not horrible nor great

Expected more

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

This is a History Channel program depicting various aerial battles. The time era takes place from the first generation bi-planes to modern aviators during Desert Storm. The Phil Crowley narrations give the program a steady newsreel sensibilities. There are military experts, historians, and sometimes, actual participants in those battles. It has old footage, maps, and most importantly CGI recreations of the aerial combat. The CGI is good for TV of that time period. It is excellent at presenting the combat tactics of these pilots. The show gives the general specifications of these planes and describe their strength and weaknesses. The CGI is able to inject action into the documentary programs. This is a must for aerial combat enthusiasts of any era.

Just seen the last episode, "Dogfights of the future" Never seen a documentary about aviation so technically flawed, so biased and so politically oriented, it looks like being some joint venture Lockheed-USAF self centered masturbation or some propaganda to make tax payers at ease to spend billions and billions in what was already known by all air analysts at the time for being the worst military money pit due to lobbying of all times and a strategic scam, the so-called 5th generation fighters concept. Firstly, at the time this documentary was made, it was well known that the B1R air2air missile truck was never to be made. From the beginning, Sukhoi presented the Su47 as just a testbed for inversed wings and never to be something else than a prototype so it is already a very bad journalist job as such infos were public. About the use of laser as an aircraft weapon, we're in pure sci-fi conjecture : past tests were led from a naval corvette recently and a Boeing 747 when Reagan was prez, as it needs enormous amounts of energy to shoot something practical and for the recent tests, it was only able to shoot a small boat and a slow flying drone, both would have been easy preys for WWII weapons, other thing is atmospheric diffraction which would make it maybe efficient against low flying satellites, but it is known for long to be not efficient for long range thru atmosphere targeting and sorry, but from the distance they shoot their laser, they would be easy prey for long range missiles and as they need to focus radar on their target and become so a target too, are big, etc etc, such scenario makes the laser platform to be fastly over, well, even AWACS are in real danger since there are very long range lock-on-radar missiles especially designed to get such platforms, but now, back to the 'star', the F22 : if people at Dassault or Sukhoi or any with real aircraft knowledge have seen those 4 F22 downing about 30 Rafales and Su35, they must have laughed non stop for days! First, shooting AMRAAMs from 100km, it as only a 10% hit probability against a non maneuvering target, non aware of the attack and non using counter measures, understand : and old F4 Phantom made a drone target! The longest effective AMRAAM shot in real combat was no more than 35km! Other thing, as I pointed : long range radar guided missiles need a target illuminating by radar so there is no more stealth as soon as you do it. Only way you can assume it is to go nearer using IRST (infra red targeting) but at such distance, you're inside opposing IRST and as F22 is big, it's in other IRST before himself seeing smaller "gen4+" planes, so, in reality, the BVR was already sold in the 60's and they thought on-board cannon was useless as long reality blew F4s in Vietnam. And well, I don't know from where this mockumentary assumes that only F22 and F35 are the only with stealth capacity : it is built of mostly radar absorbant materials and if it ain't use the passive stealth geometry, it has more potent active stealth by anulating radar signals and other bad-ass thing, so, look what happens when F22 meets Rafale : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOswfrc7Xtg And we don't speak about diponibility : at best, the full USAF F22 fleet can make only 60 missions a day where the same number of Rafales, Typhoons, Grippen, Sukhois, etc could make about 500 missions a day. Passive stealths need special shelters and are grounded for 2/3 days between each flights making'em easy preys on their bases... So, I REALLY don't know what is the point of such kind of childish cartoon? Pumping more money from taxpayers in a time when Bush was still in charge? Reassuring US citizens about they'll keep total air supremacy in the future? The point is I'm interested in all that flies for 40 years and I've never seen or read something as stupid except some stupid Youtube patriotic comments from people that had never been in a cockpit and never handled a yoke.

Although the series is high in technical proficiency and detail to re-animate air battles, there is an almost complete of historical balance. The focus of most chapters is on American aviators as if they were repeating the "Mariana's turkey shot" through the ages. Only a few chapters are devoted to Israeli or German and Japanese odds-and-ends (Me-163, kamikaze, etc.). Almost no mention is done of German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and even North Vietnamese Aces that top all-time aerial combat Aces lists. They even neglect traditional allies as the British and the French. There are very detailed accounts of aerial battles from the "other guys" point of view that should be included to have a really "Historical balance" of aerial warfare.

Over 90% of all episodes are of American victories. The rest are 'our side', whether Israelis, in admittedly the same one-sided accounts, defeating many times their number of foes, or the RAF who are represented as having to use an American rather than British pilot in a British-Canadian Squadron portrayed shooting down more unarmed planes than warplanes. The series seems to forget that the definition of a dogfight is the aerial combat between fighter planes. Seriously, in 3 seasons not a single mention of "The Battle of Britain"(admittedly the most important series of dogfights to western freedom), the Spitfire nor a British even Canadian star. There is not a single episode where an enemy fighter pilot is the star shooting down an American fighter pilot in a dogfight. That's not 'a little biased', that's 'totally biased'. That's not a 'historical documentary', that's 'propaganda'. Even non-Americans have risked and given their lives for the American ideals of 'Truth and Justice for all', but this series has none of that. I've collected such documentary series in book, tape now DVD form for over 40 years. This is the first one I'll refuse to include.