A Critical Analysis of the RAF Air Superiority Campaign in India, Burma and Malaya in 1941-45

[MIflyer]

Supersonic aircraft have what some call Q-Feel systems that adjust the flight control pressures such that there is not a radically different amount of control movement and back-pressure for different airspeeds and altitudes. The F-106 also had a system that sensed when Mach 1 was exceeded by comparing total versus static pressures (and for a given Mach number that ratio is the same for all altitudes, I have worked the equations to make sure) at which point fuel was pumped between tanks in order to maintain the same CG when the center of pressure shifted. This improved performance when the aircraft was scrambling to intercept a hostile target by keeping the pilot from having to adjust to the center of pressure change brought on by going supersonic. ,

 

[Schweik]

I know there's a serious difference when you're flying close to sea level or up at 35000 feet but how much difference is it between 10000 and 20000

 

[Schweik]

Why were all the century series planes so crappy? Too heavy for the power plants? Bad Wing shapes?

 

[BiffF15]

Why were all the century series planes so crappy? Too heavy for the power plants? Bad Wing shapes?

Crappy compared to what? Newer aircraft with better designs, or their Russian made counterparts? The MiG-17, 21, 23, 25, 27, Su-whatever were similar technology and not as user friendly. I would have taken the US made equipment over that made in the USSR.

Cheers,
Biff

 

[Schweik]

I think I'd rather fly a MiG 21 than an F-102 or F-106

 

[Schweik]

Let alone an F- 104!

 

[Shortround6]

Let alone an F- 104!

Why???

Lets not forget that the Mig-21 was produced over 26 years or more so there was definitely some improvement in components.
Some of the early Mig-21s had very short lived engines (Ok they lasted longer than Jumo 004s) and they had a very short radius of action (endurance) without drop tanks.

 

[Milosh]

Let alone an F- 104!

32 pilots died in total from 83 ejections. 65 different variants of MiG-21s were lost.
HUN MiG-21s
32/61 = 50%

In German service, 292 of 916 Starfighters crashed, claiming the lives of 115 pilots.
GER F-104s
115/292 = 39%

 

[Kevin J]

32 pilots died in total from 83 ejections. 65 different variants of MiG-21s were lost.
HUN MiG-21s
32/61 = 50%

In German service, 292 of 916 Starfighters crashed, claiming the lives of 115 pilots.
GER F-104s
115/292 = 39%

One of the guys I knew 15 years back, ran his own little IT Logistics company. Anyway, he started his working life in the fifties, flying Hawker Hunter jets for the RAF, I think it was an initial 4 year commission. He didn't renew it though because he saw too many of his friends die in landing accidents. I think the record for unreliability must go to the Supermarine Scimitar though. 76 built 38 crashes. Don't know the mortality rate.

38/76 = 50% crash rate.

 

[Shortround6]

Numbers built vs number crashed doesn't tell the real accident rate.
That would be number crashed per 1000 hours of operation.

Then you need to consider the flight envelope/use of the aircraft.

The Germans may have screwed up (aided by bribes?) but the 104G was being used as a low altitude, all weather attack/strike aircraft. Flying in bad weather at low altitude at high speed puts you in a high risk situation from the start.

 

[Milosh]

During 30 years of flying there were 1.975.646 flight hours accumulated. The average flight time per aircraft was 2.157 flight hours. A total of 292 F-104 were lost in accidents, with the tragic death of 116 pilots. That accounts for one loss per 6.630 flying hours, which is actually a normal value according to international standards.

916 Starfighter

 

[Peter Gunn]

I think I'd rather fly a MiG 21 than an F-102 or F-106

Why? The F-102 was a good interceptor and the F-106 was an absolute scorcher. Sure both had teething issues, what new technology doesn't? I guarantee the MiG 21 had just as many teething problems to work out as any other a/c from the fifties/sixties.

Hell, it doesn't even look as good as a Delta Dart.

 

[Schweik]

Well I can tell I may have tripped over something here so I'm going to venture forth cautiously.

I tend to look at these things from an Operational point of view. I don't know the full operational histories of all of the Century series fighters but all of them seem to have fallen into one of two categories when seen from that angle:

1) Interceptors or fighters with limited utility that were never ready for prime time and got relegated to home defense. Generally disliked or mistrusted by pilots and plagued by low servicability.

2) Fighter bombers which had some operational utility but suffered high loss rates and other significant limitations.

