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In the current scene of the book I'm working on, dragons are engaging alien fighters. At one point, Varthikes (my main dragon) is swooping over a fighter close enough that he could touch it with outstretched legs. I wanted to have him smacking his tail against the ship, which would lead to him hitting on the idea of using his talons to grab the fighters and throw them about (like those bird/dragon creatures did in Avatar).

I was wondering, though, how such a motion would effect his course and what he would have to do with his wings to compensate?

Any ideas?

Well, take this for what it's worth: I have a passing understanding of basic mechanics, but I'm certainly no physicist. Since you said "wings," I'm going to assume that we are talking about atmospheric conditions rather than space.

#1 - When the dragon hits his tail against the craft, his body will naturally be projected away from the craft. Every action, and all that. Obviously this will be minimized if the dragon is relatively massive compared to the craft, and vice verse; the amount he is pushed away will also depend on how hard he hits the craft. Assuming that your dragons' wings don't have ailerons or flaps, in order to maintain a steady position relative to the fighter he would have to back-beat his wings - how hard would depend on how much he was pushed away... in turn dependent on how hard he tail-smacked the fighter and the relative mass of the dragon to the fighter.

#2 - You need to consider how the dragon normally uses its tail in flight. Is it used as a rudder? If so, you need to account for the loss of such horizontal control during the time that the tail is otherwise occupied, i.e. smacking things. Is it used as a vertical stabilizer? If so, smacking it against the fighter (probably "downward" relative to the dragon's position) would magnify the effect of being pushed away from the fighter in #1 above. If the dragon normally flies with it's tail in a position other than extended, then the act of extending it to hit the fighter will do things like slow down his rotation (if any.)

Yes, it is taking place within an atmosphere.

And, the dragon is larger than the fighter by about a third.

The tail functions mainly as balance and steering. The way I'm figuring it, if the dragon turns left, the tail will curve right; turn right, curve left; dragon dives, tail curves up. So, if the tail is going down to smack the fighter, his other end should go up.

Does this make since?

It does to me. The dragon's front end should go up more than just as a reaction to tail movement to account for equal and opposite reaction to the impact with the fighter; remember also that while the tail is being used as a striking implement, it will NOT be acting as a rudder a/o stabilizer.