to be top dog in a dogfight, your fighters need stats, levels, veterans, and boosts.
Stats - +13 is best, of course, but +11 and +12 can hang tough with enough of the other stuff
Levels - self explanatory. the higher level you are, the more chance you have of winning a dogfight.
Veterans - this is where your actual skill comes from, and fighters crave them to be competitive. If you don't have 80 veterans on your fighter pilots, you might as well not launch them except to just kill bombers. You want 150 or more to be competitive.
Boost - an extra 20% skill is always handy. The more veterans you have, the more skill there is to boost.
Seaman - a seaman with a similarly crazy amount of veterans on him acts like an additional boost to all sailors on board, and he stacks with pretty much everything. This is most useful for fighters, but will be just a mild boost until that seaman is insanely high level.