Before I get started, this guide is made for those who are starting to play Sim battles in War Thunder, but I hope I can learn with other pilots as well, so, if you have something to add feel free to share your knowledge with us!

About me, I've been playing War Thunder for quite some time now, more than 2500 hours actually... Flying by the username of ''w4tch_d0g3'' (thanks to 13 years old me); Also, I'm a pilot in real life, something that helped me understand more "in depths" about what I have to say in the 1st step/section of this guide, I know this game has some flaws, but there's a thing or two that can actually be useful both in real life and in War Thunder.

Survival is about keeping your plane flying as long as you can.

This guide highlights information about improving your dogfighting skills, but let's keep in mind, flying safe and trying your best to keep your pilot alive during a battle is as important, with that being said, we're also looking on what we need to improve in order to survive and to avoid battling against your own plane on the topics of this section.

I know this section looks boring, but please, trust me, it's worthy info.

• MANUAL ENGINE CONTROL

The manual use of engine control or MEC for short, is something that some players don't actually use, it's completely up to you, but be advised, in some scenarios, it can make an impact, in case you need to go back to base or if you need that extra push to get behind your opponent.

But let's go from the basics, in some engines (mostly common in low tier planes and various allied planes) you have FEATHERING, MIXTURE and COOLING FLAPS, both for oil and radiator controls, however, mixture don't work properly in the game, so, all you have to do is set it to 120% for take offs, then, back to 100% when airborne; the higher altitude you get, the more you'll need to decrease your mixture (Reducing it to a point where you notice you can't get any more RPMs from the engine). Cool Flaps are made to decrease your engine temperature, however, you're increasing drag in order to cool down your plane.

Feathering or as War Thunder calls it, ''RPM control'', can help you acquire that additional boost you need to go after someone, but be careful, increasing RPM too much can cause the engine to overheat and later reach a failure; most planes in War Thunder have a tachometer, like the one from the image on the left. Personally, what I found to be the optimal RPMs are 2300 RPM for engine cool down and long flights, 2500 RPM for climbs and 2700 RPM (NEVER ABOVE 3000 RPM) for tight turns and small chases.

DISCLAIMER: I'm certain this won't work for BRITISH and RUSSIAN models, since I don't actually fly their planes, so, if you have any useful info on that, feel free to share it down in the comments!

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• USING THE COMPENSATOR

(Mouse and Keyboard players CAN skip this part.)

Flying a well compensated plane not only will make your flying easier, but also, can increase your aimThe best way to do so, is flying straight, than you compensate your Yaw by making the dot on your turn coordinator go to the center, compensate the Pitch by making the attitude indicator get centerlined and to compensate the roll, the plane displayed in the turn coordiantor should have both wings leveled. Always compensate first the elevator then rudder and later the ailerons.

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• Proper Use Of Ailerons Rudders And Flaps

When making turns always use both ailerons and rudders, if you want to perform better turns, make use of the turn coordinator, mentioned in the last topic, you thight your turns by giving more ailerons and if you don't make use of rudder or use to much, the aircraft can create drag that might bleed your energy faster in a dogfight, applying more rudder than needed can thight even more your turns, but, you'll be trading energy for turn time and by doing this for to long can cause your plane to stall.
Going for the flaps, it can be realy handy when you need to tight even more your turns in lower speeds that usually your plane would stall when turning, just becareful not to create a drag that your plane won't be able to recover.
In combat, during turns, what I do is, give one flap position (combat flaps) to keep my plane in a constant safe turn, or in case I need to hurry things up I give Full flaps (Landing Flaps) for a second and remove it. During loops, flaps can helpful at the top of it, when pushing your plane for the vertical start applying flaps gradually until max position, remove it when the plane start diving.

I don't recomend using flaps above 160ktns unless it's for a small second.
DON'T FORGET TO RETRACT AFTER USE!!!

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• Pre-Stall Signs And Stall Recover

Belive me, it's pretty easy to know when your plane is about to stall. First thing you'll notice, it's air coming out of the tip of it's wings, but that is just the first sign so your plane should be fine at this point. draging a bit more energy, you'll see the cockpit shaking and here the plane's structure making some noises, push the plane even furder will cause a stall.


