Showdown: Air Combat

This is a series I’ve been catching and felt the need to blog about.

The premise is simple. Major Paul “Max” Moga, an F22 pilot takes us through some of histories most thrilling dogfights, looking in depth at the planes, pilots and tactics used. The key hook is that the series uses replica or surviving fighters is a mock-up to illustrate the dogfight while Max commentates from a chase plane. Why he needs to do this is unclear but it seems to keep him happy.

Now, I’m a bit of an aviation geek. I’m one of those people who enjoys playing with Microsoft flight simulator, just to fly. Love aviation history and do take a standard male pleasure watching programmes about Arial combat. This series has its high and low points. High points are definitely in the detail in which it analyses the aircraft, doing the standard tech spec analysis but combining this with sitting in cockpits to give an idea about what the pilot would actually see. The look at tactics and pilots is also interesting and the re-enactments are great for at least enjoying the view of old warplanes haring about.

The problems spawn from a problem that affects quite a lot of the Discovery Channel’s output, particularly in military documentaries. That is a heavy bias towards the US. Now I know they were very important in WWII but on occasion as a brit you do feel like shouting “Oi, we were there too, and for longer” There is also often a stereotypical American “Gung-Ho” attitude in the US documentaries that seems a little tasteless when you think about the subject matter (War) and seems almost childish when compared to the sombre approach British documentaries take.

Anyway, I initially thought my fears would not be realised as the first episode had a few surprises. It focused on the conflict between the F86 Sabre and the Mug 15. The particular focus was on the Pilot James “Jabby” Jabara, the first Jet Ace. Again, it was American-centric but this is understandable for a pilot with such an accolade. It also had some remarkable sense from the commentators, who did point out that Jabara was dangerously reckless in that particular battle. Normally US documentaries make legends of men who show Balls over brains.

However the US-Centric approach really has made the majority of the series a bit of a mixed bag. They seem short on legendary dogfights with US pilots, so we get some odd picks, in particular the legendary rivalry between the P51 mustang and the ME-109, no Spitfire then? And in quite a few of these dogfights, The mustang, The P38 vs. Zero and the Corsair vs. Zero (We see a lot of the Zero) it really is a US pilot in a superior plane, with superior tactics blundering enough to make the fight exciting.

If we got a second season I’d hope for a few non US dogfights (Russian, British, we were all in WWII) and perhaps some WWI stuff, but until then this will live as another promising series damaged by US bluster