In both cases there seemed to have been extended and serious development problems with fatal accidents, as well as some infamous corruption scandals.

I admit the MiG 21 was a fairly ugly plane (and I think this is true for the -17, and -19) with short range, and no doubt it too had teething and reliability issues, but it seems to have had a good combat record and a very long combat service history during which it remained viable.

I know there are some well known issues with the Cope India exercise but the history of that event does indicate to me that the useful life of the MiG 21 was extraordinarily long. I don't think anyone is still flying F 102s or 104s are they?

There seems to have been a lot of 'fails' in Jet fighter designs in the 50's and 60's. The MiG 15 and F-86 are stand out success stories but all countries that competed in that arena seem to have had a lot of embarassing setbacks. Consider the F 89 and the "Battle of Palmdale"

Battle of Palmdale - Wikipedia

I think it's a good thing they were never tested by a genuine emergency!

Of course the Soviets had PLENTY of fails too, as did the French, British, Chinese, Italians etc. There were so many nuclear accidents involving Soviet and US aircraft it's positively hair raising to think about.

The Century series seem (from my perspective) to have been fairly radical new designs which departed from earlier trends rather dramatically. Contending with combat in the context of supersonic flight was a major challenge of course.

But they seem to have hovered just beneath the threshold of full viability as fighters, IMHO. YMMV!

S

 

[buffnut453]

And all this has exactly what relevance to "A Critical Analysis of the RAF Air Superiority Campaign in India, Burma and Malaya in 1941-45"?

Just askin'....I know there's often thread drift but Century Fighters aren't even WW2. Maybe time to get back on-topic?

 

[michael rauls]

One of the guys I knew 15 years back, ran his own little IT Logistics company. Anyway, he started his working life in the fifties, flying Hawker Hunter jets for the RAF, I think it was an initial 4 year commission. He didn't renew it though because he saw too many of his friends die in landing accidents. I think the record for unreliability must go to the Supermarine Scimitar though. 76 built 38 crashes. Don't know the mortality rate.

38/76 = 50% crash rate.

Ouch!!

 

[Kevin J]

Why? The F-102 was a good interceptor and the F-106 was an absolute scorcher. Sure both had teething issues, what new technology doesn't? I guarantee the MiG 21 had just as many teething problems to work out as any other a/c from the fifties/sixties.

Hell, it doesn't even look as good as a Delta Dart.

I though the US tried the Dagger in Vietnam and unlike the Crusader was an utter disaster.

 

[BiffF15]

I admit the MiG 21 was a fairly ugly plane (and I think this is true for the -17, and -19) with short range, and no doubt it too had teething and reliability issues, but it seems to have had a good combat record and a very long combat service history during which it remained viable.

The MiG-21 did have a long career. If you have quite a few in your AF, regardless of how many you seem to crash, and are cash strapped but need increased capes what do you do? Get the Israelis to upgrade them. The Russians make very robust stuff (MiG-21 / MiG-29) which helps with longevity. Depending. Look up how the Indians like their Flankers, or better how they like dealing with Russia to get parts or motors.

Life expectancy on a MiG-29 motor is 300 hours then toss it according to the Luftwaffe guys I fought. They detuned it a tad, and would get work done at 300 hours to double the life to 600.

The combat record of the Fishbed lies directly at the feet of the White House, who as previously mentioned, tied the tactical hands of our guys and then fed info to the enemy via Swiss Embassy. A disgusting event which caused a lot of US military to die or become POWs.

I should have said F4 Phantom instead of Century Series as that's what I had in mind. Also at that time the USAF had stopped doing dissimilar trading as it was deemed to dangerous. That was fixed and Fighter Weapons Schools opened in both the USAF and USN which changed things fairly well.

Cheers,
Biff

 

[Milosh]

F-89s were to intercept and shoot down Soviet bombers, not fighters. Their missiles were unguided.

 

[Shortround6]

Well I can tell I may have tripped over something here so I'm going to venture forth cautiously.

I tend to look at these things from an Operational point of view. I don't know the full operational histories of all of the Century series fighters but all of them seem to have fallen into one of two categories when seen from that angle:

1) Interceptors or fighters with limited utility that were never ready for prime time and got relegated to home defense. Generally disliked or mistrusted by pilots and plagued by low servicability.

2) Fighter bombers which had some operational utility but suffered high loss rates and other significant limitations.

In both cases there seemed to have been extended and serious development problems with fatal accidents, as well as some infamous corruption scandals.

