Energy fighting

Stop! Please leave this article alone. Moderator Rapitor will be building this page with data he wrote on the War Thunder Forum. Stay tuned for updates.

Work in Progress.

Original here: https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/376001-energy-fighting-explained-feedback-review-welcomed/

Disclaimer:

- A few concepts and equations have been simplified, to make them understandable to neophytes.

- This page, while fairly exhaustive, does not to provide a complete guide about the subject. Reading this will not allow you to be #1 in the next Top Gun promotion.

Context:

When energy fighting is discussed, it very often turns down to categories. it is convenient to put things in boxes. It makes everything more simple. “This goes to A, this goes to B” etc. Unfortunately, flying is not simple, and the world is not made of black and white. To fully understand how to push your plane to its limit, it is important to see that energy fighting is not 2 opposed concepts, as Yin and Yang, but a continuous grey scale from black to white. Let's not bound yourself to "diving attack" and "turning fights".

You will often read: “we have BnZ planes and Turn fight planes”. Some say “we have energy fighters and turn fighters”

The former implies that a turn fight plane cannot BnZ, or a BnZ plane cannot turn fight; back to our comfortable boxes, it is so nice (and wrong) to see the world in black and white.

The latter is basically someone trying not understanding the concept of ACM. Flying is energy fighting. So unless turn fighting is not flying and turning, you cannot explain how it is not energy fighting as well. 

This wiki page aims to explain what is energy fighting, what it means and how you can use it.

Flying is energy fighting and this page explains (partially) what to do with your energy. It provides a solid basis to help you understand how can you fly to get out of trouble, or even better, how to get your guns on the target.