I worked with a Navy F-4 ACM training squadron shortly after Top Gun was established, and the instructors had all had their initial training in the pre-Top Gun era. Apparently the Navy in those days envisioned the F-4 as a long range fleet defense interceptor and nuclear weapons delivery system. Their training in air-to-air focused on long range detection and interception of Badger/Blinder/Beauty class threats with BVR missile kills. Mixing it up with single seat fighters in visual combat was just not part of the scenario. That's what the F-8 was for. ACM training was further limited by a safety-driven prohibition against dissimilar types dogfighting of any kind. The AIM-7 Sparrow spent its entire life "on the verge of" and "one tweak away from" reliable performance. Never quite got there. Kinda like the torpedo performance issues of WWII, the R&D folks never quite believed what the combat folks were telling them.
When McNamara stuffed the Navy-developed F-4 down the Air Force's gagging throat, the AF begged for at least an internal Vulcan like their Century Series had, but the answer was "WYSIWYG". The F-4C was an F-4B with a cheaper radar, a full set of flight controls in back, and softer struts. Mac couldn't even be talked into eliminating the tailhook!
Air combat doctrine of the day was predicated on the concept of "sterile airspace" where all bogies are bandits, where IFF always works, and friendly fire losses are not an issue. It took a while (years!) for the realities of Vietnam to set in.
Cheers,
Wes
While it is fun to blame everything on McNamara, what did the USAF have for air combat in that era? One would also like to ask what, regardless of how good, would the AF take from the navy without gagging except budget? Pretty much nothing. Air Force and Navy purchasing decisions from the Eisenhower era were not McNamara's fault, like no guns. The TFX mess was less because of jointness than trying to stuff two wildly different missions into one airframe.
The problems in Vietnam had a lot of sources, including people whose working clothes include stars and eagles on epaulettes, not just grey three piece suits.
Sorry for the choppy writing. I'm blaming my tablet.
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(addendum, on a real computer)
There were, and are, a lot of political "issues" between the USAF and USN; I suspect that these have been more problematic at the higher levels of command than in the field and I suspect that they are now much less severe than they were in the 1960s. I would conclude, then that a lot of the AF's gagging at having to accept the F4H, initially as the F-110, was more due to the necessity of accepting an aircraft developed for the USN than due to problems with the aircraft. Of course, one very real issue at the time was that the USAF needed an aircraft that was better at air-air than what they had in their inventory: the F-104 was designed as a fighter, but it's air combat success was, at best, mediocre (
F-104A/B in Combat with Pakistan AF) and the USAF never seemed to be enthusiastic with the type. The F-106 was, from what I've read, quite good in air combat, but it had no gun and the Falcon missile made the Sparrow and Sidewinder seem paragons of success. The F-105 was, in essence, a bomber. The F-100 was suffering from irremedial fatigue issues. The time frame was too short to get the USAF a brand-dandy new airplane uncontaminated by navy blue paint.
As an aside, quite a lot of the R&D money spent on the F-15 was so they could get the same electronic performance as in the Phantom without a back-seater.