The 6 Famous Air Battles of the 20th Century On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers of the United States piloted "Aviator 1" for the first air flight. This great invention ushered in the age of aircraft in the 20th century. When aviation competitions became popular around the world, the young Italian officer Douhet had already begun formulating his theory of air supremacy. Aircraft first participated in the Italian-Turkish War in 1911. By the time World War I broke out, the total number of aircraft from the major participating countries had reached thousands. On October 5, 1914, two sergeants of the French Air Force brought a machine gun onto the plane and shot down a German aircraft. This was the first air battle in the history of world war, marking the expansion of war into three-dimensional space. In the summer of 1939, Japanese militarists began to try to conquer Soviet Union and Mongolia. The Nomenkan Incident was their carefully planned experiment, but they were completely defeated by General Zhukov. On June 12, 1939, the Japanese army launched an offensive and sent a powerful fleet of aircraft to attack the Soviet and Mongolian army positions. The Soviet army immediately dispatched 60 N-15 fighter planes to intercept. The sudden appearance of the Soviet aircraft group disrupted the unsuspecting Japanese aviation formation. The air battle lasted for eight hours. The Soviet army lost 34 aircraft and shot down and damaged more than 50 Japanese aircraft. The Nomonkan air battle was a large-scale air battle conducted by the Soviet Union on the eve of its participation in World War II. It not only dealt a heavy blow to the arrogance of the Japanese aviation force, but also accumulated valuable practical experience for the aviation force to support ground troops. During the Korean War, the United Nations forces led by the United States relied on their absolute air superiority to dominate the skies over North Korea. The Volunteer Air Force emerged from the sky and established a "Mig Corridor" over the Chongchuan River to the Yalu River, completely defeating the arrogance of the U.S. Air Force. . In this "strangulating war" that lasted for 10 months, the Volunteer Army shot down 122 U.S. aircraft and injured 41. Even the American "air hero" and "ace pilot" Major Davis was killed by the young Chinese pilot shot down and killed. Lieutenant General William, commander of the U.S. Far East Air Force, had to admit that the U.S. Air Force was "fighting a powerful and skilled enemy." "The United Nations Air Force's air blockade of North Korean railway transportation completely failed." The Kuban air battle was In a large-scale air battle on the Soviet-German battlefield in World War II, the German Air Force suffered a serious setback in the battle, thus losing air superiority on the southern flank of the Soviet-German battlefield. On the night of February 5, 1943, the Soviet Marine Corps launched an early offensive, successfully landed on the south side of the Kuban Peninsula, seized the landing site, and stabbed across the south side of the German defense line. The German army was greatly frightened. On April 17, it dispatched four infantry divisions and 27,000 people, supported by a large number of aircraft, to launch a frenzied attack on the Soviet landing site named "Little Di". The first round of the Kuban Battle broke out on land, sea and air at the same time, with the air battle being the most intense. The 4th Luftwaffe of the German Air Force deployed nearly a thousand combat aircraft in this small space to violently bomb the landing site and support infantry operations. The number of Soviet aircraft also increased to more than 900. During the two-month air battle in Kuban, the Soviet army dispatched 35,000 aircraft and shot down more than 800 German aircraft, which greatly weakened the German air power. The Soviet Air Force seized air supremacy on the southern flank of the Soviet-German battlefield, paving the way for further seizing air supremacy over the entire Soviet-German battlefield. After Hitler swept across the Western European continent with a blitzkrieg, he formulated a "Sea Lion Plan" to invade Britain. He decided to launch a large-scale air offensive first, aiming to eliminate the Royal Air Force and destroy its defense system in preparation for the cross-sea landing, so the war broke out The largest air battle since the beginning. The Luftwaffe suffered a serious setback in the Battle of Britain and was forced to abandon Project Sea Lion. On August 15, Germany dispatched 520 bomber sorties and 1,270 fighter sorties in an all-out attack on major British targets. Over southern England, the British Air Force's "Spitfire" and "Hurricane" fighter jets and 600 German bombers launched an unprecedented large-scale air battle in the history of world war. The British planes adopted the tactic of flanking the rear bombers separately, causing the German bombers to fall into a chaotic flight. Enraged, Hitler launched several lightning air raids on London. In the most intense four months of the "Battle of Britain" from July to October 1940, the British Army lost 915 combat aircraft.
However, Nazi Germany lost 1,733 aircraft, which was the first serious setback since the beginning of World War II. The Falklands War and the Lebanon War that occurred in 1982 were watersheds in the history of modern warfare, marking that war has entered the high-tech era. In the Arab-Israeli war, the air battle in the Bekaa Valley attracted the most attention from military strategists. On the morning of June 9, 1982, the Israeli Air Force released a drone to lure Syria to launch missiles; after the radar of the Syrian Army in the Bekaa Valley captured the Israeli Air Force "plane", following the commander's order, the Sam-6 missile Shooting at Israeli Air Force "aircraft" again and again. At this time, 90 F-15 and F-16 fighter jets and F-4 and A-4 bombers of the Israeli Air Force launched a fierce attack on the SAM missile positions in the Bekaa Valley. In an instant, 19 SAM missile positions became A ruin. Syria immediately took off 62 MiG-23 and MiG-21 fighter jets to counterattack the Israeli attack formation over the Bekaa Valley. However, the Israeli Air Force had already taken precautions against this. In this air battle, it shot down 30 Syrian aircraft without losing a single aircraft. In the air battle in the Bekaa Valley, the Israeli Air Force destroyed 84 Syrian aircraft without damaging a single aircraft. Since then, air combat has entered a high-tech era, and a new page has opened in the history of world air combat.
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