dogfight
/ˈdɒɡfʌɪt
/noun
1A close combat between military aircraft: Sergeant Smith and a colleague were in a dogfight with an enemy aircraft...
- In time, they battled over trenches in World War I, engaged in dogfights with other aircraft, attacked ground troops and disrupted enemy activity near the front lines.
- The Americans lost only twenty-two fighter aircraft in dogfights or to flak over Guam; nine more planes were lost operationally or on search missions.
- Battle of Britain is a wonderful film if what you principally want to see are lots of vintage World War II aircraft engaged in aerial dogfights.
1.1A ferocious struggle for supremacy between interested parties: the meeting deteriorated into a dogfight...
- At such an early stage of the season, this was never going to be exactly a relegation dogfight - but it was certainly competed with the ferocity of one.
- Recent good work by the team looked light years away and they have now got themselves embroiled in a dogfight that they might struggle to win.
- With his claiming more MP supporters than all his four rivals combined, he is assured a place in the final, two-person dogfight - where a winner is chosen by a vote of the 300,000 party members.
Derivatives
dogfighter
- The F-16 was designed to be the world's best dogfighter, able to achieve extremely high kill ratios either with its Sidewinder missiles or with its guns.
- They made their search strategic, like experienced dogfighters; swerving around one another to avoid any other possible attacks that so took their over-eager friends.
- The choppers were poor speed-combatants, but they were deadly dogfighters.
dogfighting
/ noun ...- Another interesting twist is that some of the videos were filmed in Japan, where dogfighting is apparently not illegal.
- They are the kind of people who have little compassion for anything wild and are happy to participate in such pursuits as dogfighting and cockfighting.
- An impressively comprehensive Training mode guides players from simple maneuvering techniques to complex aerobatics, dogfighting, and air-to-ground combat.