This video might help you to see those pre-stall signs mentioned before and how to survive when getting into it.







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• On Board Fire Control and Critical Engine Damage

There are 2 tips of fire your plane can get: Fuel Fire and Oil Fire.
Fuel Fire: First thing you'll notice is your plane bleeding fuel, now you need to be fast, first cut the engine power, RPM control to 0%, for less drag, if possible, fly the plane upside down and get the fast as you can. Fire out, engine power back on, RPM to how was before and level straight.
Oil Fire: This one is a little trickier to be 100% sure, and if it is, don't wast your time trying to save your plane so just eject from it, let's see some scenarios to help you understand better.
Fire on Board, but your fuel isn't leaking = 100% is your oil
Fire on Board, both your fuel and oil are leaking = 50%/50%
Wanna try to improve your odds in case both are leaking? Look at your plane's X-Ray, if the oil tank or the engine are orange to black, I wouldn't risk it saving, and if it's any color bellow, that could be just your fuel on fire and your oil just leaking and not buring, so you might be able to survive.

About Structural damage, I always try to save the plane and in most cases, it can be. Let's say your plane got damaged and your leaking oil or/and water, temperature is rising, first of all you need to control that temperature, and try to use less of your engine as possible, what usually works for me is:
1º: Set cool flaps to manual and open both or the one leaking at max.
2°: Max throttle (more fuel on the engine can help it cool it down) never above 2000RPM.
3°: When oil or water get's temperature above 160ºC, cut engine RPM to 0% until it drops to 90ºC.
4°: 90°C, power back on, RPM to 2000 or bellow and repeat until managed to get to the airfield.

Ok, so you need to understand how your fighter fly and what is it made for. There are 3 ''classes'' of fighters: Turn , Energy and Boom and Zoom Fighters, you don't need to master all this 3 to know how to dogfight but you need to know how those planes behave during a dogfight to keep one step ahead of your enemy.


Turn Fighers - Those planes are made to keep your enemies close trying to out turn him with manuvers and loops, some suffer from bad energy retention, like the Spitfire, or don't do so well in high speed as most of the japonese models.


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Energy Fighters - Fighters like the Mustang is all about engine power and contrary to the turn fighters it's main objective is too keep distance from the enemy and making a single blow with alot of energy, but like the name says, it need energy to keep on the fight, planes from this classes suffer when they are out of energy, most because they are to heavy, then, becoming very hard to manuever, so in the end remeber to get away from your target and making a run back on him, if you miss it DO NOT try to turn fight him, get away and do it all again until you managed to destroy it.



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Boom And Zoomers (Bnz) - Zoomers will always try to be on top constantly diving on the enemy, if your the zoomer and lost your shot at the opponent, DO NOT abandon your tactic and go for the chase or the turn, you'll probably going to end up killed unless ur plane is good in one of those atributes too, but make it as a last resource in case your enemy end up with more energy than you.

Knowing your enemy behavior isn't that hard, in less than 10 seconds you can figure it out, just see if the other pilot fly more agressive or defensive, a good pilot can always fly both ways, my advice, don't be to defensive or to agressive, know the right timing.

Flying Defensive: a defensive flying starts from the take off, after your get airborne never go straight to the center map, going straight it will only make it easy for enemies to spot you and even cut you from bellow, if your not aware of them. go for the sides and in most cases climbing, 2500ft above ground is a good altitude, but if you already have visual with an enemy plane, follow its climb, always trying to be above him and aware of your speed, don't climb bellow 160 knts.
During the match as you alredy took down the planes that had spawned at the begging or it simple didn't spawn any at the time, progress helping your team on the ground and always keeping an eye on the enemy airfield and your back. What i usually do in mid games, is, to give a hand to our friends on the ground and making climbs on spiral to avoid attacks from enemy bellow and see if there is any on my six.


