Greatest Fighter Aircraft of All Time

Which is the best

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I like the -25 for its looks and its speed. How was the sr-71 able to fly circles around it?

I went with the phantom. It's too bad they left missiles to do all the work in the early years of the vietnam war, but overall a great (and awesome looking) bird.
 
Oh and by the way, the DR.1, I made a mistake, I thought that was the one that the BAron was flying, so I should have put DR 2[/quote]
Yeah Ober Leutnant Basil Fawlty was the best in the Fokker DR2
 
Aggie08 said:
I like the -25 for its looks and its speed. How was the sr-71 able to fly circles around it?
Click to expand...
Read Mig Pilot - On spy missions they would get to altitudes where the -25 was just closing in on them but still out of range, light up the afterburners and leave them in the dust, the SR-71s would then turn around (probaby a 150 mile turn radius) and come streaking back at the -25s. About this time the Mig-25 was running out of fuel...
 
Ive always had the impression that the MiG-25 was designed to intercept high flying and mach 2 US bombers, such as the XB-70 and B-58. It was fast, had a powerfull radar to burn through ECM and was designed to carry nuclear tipped AA missles. Anything else, it was substandard or useless. Its role and impact on aviation history is quite limited. Personally, I dont think it should have even been included on the list.

I also agree with several of you on you have to compare aircraft against its peers. Plus, you have to differentiate between the "dogfight" fighters and the "interceptor" fighters. Consider the stakes in the cold war for a nuclear armed bomber and the devestation it could do. The F4 might have been able to perform far more missions than the Lightning but the Lightning had a far better chance to take out a bomber than the F4.

IMHO, for the time period between 1953 and 1975, there should be two catagories. Best interceptor and best fighter.
 
the Lightning had a far better chance to take out a bomber than the F4.
Click to expand...

How so? Im aware the early model phantoms had no cannons but that was fixed up right away, the EE lightning would have been a better choice simply because of its response time to an incoming raid, but in terms of actually shooting down a bomber with an F4 is not a problem, It was heavily armed moose, now if you want to say it had a better chance of shooting down a bomber then it could a fighter (naturally bombers are easier to shoot down) then that would make perfect sense.
 
The performance data for the Lightning was posted and it demonstrated that it could get off the ground faster and intercept the hypothetical bomber further from the target.

Of course once both planes had its radar lock on the bomber, then its goodnight for that target. The Lightning could just get into a firing position sooner.
 

The top speed of the SR-71 ever published was mach 3.3, there are those that say it could fly faster than that, I believe them!!!
 
So do I but even at mach 3.3 it was faster than every plane in existance and some AA missles as well.
 
Kyushu J7W1 Shinden

It featured:

Swept wings
It featured decent cockpit visibility when taxiing and in the air
Twin vertical tails
Provision for a jet engine
Tricycle landing gear
Canards
Cannon armanent in the nose
Intakes to the side of and below the cockpit like modern jet fighters

all in one aircraft

It flew twice, and its vibration problems would have been fixed by the use of a jet engine

http://www.eagle.ca/~harry/aircraft/shinden/





http://www.ne.jp/asahi/airplane/museum/cl-pln10/2004cl/shinden.html
 
The design speed of the SR-71 was a little over mach 4 and I don't know of a case where Kelly Johnson missed a design mark. I knew a former radar operator fron Kadena who said it wasn't unusual for a SR-71 to accelerate away from a persuing SAM.

I ran accross this a while back
Though I travel through the valley of death, I will fear no evil........... I'm in a SR-71 at 80,000ft and still climbing. This is reported to be on a sign at the Kadena main gate.

wmaxt
 
I had the opportunity to watch the 71 on radar once and using the old time distance rate formula was over 2000 Knots certainly very quick
 
There is a host of engineering problems with trying to precision hit something when your traveling at Mach 3. A bomber version of the SR71 would have added nothing of value, that a B52 couldnt do.
 
My fist program at Lockheed was on the SR-71/U-2. You carried the same clearance badge for each aircraft. We did work on sub assemblies and ground support equipment being rebuilt in the early 1980s. There were always rumors and stories of what the SR-71 can do and not do, but it seemed those with the right clearances new that the aircraft was a lot faster than what was published....
 
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