the.com/dogfight
Two egos, two engines, one sky small enough for only one of them.
means A close, chaotic aerial battle between fighter planes maneuvering at tight range to get a clean shot on each other — or, more loosely, any scrappy, no-holds-barred fight.
from From actual dogfights — the snarling, snapping, tangled-up melee of two dogs locked in combat — a visual so apt that early 20th-century aviators borrowed it the moment fighter planes started tangling in tight, twisting close-range combat during World War I. The chaos of looping, diving planes clawing for position apparently looked enough like a scrap of snarling dogs that the name stuck, and it's described aerial close combat ever since.
- origin
- named for frantic, snarling close-range combat
- golden era
- WWI aces dueled with machine guns and nerve
- modern twist
- missiles mostly killed it, but pilots still train for it
- other meaning
- also slang for a brutal, scrappy competition