I've been watching Dogfights on the Military Channel

The "experts" announced in the mid 1950's that dogfighting was obsolete, just as both the British and the US had thought that the new aircraft coming on line in the later 1930's would be too fast to dogfight in. The "experts" forgot that relative speeds when the aircraft are going the same way, isn't much different. That's how the F-4 Phantom II was designed without a gun.

I've mentioned Dr. Reginald V. Jones who was the Air Ministry's Science Intelligence officer for German developments. Having already followed the development of the V-1 and V-2 at Peenemunde, the British sort of panicked and created the Crossbow Committee to investigate both weapons. The first thing that the Committee of civil servants did, was run out and collect a whole bunch of scientific "experts". Scientists who were pre-eminent in their fields, who insisted that the V-2 had to weigh over 70 tons, because that's how thick the the steel would need to be to resist the pressure of the solid fuel like a fairground rocket. There had already been intelligence that they were liquid fuelled. Jones and his assistant looked the committee up and down and said, "Liquid fuel ! Ahh said the experts, of course liquid fuel. It took the experts forever to accept that the rocket was liquid fuelled and lightly built. One of the "experts" said "Those Germans must be brilliant. You know I've calculated that the concrete launch platforms must only be sloped by half a millimetre to get the V-2 to tilt properly toward its target." Jones and his assistant looked at this eminent scientist and said "Inertial guidance." "Ohh", says the scientist and off he walked.

Rob