20 Facts About Fighter aircraft

Fighter aircraft are fixed-wing military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat.

In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace.

Domination of the airspace above a battlefield permits bombers and attack Fighter aircraft to engage in tactical and strategic bombing of enemy targets.

Many modern fighter aircraft have secondary capabilities such as ground attack and some types, such as fighter-bombers, are designed from the outset for dual roles.

An interceptor is generally an Fighter aircraft intended to target bombers and so often trades maneuverability for climb rate.

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However at the outbreak of World War I, front-line Fighter aircraft were mostly unarmed and used almost exclusively for reconnaissance.

Fighter aircraft development stagnated between the wars, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, where budgets were small.

In contrast, designers in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States believed that the increased speed of fighter aircraft would create g-forces unbearable to pilots who attempted maneuvering dogfights typical of the First World War, and their fighters were instead optimized for speed and firepower.

In practice, while light, highly maneuverable aircraft did possess some advantages in fighter-versus-fighter combat, those could usually be overcome by sound tactical doctrine, and the design approach of the Italians and Japanese made their fighters ill-suited as interceptors or attack aircraft.

Also, significant numbers of British, and later U S, fighter aircraft were supplied to aid the Soviet war effort as part of Lend-Lease, with the Bell P-39 Airacobra proving particularly effective in the lower-altitude combat typical of the Eastern Front.

Axis fighter aircraft focused on defending against Allied bombers while Allied fighters' main role was as bomber escorts.

The only pure rocket Fighter aircraft ever mass-produced was the Messerschmitt Me 163B Komet in 1944, one of several German World War II projects aimed at developing high speed, point-defense Fighter aircraft.

The rocket was the main engine for delivering the speed and height required for high-speed interception of high-level bombers and the turbojet gave increased fuel economy in other parts of flight, most notably to ensure the Fighter aircraft was able to make a powered landing rather than risking an unpredictable gliding return.

Fighter aircraft designs were significantly influenced by the Energy-Maneuverability theory developed by Colonel John Boyd and mathematician Thomas Christie, based upon Boyd's combat experience in the Korean War and as a fighter-tactics instructor during the 1960s.

Some early jet fighters required 50 man-hours of work by a ground crew for every hour the aircraft was in the air; later models substantially reduced this to allow faster turn-around times and more sorties in a day.

Some modern military Fighter aircraft only require 10-man-hours of work per hour of flight time, and others are even more efficient.

The first stealth Fighter aircraft introduced were the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk attack Fighter aircraft and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit bomber .

From WWI to the present, fighter aircraft have featured machine guns and automatic cannons as weapons, and they are still considered as essential back-up weapons today.

British and German Fighter aircraft tended to use a mix of machine guns and autocannon, the latter firing explosive projectiles.

The defeated enemy Fighter aircraft were for the most part older MiG-17s, -19s, and -21s, with new cost of $0.