Aerial Ramming
Erich Hartmann, who is credited with 352 aerial kills, is the deadliest fighter pilot in history. Even though many of his victims were Soviet fighters, let's pretend for the sake of argument that he also downed 352 P-51 Mustangs, which were among the most prevalent US fighters of the conflict (pictured above). He would have destroyed nearly $20 million in fighter jets for a cost of about $58,000 at the time. That equates to more than $340 million now. What more could have been done because it was obvious that shooting the man down at the moment didn't work out too well? The exceedingly risky method known as "air ramming" is one low-cost substitute for a regular dog fight.
Air ramming entails ramming an opposing plane with your own aircraft, much like ramming another vehicle off the road. You can understand why this strategy isn't used very frequently. It requires a steady hand, a keen eye, and nerves of something a little harder than steel because the objective is to avoid getting yourself murdered in the process. It's a strategy that's nearly as old as flight itself.
Even before World War II, there were rumors about the technique, although many people thought they were completely false. What kind of lunatic, after all, would do such a thing? But ask yourself: What do you have to lose if you're out of ammo, facing an enemy in the air, and fully expecting to be shot down?
Witnesses on the ground observed one of the Soviet fighter pilots very clearly maneuver his plane into the enemy, destroying both of the Hungarian aircraft in the process but allowing the Soviet, who had no idea when he might need to jump ship, to float safely to the ground with his parachute in 1956 when two Soviet fighters engaged two Hungarian aircraft. The pilot denied doing it on purpose, but witnesses said his goal and outcome were very evident. The pilot eventually acknowledged that he slammed the plane to destroy it after his guns stopped working.
