I swear, many WT players think they are like this

 

They aren't. 

A player could do amazing aerobatics with the I-153P "Chaika", but then again, air combat isn't much about aerobatics!

Relevant manoeuvres are in my opinion:

Boom and zoom (dive, shoot, pull up)

defensive spiral (to avoid getting hit by someone trying BnZ on you)

Scissors (if nothing else works and you don't roll slower than your pursuer)

Rope a dope (enjoying altitude/energy advantage, you lure him to climb up to you, counterclimb, then dive on him when he's very slow and shoot)

wingover (very rarely, and usually as part of a rope a dope)

loops (if your plane is MUCH better at vertical manoeuvres)

Immelmann (not in a fight, though)

barrel roll attack (primarily useful if your target is distracted)

high yo-yo (primarily if you'd overshoot your target otherwise)

Split-S (if a quicker pursuer forces you into a dogfight when you are slow)

By far the most common techniques used by me in air combat against fighters are BnZ, rope-a-dope and simply attack with advantage of surprise. I rarely need to use the other abovementioned maneuvers.

Beginner pilots should understand rope-a-dope and stop falling prey to it.

They should also learn to simply wobble around and flee to the blue spawn or blue airfield defence  (at low altitude) if they have a comparable fighter on their tail.

Pay attention and don't fly in a straight ling when in a bomber under attack.

Withdraw after surviving a dogfight and look around (regain situational awareness) instead of continuing to dogfight at low energy in a furball.

Learn BnZ once you learned to hit something in the air, and reliably so.

Most importantly, learn to pay attention to your surroundings.

French vehicles

I suppose France deserves (and will get) a tree of its own sooner or later in War Thunder. Those few D.520 and D.521 in the British tree are but a start.

The really interesting planes will be Bloch M.B. 157 (a P-47D equivalent), M.B. 162 (a faster B-17 equivalent), M.B. 175 (Pe-2 equivalent) as well as the Potez 631C3 (another Bf 110C equivalent).

Meanwhile, they had a huge quantity of interesting tanks up to 1940, with plans sufficient for tanks competitive up to 1942 and later on they used U.S.-made tanks, followed by French post-war designs including the unique AMX-13 light tank.

Here's a wonderful website on French tanks, best if you can read French:

http://www.chars-francais.net/2015/index.php/engins-blindes/chars

P-51B film

Teamkillers everywhere

 

Respawn

The 100 deathmatch event and its exploiters

So there were two accounts with less kills than matches in that event, and they qualified for the top 300 free premium plane prize.

One of them scored only 8 kills in 84 matches, "improving" to 60 kills in 325 matches and later 257 kills in 355 matches.

You could "achieve" these stats (60/325) by having nothing but a bomber in your deck, then joining the queue and not doing anything else. The server would force-spawn you with the plane after a while in the match, the gunners would rarely kill some red plane and since you'd be force-spawned several times per match and fly straight forward to the reds, you'd end up having a kill once in a while.

So I suspect these accounts were rewarded for what was mostly or exclusively bot activity. I reported it in the forum and next time I went there to look for replies the topic was deleted, with no pm in my account.

This is some serious nonsense, but somewhat representative of Gaijin's design of competitions and events.

Do you remember the torpedo bomber event which allowed Beaufighters and B7A2s in? OF COURSE players used them to slaughter the Beauforts, Il-4s, Wellingtons and TBFs! Gaijin later removed the Beaufighters, but never removed the B7A2s. 

Gaijin is great at 3D models, fine at textures design and the ingame voice chat works surprisingly well, but they fail in too many things involving a requirement for logical thinking or anticipation of exploitative player behaviour.

I don't know if you noticed, ...

Kick the instructor out! / How to capture airfields

Newbies have difficulties capturing airfields in Domination air matches. The reason is that they either approach at very low speed and get shot down or they attempt to touch down at high speed as do the experienced pilots - and crash.

The reason for the latter is that they have the "instructor" active, a ghostly AI instructor pilot sits in your back and when you approach the ground at high speed he pulls up, so you push down even harder and he pushes down even harder. At some point you either give up or crash.

Kick this instructor out - it has no usefulness whatsoever. You won't miss him.

Go to menu, then controls, then instructor and simply switch all those useless options to "off".

Other tips about capturing airfields:

Floatplanes and flying boats can capture by skidding over the runway at slow speed. They get a flying start after repairs.

Dive bombers can capture airfields by surprise. They pretend to be irrelevant at 2+ km altitude, then dive, brake with dive brakes, landing gear and flaps and touch down for the capture or at least neutralisation.

Forget the B7A2 for this, though; its undercarriage springs make it too bouncy.

You cannot capture an airfield if hostile ground forces (or non-repairing red aircraft) are on it. Kill tanks (or AAA, armored cars) in time!

Su-2 and BB-1 are close to useless for capturing airfields, which may be relevant on Krymsk at low battle ratings because these are really good attackers. You need to slow down to 140 kph to land these planes without propeller damage. A landing attempt means the loss of the plane, even if successful.

Some airfields are bouncy or have obstacles. There's a walled machinegun position on Korsun airfield, some flag poles and other obstacles are on other airfields. Keep your eyes open!

If the match is close and a red player is about to capture an airfield don't chase to kill him. Instead, lower your landing gear and manoeuvre to land yourself to recapture the airfield right after he takes off again (or dies).

You can capture an airfield not only along the runway, but often also obliquely - particularly with slow planes such as biplanes.

Turnfighters (I-153, A6M, Ki-43 etc.) are fine for guarding and recapturing an airfield. They can stay low and close to the airfield.

American fighters (P-51/Mustang, P-47) lower their landing gears very slowly. Keep this in mind if you fly in them.

What matters is that you roll with a single wheel or slide on the ground. More wheels are optional. A P-38 with destroyed main landing gear can capture with its front wheel, for example.

You are immune to collisions while rolling on an airfield, but not once you're airborne again. Watch it! You may collide immediately if you pull up at the wrong moment. This is particularly important at the beginning of a match when often 3-5 players try to capture a single airfield.

A capture of an airfield is worth 300 points. That's more than an aircraft kill. This is very recommended for fast stock planes.

Repairing aircraft do not defend an airfield (AFAIK), but they may deceive red players to believe so (or entice them to kill instead of touching down).

On the Britain domination match it's recommendable to capture moving into the direction of the blue spawn point, and at the blue side end of the very, very long runway. You may also decide a very close match in your favour there if you roll around at 'your' end of the runway. The reds cannot capture the runway while you roll there and survive.

About Peleliu:

Two things: Best winning tactic for a squad of four is to rush the 'hostile' airfield at the beginning. This badly disrupts their start of the match and usually wins the entire match if you succeed to capture it. Use chat commands to call for others to do the same!

Second, the Southern (crosswise) airfield is much more difficult to defend because it can be captured from many more directions.