Customer Reviews

Dogfights: The Complete Season 2 (History Channel)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dogfights Season Two was every bit as exciting, thoughtful and well produced as Season One. Filled with many great interviews with actual participants in much of the action being documented, coupled with the "in the cockpit" feel of the show, there is no other documentary on the subject of dogfighting quite like it. Why the History Channel would cancel the best, most exciting and informative show they've ever produced at the peak of its popularity is still a mystery. Don't miss out on a chance to own this show on DVD while it is in print.

This DVD set contains all seventeen episodes from Season Two. Here's a list of episode titles:
Kamikaze
Jet vs. Jet
Thunderbolt
Gun Kills of Vietnam
Desert Aces
The First Dogfighters
Luftwaffe's Deadliest Mission
No Room for Error
Night Fighters
The Bloodiest Day
P-51 Mustang
Dogfights of Desert Storm
Tuskegee Airmen
MiG Killers of the Midway
Supersonic
Death of the Luftwaffe
Secret Weapons

One of the best shows I have ever seen. The computer graphics depicting the dogfight put you right there. Plus they interview the pilots to give you inside information on what they were thinking and seeing. Very good series. Start with the "No Room For Error" episode. Highly recommended.

'Dogfights, season 2' is even better than the first season. Season 2 has 5 CD's instead of 4 that season 1 had, plus one extra battle per CD. This season has WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm and the Israeli Sx Day War.
I love both seasons. I watch them over and over again. If you want to watch air battles about famous aces like Robert S. Johnson, Robin Olds, Lee A. Archer and more. With air battles about the P-51, P-47, F-4, F-86, F-15, Mirage and more.
If you want to read about aces and air battles, then buy Osprey's 'Aircraft of the aces' books. If you want some action yourself, then buy 'IL-2 Sturmovik' and/or 'IL-2 F.B., A.E.P.', and if you want to watch air battles, then this is the documentry!
I'll always buy History Channel's 'Dogfights' series.

Best aviation show ever, and I've probably seen them all. Besides the great storytelling, the visuals are stunning. If you enjoy aviation history, this is the show for you. Too bad we're only getting two seasons of it out of the History Channel, as it is the best thing they've ever featured, IMHO.

This five dvd set has some really beautiful highlights. The CGI is fabulous. The resulting episodes are visually arresting - much more lifelike than actual combat footage, which tends to be grainy or washed out. The CGI is so accurate that even the reflections on the fuselage of each aircraft follow the sun as the pilots maintain an orbit above or around a target, or pursue their enemy. The sequences of aerial combat are very fluid and very close to the sort of dogfight scenarios that one might visualize without having had the actual experience of air combat.

"The Luftwaffe's Deadliest Mission" depicts the unique mission of the SonderKommando Elbe, and elite group of German pilots mustered together in a last ditch effort to stop the allies from entering Deutchland: Using stripped down ME109's, the mission of each pilot was to seek out and ram Allied B-17 and B-24's in Kamikaze fashion. The CGI is great, but the interviews with two of the surviving pilots is especially interesting.

Also noteworthy is "The Tuskegee Airmen" which goes into specific detail about the heroic exploits of the Brave African-Americans who flew P-51 Mustangs in covering missions for the B-24's and B-17's that flew combat missions in the skies over Romania and southern Europe.

Other Highlights: "Death of the Luftwaffe" chronicles Operation Bodenplatte, which took place on New Year's day, 1945 against a forawrd American airbase in Europe; And "Secret Weapons" which are accurate depictions of the ME-262, the Kamikaze, and remotely controlled airplanes.

The air war in Korea is included in the episodes, "Supersonic" and "Jet vs. Jet". Again, great CGI. Ace Pilots Frederick "Boots" Blesse, Robbie Risner and Ralph Parr give great commentary. The leap in jet technology and the effect it had on aerial combat and the resulting high speed problems each pilot faced are explained in surprising detail.

Of particular interest is the inclusion of about a half-dozen episodes that depict the F4 Phantom and the various missions assigned to their Pilots and Radar Intercept Officers.
I'm a huge fan of the F4 Phantom and the pilots that flew them, so these episodes are truly amazing to me. It's difficult for me to imagine to be at the top front of all that raw power.

Some noteworthy F4 Phantom sequences: "The Bloodiest Day" which depicts the May 10, 1972 bombing mission of the Hai Dong Railyards, and "Gun Kills of Vietnam," which shows how effective the addition of a gun pod on the F4 was.

"Dogfights of Desert Storm" is also covered extensively in one episode, and on another disc, an episode covering the exploits of the Israeli Air Defense Force is also included.

"The First Dogfighters" feautres a segment devoted to the techniques of aerial combat that Eddie Rickenbacker and other notables such as Manfred Von Richtoffen helped to develop and are still studied by combat pilots today.

To its credit, the History Channel also put together a CGI series that dealt more with ground combat in World War II, but the CGI didn't work all that well. Even though the historical information was accurately depicted, the CGI wasn't nearly what it should have been mostly by virtue of the complicated nature of recreating computer-generated human beings. In other words, the soldiers didn't look real.

This is a great set.

season 2 of the popular Dogfights series as seen on the History Channel (and Military History Channel)... awesome series for anyone interested in aerial combat from WWI, WWI, Korean & Vietnam conflicts, and a few air battles from more recent times in the middle east. the series combines excellent CGI graphics with interviews of experts/historians and the real pilots who were there to explain the situations and the tactics they used.
it's a great thing to have these interviews on record as the members of this generation (WWII) won't be with us for a whole lot longer...
I noticed that in season 2 they improved the graphics of the ground/terrain over that which was seen in season 1... not a huge deal but does make the whole thing look a bit more realistic.
too bad it seems the series has been canceled but the great CGI technology seems to be living on in another series call "Battle 360" - also worth checking out for WWII history buffs.
only complaint is that just like in the season 1 DVD set, they didn't edit out the post commercial break re-cap segments - this gets very annoying when watching several episodes in one sitting... other then that, highly highly recommended for the air combat buff.

Very happy I bought this DVD pack. As an absolute nut for air combat and computer graphics, these shows are just great. BUT -- I have only watched 4 episodes so far and have already come across a really bad editing issue, the "Supersonic" episode ends abruptly in the middle of an avaition historian's sentence. It seemed very close to the end of the episode anyways but... Not too much to ask to have the entire episode on my DVDs that I bought is it? ;).

Dogfights, Season 2 is a great series!
The only problem I had is on disc 5. In the first episode on the disc (Supersonic); the historian, Barrett Tillman, is speaking near the end of the episode when it abruptly ends with him in mid-sentence!
I thought perhaps it was a defect in the one series that I had received so I sent for another set and it had the same flaw. I'm assuming every set has the same defect.
It is obviously an oversight in the original editing by The History Channel.

This is the best show ever on dogfighting. most of us agree with that. The cgi effects are stunning and the stories are all true. The only complaint could be that they don't feature enough "enemy' aces! But there's some of them and I can't imagine why this show is no longer being made. But there you have it. And if any show needed to be on blu ray it was this one. The dvd's look great though and that's why this series is worth collecting. The stories of pilots battling to survive and to overcome the odds even are well done and poignant even. Military history fans should jump on this one.

This season is great. I am not a war buff but my husband is and he loves this set. I was very happy to find this for him and it definately was worth it.