Mogster and all, the following is an excerpt from one of the finest accounts on WWI air fighting tactics you will find (on the net or otherwise in my opinion). They're the words of Austrialian combat leader and Camel flying ace Arthur H. Cobby, and I have always found his distillation of aerial tactics remarkably to the point but illuminating:

Of course, in this early kind of fighting, the man who wins is just the better of a couple of very dud fighters. You fly all possible ways except the right, jerking the machine about, yanking it here and there, and so on. Later when one has become accustomed to the enemy tactics, and has had perhaps a dozen combats, and been in a good many dog-fights, he deliberates, and never goes into a scrap unless he has the Hun where he wants him. When an experienced pilot is out waiting for single enemy machines, the hostile pilot he is stalking is as good as dead before even a shot is fired, and it just requires that final impetus to send him under - to such a fine art has his aerial fighting been reduced.

The above words reflect what Boelcke taught Manfred von Richtofen, and what von Richthofen imparted to his young wolves, and what their enemy opposites like Mick Mannock tutored. None of these aerials hunters went looking for dogfights, they went looking for victims to be executed at minimum risk.

Hey Guys, enjoy Cobby's complete paper here (I don't think you'll be disappointed that you took the time to read it).

http://www.australianflyingcorps.org/story/2005/2/24/95913/4564