High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Aerial ramming or air ramming is a last-ditch tactic in air combat, sometimes used when all else has failed. Long before the invention of aircraft, ramming tactics in naval warfare and ground warfare were common. The first aerial ramming was committed by Pyotr Nesterov in 1914 during the First World War, and in the early stages of World War II the tactic was employed by Soviet pilots who called it taran for "battering ram"; the same word is used in the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and Bulgarian languages.