Dilemma.

I'm currently writing a scene in A Kingdom Divided, where two pegasi are trying to impress one another with series of aerobatic maneuvers, and I have a problem, which not only applies to this scene, but also to every dogfight scene in this story. For example, we have maneuvers like:

- Cuban eight,
- Immelman turn,
- English bunt,
- Pugachev's Cobra
and tactics such as Thach weave or Finger-four.

How to describe them in the world where there's no Cuba, Max Immelman, England, Victor Pugachev, John S. Thach, and where almost no one has fingers? I usually just describe the maneuvres instead of using their names (though I left the "Cobra" as a name of that move and I'm thinking of making Finger four a Griffonian formation called "Four Claws"). I'm doing similar thing with weapons, though I'm planning making a series of blogs explaining what RL weapon they're based on. For example, 20 mm autocannon Rainbow Dash uses to shoot the airship down in chapter 3 is based on Oerlikon MG FF:

If you meet one of those guys, you gonna have a bad day...

basically because it was the lightest Oerlikon cannon I found. Still, it weighs 26 kilos and that's why it's mounted to the battle saddle, being a fixed, forward-facing weapon, and why pegasi leaves them at home while carrying the bombs. The Moon Army airships are armed with heavier version of Oerlikons, like L85 (since they used to be the parts of the same army, the equipment of both Moon and Sun Armies is similar).

That's more or less how Vinyl sees the world in chapter 3...

And, a propos eponymous moves and terms in aviation, at some point in chapter 3 Rainbow Dash quotes Manfred von Richthofen mixed with Dicta Boelcke and Sailor Malan's rules of aerial dogfight. At least the ones that could be easily applied to pegasi, whose tactics differs slightly from the one used by WWI/WWII planes.