Flying Agressive: spotting an agressive pilot is simple, he's the one, that, during a merge, won't stop shooting you until he made a kill or collide with you or during a turn fight he'll try to keep its noose pointed at your plane at all time, pushing its plane to the edge, it's effective but its also dangerous, keep in mind that, what is most important is you and your plane's safety so don't make your self at to much risk.

In this Video, I was in the 109, flying defensive constantly avoiding to get shot by the P-40's, both of them were flying aggressively probably becouse they tought they had the number advantage, but, it's clear to see they're mistake at the end of the fight, with one of them pushing his plane to a point of wing stall and the other ending up with no energy to manuever.

To start with, I'll not be couvering all manuever that there are, just the ones that i think it's best to stay alive and are usually enough to get in to the enemy's six, remeber, step one and this is something i see alot of players getting wrong, as an exemple. Yak's are realy strong turn fighters, but, most players don't actually know how to fly it, it's pretty common to see yak players getting into spin stalls becouse of to much use of elevators. So, do some practice and see your planes limitations before get into a real fight.

With that said, what you'll most see is loops after loops until your enemy get out of energy but, keep in mind that you can get out of energy first or that the other fighter can turn better than yours and that's where you need to get fancy.

*Bougie and you are going face to face, don't try to kill him right there, that will give a 50/50 chance of sucess, instead, when face to face, climb or descend gradually 30º to its left or right and when you fell your close enough go for the merge, personally, when flying turn fighters, I start the turn sooner giving me a slight advantage at the beggining, but, with some energy figther i like to make a straight foward climb without loosing to much energy.

*Bougie on your six or constantly boom and zooming, if you can't think in something fast or better, go for a dive (if high) or do a split S (make your plane go upside down pull on the stick up and level the plane again after a complete 180º) and try to get away from this fight and get altitude so you can even the odds of sucess.



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*Bougie is out turing you, split S probably won't save you here, what's best in those cases is to throw your enemy into a rolling scissors, making the attacker keep rolling with you always trying to drag speed on top of the enemy to get on its six when descending on him.







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*Bougie is bellow you and you know he is flying a heavier plane or it's engine won't have the energy to catch you on a climb, you might try the hammerhead manuever (climb vertically the higher you can, than with the rudder point the aircraft's noose to the ground or, if possible, push the plane to a vertical so you can dive with more energy), perfect for energy fighters and BnZs.








But in the end, again, what is most importante is your life, so if you'r not very confident about how the cards are playing for you, just disengage from combat, go back to base, if needed, there is no shame on that.

Belive me when i say that this section is importante to, cause when learning to play war thunder is pretty easy to get distracted, if even the best pilots during war periods got shot down cause they got distracted why wouldn't you?

With that said i got some topics that are most comom to happen and maybe help you to be aware.

During combat, when the enemy desingage, be very careful when going to the chase cause you'll be flying most time in straight line wich means your an easy target and in most cases your enemy is running to his airfield, and don't even try fly trough the AAA's, my advice, don't stay to long after the runnner, better to let him go sometimes.


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Again, During Combat, when in a dogfight even if it's a 1v1, find some time to look at your six just don't loose track from your main target, and if you find your self against more than one plane NEVER fixate in one target, make your moves based in the one that is closer to point it's noose against you, i know it's hard to let it go some times but you need to wait for the perfect timing, regular war thunder pilots when they have the supeior number of planes at its side they tend to go more agressive, basically, you need to use they're despair to kill, to make them do a mistake.


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I don't know about you, but I prefer to go in a dogfight agains't a spitfire then go after most bombers.
Hunting bombers can be very hard to rookie players. Don't underestimate those gunners, every second you stay at they're sight you're making your pilots life at risk so the best approch is to make a swift and effective strike.
What I usally do, is, to climb side by side with the enemy bomber always with him on my field of view, and after i got some altitude and managed to recover my speed I go for the dive and aim at the weaks spots, usually, been the wings. Just be careful when going for the dive or you can ram on the enemy the same as the gif...

Thank you very much for reaching the end! I had so much fun doing in it, put some work on it and I hope that I fulfilled my goal with this, by teaching something to new pilots out there!


----------------------->>> Have a Good Flight!!! And Happy Hunting!!! <<<------------------------