The fighter is a military combat plane designed for chasing and striking in the air as well as to the ground and the sea. Note that « fighter » is a generic term that gathers all the flying objects with an offensive purpose, ie. Planes equipped with a machine gun, jets, bombers, UAVs, etc.

Aircrafts kept progressing throughout the Xxth Century until now. The first fighters appeared during WW1. The very first air battle took place over Reims' sky in October 1914.
During that period, both French and German soldiers and engineers developed numerous innovations in order to win the sky battle, like the idea of an inboard machine gun, a synchronization system between the gunfire and the propeller, etc.

The fighter reached its climax during the WW2, when German Luftwaff was repelled by English fighters, or during the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941 by Japanese zeros. During that period, most of the manpower was devoted to war effort, and that led to the creation of jets. The peak in the aircrafts' deterrent use was reached back in August 1945 with the successive bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with two Boeing B-29 bombers. 111 000 people died right away.

Since then, each international conflict makes airspace a high priority line to fight the enemy. Among the most famous planes there are : bomber B52, Mirage 2000, F118, Spitfire, etc.