Cold War Intercept

1950-1980 supreme interceptor?

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The U-2 was a great aircraft and I think the 1960 downing of Francis Gary Powers was a failure on all parts. The CIA was demanding more and more intelligence on Soviet Strategic Bomber strength, the capability of Soviet SAM capabilities were being underestimated, by 1960 the U-2s limitations were becoming apparent but it seem they were ignored and these dangers combined with the fact that the U-2 had a "window" of about 410 knots at altitude where it would either stall or rip the wings off resulted in a situation where a direct hit was not necessary to bring down the aircraft. At a Lockheed Management Club dinner I attended in 1982, Kelly Johnson stated in 1957 the Soviets were complaining about out overflights and they were going to shoot down that spy plane. Well three years later they did it.....
 
Yep - Powers died while flying a news helicopter over the San Fernando Valley in the early 70s. I was in a CAP Squadron named after him. At first we got flack for this but his son intervened....

My uncle Bill was assigned at a communications "expert" in Ankara Turkey around 1960 and once said he used to see Powers and other U-2 pilots, they were operating out of there and Pakistan at the time. When Powers got shot down they sent anyone involved with the mission stateside - they didn't even have time to pack up their household belongings!

One side note - back in the early 80s I saw an old Lockheed employee telephone book. Skunk Works departments were usually numbered 7721, 7735 ect., but there was no listing of what those departments did. Francis Gary Powers was listed as a Lockheed Employee in the phone directory I seen, I think it was dated 1959 or 1960.....
 
The last U-2 were used by NASA where in 1995 n celebration of the U-2s 40th anniversary first flight, NASA took one of it's U-2 and broke something like 15 climb to altitude records, not bad for a 40 year old airplane....

The TR-1 emerged from the U-2R which stretched the fuselage and wings. The TR-1 (Tactical Reconnaissance) designation was given to the aircraft for semantics, thinking that it's use as a spy plane would not be recognized by the Soviet Union during the early 1980s. I believe the TR-1 is still being produced or there is a line that is converting U-2Rs to TR-1s or re manufacturing TR-1 aircraft that were built in the early 1980s....
 
For Eric: "In 1984, during a major NATO exercise, Flt Lt Mike Hale intercepted an American U-2 at a height which they had previously considered safe from interception. Records show that Hale climbed to 88,000 ft (26,800 m) in his F3 Lightning."


For Adler:

If you consider just catching an enemy aircraft without actually shooting it down an interception - you must be joking to ask if the Lightning ever made an interception. Have you never paid attention to the stories about my dad scrambling Lightnings? Of course they intercepted Soviet bombers, they were on the front-line in Germany and Britain. The only aircraft the Lightning has shot down was a pilot-less Harrier that had to be destroyed to avoid casaulties.

For the performance of the F-14. Well, the Lightning can be at 44,000 feet, direction and cruise in four minutes from call on a ground strip. The F-14 would be up in eight-nine minutes, after all it takes the F-14, with my crude working, three minutes-twenty seconds to reach 40,000 feet - that is if it can maintain a 30,000 minute climb rate, which it couldn't. So, I'd say about four minutes. Plus, on the bell it has to warm up and set up it's avionics, so being polite I'd say the F-14 is at 40,000 feet, direction and cruise in about eight-nine minutes, that's at least four minutes slower than the Lightning. That's okay, right? It's got the Phoenix to make up for that. But no, because the Lightning's recorded speed is Mach 2.3, that's around 26 miles per minute ...that means in the four minutes the Lightning has travelled over one hundred miles - more than the range of the Phoenix ... and Mach 2.3 isn't even the top speed of the Lightning.

The Lightning would be there first, plus the Lightning has a seven mile gap to play with since it's missile has that range. Ideally, it would be a combination of F-15s and Lightnings, the Lightning would be the shield and the F-15 the sword ...because the F-15 is more advanced than the F-14. And the Lightning is capable of halting, or slowing any enemy assault 'cos it's just that quick.

Did Lightnings intercept!?!
 

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It couldn't turn on a six-pence like the F-5, but it was a vertical fighter. In a dogfight it could cause more than a shock when it pulled up, and climbed away from it's opponent where the opponent just couldn't follow.
 
the pure interceptor became a dinosaur about 1975 when more multi-role a/c became the norm the combination of the quatum leaps in electronic and computer technologys from start up and design of the a/c to and including the final product made the interceptor redundant
and i think the f 14 would smoke a lightning hands down the times you qoute for time to climb i don't feel as correct...... i've given control instructions to an f14
to climb to fl350 within 5 dme or anticipate altitude restrictions .....he did it the guy in centre wanted to see if the a/c could do it and watched on his radar
i would have liked to see the one of the raf aerobatic teams flying the lightning
 
Multi-role aircraft only appeared because of reduced funding ...but, didn't I say on the first page this is all about interception ability, any mention of multi-role is a waste of energy? I believe I did.

The F-14D had an initial climb rate of 30,000 feet and a ceiling of 52,000 feet. It was slower on take-off due to modern equipment, and it also had to heat up it's engines. It's at least four minutes slower than the Lightning from call to 40,000 feet, which means the Lightning would actually beat the F-14D and it's AIM-54s to the target because it would have already made a 100 mile advantage on the F-14 before it launched it's missile.

And the F-14 smoking a Lightning? Is that when a Lightning is flying at 60,000 + feet and the F-14 is struggling at 52,000 feet or what?
 
... that's a great statement. You have a good point. Wait, no you don't, what are you going on about?
 
the numbers the lightning had were impressive but the tomcat was years ahead in every other facet including weapons, fire control,ecm and in particular the radar also the rio would be a major advantage
 
The fire-control and weapons system were enough because the performance of the Lightning as an aircraft allowed them to stay in existence. The radar on the Lightning was also good, with a one-hundred and twenty degree vision it was capable of detecting targets many miles apart.

The systems on the Lightning were basic in most cases, and that is what made it the ultimate point defence interceptor. It was up there, among the enemy before anything else out there. And it may have only had two missiles but it also had two 30mm Aden, which allowed it to shoot down much more since it'd already be near the enemy aircraft at the time.

The F-14s systems were superior, no other number excluding combat radius were superior. The actual airframe capability of the F-14 in performance terms was inferior.
 
i sure they were good but to switch over to digital systems or new technologies as they came out cuz the lightning was a product of its era and it must of been very labour intensive to switch all systems over to new technologies and very expensive . i'm not up on the various mks and when they went with digital being how the original airframe (i'm guessing) wasn't designed for the new technologies
 
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