I admit the MiG 21 was a fairly ugly plane (and I think this is true for the -17, and -19) with short range, and no doubt it too had teething and reliability issues, but it seems to have had a good combat record and a very long combat service history during which it remained viable.

When you are looking at things from an operational point of view it helps to consider a number of operational facts. It also helps not to go in with preconceived notions (US aircraft were expensive crap foisted off on the US taxpayers).

In the 1950s they were just starting to get into life cycle accounting (how much it costs to operate a plane or fleet of planes over a number years or hours of operations). The Russians didn't tell anybody how few hours per year they were flying a lot of their aircraft. If you only fly a few hours a month even short overhaul life engines can last quite a while.

For true comparisons you need to know how many hours were being flown per month (or per year), how often engines had to replaced and other operational factors.

US readiness rates sometimes sucked, but lets compare apples to apples, the f-102 and the F-106 were all-weather fighters from the start, they were expected to take-off and intercept incoming bombers at night in rain or snow storms,. Granted with was with aid (a lot of aid) from ground radars and ground controllers but it took a lot of electronics and the electronics of the day was vacuum tubes and circuit boards. Several cubic feet of 1950s electronics will now fit on one micro chip.
The first all weather "interceptor" versions of the Mig-21 didn't see service until 1961. almost two years after the F-106 started to enter squadron service. As electronics got smaller and lighter you could fit more capability into existing aircraft.
The Mig-21 day fighter didn't enter production until 1959 (?) so it was a tad late compared to the US century series (5 years later than the F-100) one would hope it was better than the older American aircraft.

The F-102 and F-106 got relegated to home defense because that was what they were designed for, to work as an integrated part of the home defence system to stop Russian nuclear armed bombers from making it to US soil. Dog fighting cheap daylight only enemy fighters was NOT part of the mission requirement. The F-102/106 needed a in plane radars, fire control computers that could compute collision course intercepts and firing solutions for the guided missiles of the day. and a communications link that would allow the planes navigation and intercept systems to communicate with ground systems. The powerful ground radars and computers would vector the F-102/106 to intercept points.
It has been said that the F-106 could be flown from the ground with the pilot only needed for take-off and landing and perhaps to confirm the target identity before firing the missiles.
And do it using those late 1950s electronics (when they worked)

A lot of the century series had much more ambitious goals than the Mig-21. granted they did not always live up to expectations but in the 1950s the Mig 21 either didn't exist (as a production aircraft) or existed in a rather primitive form. "Avionics included PUS-36D weapons sequencing module, R-800 communications radio, ASP-5NV-U1 computing gunsight, and SRD-5MN Baza-6 radar rangefinder. "
The F-86 used a radar rangefinder from the start in Korea, 7-9 years earlier.

Now I will note that the short overhaul life of the engines used in the early Mig 21s was a deliberate choice. The USSR did not have the access to or expertise to work with some of the exotic materials the Americans and British did. To get the combination of power to weight that they wanted with the material they had to work with engine life had to be sacrificed.
THey could have made longer lasting engines but only by making them heavier for the same power.

 

[MIflyer]

In Vietnam one of the problems the Migs had was that the US aircraft were all faster than they were at the lower altitudes. A Mig-21 could not catch our fighters down low. I recall reading that our F-105's would sometimes go into attack a target with a Mig-21 flying formation. The Mig could not get into position to fire because if he backed off on the throttles for a second or did a maneuver to get behind the 105's they would leave him.

I also recall one Indian pilot saying that while the Mig-21 was theoretically a Mach 2 airplane every time he got much past Mach 1 the low level fuel light came on. But our Red Eagles unit flying Soviet equipment at Tonopah said that it was very impressive how you could get a Mig-21 up just past Mach 1 and then back off on the throttles and it would stay supersonic for quite a while.

And the other reason the Mig engines had short service lives was that it fit their philosophy. You had to keep people working in a Communist county, where the Govt owned everything, so you built stuff designed not to last very long. You had to keep the factories going and you did not expect equipment to last very long in combat anyway. They did not build Migs with lots of access panels because they would be sent back to be rebuilt, not fixed in the field. Of course, one bullet in the wrong place and the airplane was as good as destroyed.

At 10,000 ft air pressure is 10.1 PSI. At 20,000 ft air pressure is 6.76 PSI. I can tell you from personal experience that it makes a hell of a lot of difference if you are trying to breathe!