Dogfights - The Complete Season One (History Channel)

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DVD details

Actor: Dogfights
Brand: A&E
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Black & White, Box set, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 517 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: A&E Home Video

DVD Reviews of Dogfights - The Complete Season One (History Channel)

DVD Review: Superb !
Summary: 5 Stars

Fabulously produced series. Great Value for Money. Worth every valuable cent you can find these days.

Kudos to the team. Highlight for me was interviews with the pilots and aces ... the Israeli - Jordanian dog fight was a classic - the pilot acknowledging that (and, I am paraphrasing here) .. "even though we are sworn enemies, as pilot to pilot, I really wished he had lived".

I was never into battles etc, but this is a must see. Warning :: It's highly addictive !

Very inexpensive for what it offers.

SUGGESTION :: I bought Dogfights Vol 1 and Vol 2 and saved a bunch of money :) Don't buy them together -- buy them separately. And with free shipping, you've got yourself a deal !

DVD Review: Worth it for the Taffy-3 Episode alone
Summary: 5 Stars

I caught the original "pilot" for this show on the History Channel in Fall of 2006 and absolutely loved it. Apparently I wasn't alone as many other viewers were so impressed that the History Channel made it into a full-fledged series. I have an intense love of military aircraft, and in particular anything having to do with WW2 air combat. In high school my friends had posters of their favorite bands hanging on the walls. I had posters of B-17's and Ju-87 Stukas. This, coupled with a sizable collection of flight sims and plastic aircraft models makes me a prime audience target for this program.

Dogfights uses state of the art CG graphics to recreate some of the great dogfights in history, covering all eras from WW1 up to the Gulf War. There seems to be a heavy emphasis on Vietnam and WW2 era dogfights in particular, and that may irk some folks, but really this is where the vast majority of such action took place and the show reflects this. In addition to this are two episodes largely relating to sea battles, specifically the hunt for the German battleship Bismarck, and the fantastic episode on Taffy 3 (a handful of US Destroyers and Destroyer Escorts taking on a greater force of Japanese cruisers and battleships, including the Yamato, and *winning*). Honorable mention goes to the episode on the Cactus Air Force flying F4F Wildcats, and the awesome episode "Long Odds" featuring extremely mismatched dogfights between Swede Vejtasa in an SBD facing off against 3 Japanese Zeroes, a very unique tale about a B-17 named "Ol' 666", and a dogfight between Mig-17's and the venerable F-105 "Thud".

The program typically covers certain pilots' exploits. These pilots are interviewed throughout the show describing how the dogfight unfolded, as well as interviews with flight instructors and historians. Starting forces are shown as well as side by side comparisons of the aircraft involved, marking their strengths and weaknesses. The WW2 episodes appear to be primarily based in the Pacific Theater, and the only WW1 episode is more or less of a portion of the series pilot. This too may get under some folks' skin, but I love this show in any way I can get it and I think it's safe to say most of the other posters here agree.

There is some controversy surrounding the show's noticeable highlighting of US and Israeli pilots. In truth I think the show would gain much by doing a 2 hour special on the Battle of Britain, but remember that this show was primarily intended for a US audience and thus the producers were trying to cater to this demographic. There were some episodes done from the Japanese and German perspectives in Season 2, but not much else, and as I said this will irk a few folks. There's a number of things I'd love to see the show do programs on;

-The aforementioned Battle of Britain
-Pearl Harbor
-Anything on the WW2 Russian Front (who doesn't want to see some I-16's zipping around?)
-The Nigerian Civil War where the newborn nation of Biafra's tiny mercenary air force took the larger nation's modernized Air Force to task using homemade fighter planes
-A whole episode on Hans-Ulrich Rudel's exploits in his famed Stuka (there's enough there to do a 2 hour special, at the very least!).

There's some uncertainty about the future of the show and rumors of cancellation, which makes a number of us fans a little bit uneasy. There's practically nowhere else we can go to get this kind of programming and that worries me and a lot of others. The bottom line though is that you cannot find a better program of this type anywhere and cannot recommend buying this series on DVD enough. You will not be disappointed!

DVD Review: Amazing Dogfights
Summary: 4 Stars

I really enjoyed this program when I saw it on the History Channel, and was very excited to be able to get it through Amazon. It's really great how they used first hand descriptions from the pilots that flew the planes and the missions, and re-enacted the dogfights with computer animation so that you could see what the pilots were describing. It also gave great detail about the planes and their strengths and weaknesses. The only downside was that even though the commercials were edited out, there was still the annoying ritual that is on all History Channel documentaries, where they back up to re-tell half the story after each commercial. This tends to be a bit annoying since there are no commercials, so no reason to review the story. But it's still a great documentary and very interesting in spite of that one small situation.

