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I'm curious. Am I misinterpreting that drawing, or did that Canberra GLIDE all the way around that loop and arrive back at the starting point at 45K feet?? That's one hell of a L/D if so!! Hell, who needs a U2? In any case, a pretty fantastic machine for its time. Blows the socks off its contemporaries like the B45 and the IL28. How come our B57s couldn't pull off stunts like that?
It reminded those who had any doubts, the meaning of ruthlessness.
Yes, you ARE misinterpreting it!
Amazed those early generation jets stayed lit at 70,000 ft. I remember reading of US jets doing zoom climbs well above their service ceilings, flaming out, and restarting on the way down.
Though I know turbofans don't usually perform as good as turbojets at high altitudes, I was told that the two had similar thrust ratings. That said, one thing you're not factoring in is the Spey engined Phantoms had to be redesigned to accommodate the larger engine: This affected area rule.
I always thought that was a myth.
In 1973, when HMS Ark Royal came to town to play ACM games with our resident combat training squadron, their Spey powered Phantoms and unorthodox tactics waxed our J79 birds and TopGun trained instructor pilots BADLY! In five days of nearly constant engagements, every single bird our side sortied was scored against, to zero kills for the home team. On two occasions, Buccaneer low level attack planes popped up into the fight from below, scored kills, and egressed safely. Airspace allocation set the ceiling at 25K, as there were civil jet routes overtop, so the altitude advantages of the J79 were somewhat curtailed. Still a mighty impressive demonstration.
Essentially a big multi-blade, shrouded turboprop, minus the blade tip vortices with their attendant efficiency losses and earth shaking noise. Ever stand near a runway by the liftoff point of a departing Orion or Herc? That penetrating rumble you feel in your gut is pure wasted power spinning off the prop tips.
So part of it had to do with the ceiling limits, and the fact that the RN:FAA pilots seemed to have better skills in Air-to-Air combat. I figured they would have held the edge from the late 1950's to the start of Top-Gun, but I guess it extended a little past that. I wouldn't be surprised if things improved from the 1960's all the way to 1975.
High overall thrust, and high speeds.
Well yeah, as I understand it: The turbojet is theoretically better at higher-velocity (particularly at high altitude) than the turbofans in terms of power-loss at altitude, and ability to operate at higher speeds (exceptions exist such as well designed low-bypass fans). Probably why most high-bypass fans generally operate at subsonic speeds.
It has a trans-antlantic range while flying at Mach 2.0, I wouldn't consider that to be trivial. There are routes that would profit from greater ranges, such as the ability to fly across the Pacific.
Correct, the earlier F100 had a bypass-ratio of around 0.72:1. This gave it better SFC than the J79, and more thrust than the J75. It might have lost more thrust (proportionally) than the J79 or J75 at altitude, and appeared to have a lower exhaust velocity (It's a guess, but I remember claims the J79 had a higher exhaust gas temp), and the F-15A didn't seem to be able to hold supersonic speed without afterburners (The XF8U-3, powered by the J75, could hold supersonic speed without afterburner). That said, the plane had a VMax switch which increased performance, and allowed it to run-down a MiG-25. As for the later F100 variants, from what I recall, the F-15E had a lower bypass-ratio (0.3?) that allowed it to hold some degree of supersonic speed without afterburner, though it didn't have the VMax switch.
Considering it had an acceleration rate that even beat the F-104, and could even accelerate to, and maintain supersonic speed without afterburners, I'd guess that it wouldn't be that hard to position itself for an intercept. The limitations might be the radar (from what I was told the radar was fairly simple), and the missiles, a down-the-throat shot might be difficult to pull off (On one hand: The Concorde was a large target, and produced a good thermal return when at speed, so the seeker might pick it up further than most aircraft; On the other hand: The high closure rate of Mach 4+ would result in very little time to get a lock and shoot), and an attack from the rear would result in a poor closure rate and work against endurance limits.