DVD Review: Great shows - couple of technical quirks
Summary: 4 Stars

I agree with a previous reviewer that probably the strongest plus in the Dogfights series are the interviews with the pilots. WWII history is about to pass from the realm of "living history", as most of the heroes who fought that war are dead. These interviews help ensure that the stories will be there to enthrall the next generation - assuming that the school systems will allow the stories to be told (but that's another soapbox and not appropriate for this venue).

I love the series; and have watched the episodes over & over - especially the one about the Battle of Leyte Gulf with Taffy 3. The only negative comments I would make from a technical standpoint (and these are not deal-breakers) are these. First, the rocking effect that happens every time a plane flys by is cool at first; but, repeated watchings of the episodes find that the effect starts to become annoying. I could do with the effect happening maybe once per episode, maximum.

The other thing that gets redundant is they show the same plane getting shot down 3-4 times, from different angles. I don't have a problem with seeing the event once from the attacker's cockpit & once from the recipient's vantage point. But, any more times is too repetitive.

As I said before, neither of these things are serious faults; and I'm certainly not suggesting that anyone not purchase the series. The special effects are amazing, and the subject matter is engaging. I'm always on the edge of my seat when I watch an episode, even though I may have seen it 10 times.

DVD Review: "Dogfights" is worst warplane series, pure propaganda.
Summary: 1 Stars

I've collected historical and military documentaries for over 40 years and this is without a doubt the worst fake historical-documentary series that is in fact propaganda that I've seen in English. Worse, it is the ONLY series I've seen in ANY language that not only omits the 'Battle of Britain' and Spitfire, but shows such a one-sided, American/Israeli-biased series. If the RAF is mentioned it is to prove how great Americans & Israelis were in comparison to them.
If there was fuel to the rising criticism of the owners of the History channels recently producing unprofessional and unethical propaganda programming, this is it.
This is the only series I wouldn't even accept as a gift to be beer coasters.

Description of Dogfights - The Complete Season One (History Channel)

Harnessing the technology from the latest cgi video game flight simulators this puts the viewers behind the cockpit pitted against enemy aircraft in 11 of modern historys greatest air battles. Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 04/24/2007 Run time: 517 minutes

Detailed digital re-creations of aerial combat are the obvious highlight of Dogfights, but the greatest value of this popular History Channel series lies in its assembly of priceless interviews with veteran pilots who fought in history's most dangerous dogfights and lived to tell the tale. As an oral and visual history that will enthrall viewers of all ages, the series pays tribute to these men and their remarkable skill, and their vivid recollections ensure that this series will be discussed and studied for many years to come. Filling four DVDs, these 11 first-season episodes run about 43 minutes in length, with each episode focusing on specific dogfights where "you're in the pilot's seat" for a breathtaking study of how these potentially deadly aerial encounters began, developed, and concluded. From the biplanes of World War I to the F-15 Eagles of the U.S. and Israeli Air Forces, the series re-creates legendary dogfights with computer-generated aircraft so authentically detailed (including accurate paint-schemes and military markings) that you can even see the rivets in their fuselages. With CGI pilots nestled in their cockpits, these airplanes look and move like the real thing, and while other details such as aircraft debris, flames, explosions, and crashes are rendered in video-game quality resolution (i.e., not state-of-the-art but sufficiently impressive) the aerial activity also includes gun-tracers, rockets, and missiles that are instantly convincing. As you learn about strategic maneuvers like the "Thatch Weave" and "Rolling Scissors," the only thing missing is the G-forces you'd feel if you were actually flying the planes.

With highlights too numerous to mention individually, each episode follows a precise and logical structure, thrusting the viewer into the chaos of combat, then supplementing the visual excitement with detailed schematics and comparison charts of aircraft on both sides of battle. Each chart examines the characteristic strengths and weaknesses of the aircraft involved (from structural integrity to weapons systems, maximum speed, climbing rates, etc.), and archival footage of the actual aircraft in action is accompanied by background history and pilot testimonials. Although most of the action is taken from Pacific theater combat of World War II, dogfights from the Vietnam War (as in "The Last Gunfighter," a tribute to the F8 Crusader) and the Middle East are also included. Among the most thrilling episodes are "Long Odds" (focusing on the heroic endurance of WWII Navy Ace "Swede" Vejtasa and Medal of Honor winner Jay Zeamer) and "Hunt for the Bismarck," a riveting study of aerial supremacy over Germany's legendary battleship. As a bonus feature on disc 1, the feature-length pilot episode "Dogfights: Greatest Air Battles" was produced a year before the 2006 premiere of Dogfights and offers a more generalized history of aerial combat and flying-ace heroes. Also included is "Dogfights: The Planes," a featurette compilation of individual aircraft profiles culled from the series proper. Unfortunately, Dogfights is presented in "plain" widescreen (i.e., not enhanced for widescreen TVs), and subtitles and closed captioning are not included. These are the only drawbacks in a four-disc set that's an absolute must-have for military buffs, future "Top Gun" candidates and anyone interested in the history of aerial combat. --Jeff Shannon

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