The Greatest Fighter Jet of All Time.

Waynos said:

In design terms, the F-15 was/is a masterpiece of fabulous design for its role that is virtually unchanged (apart from the stealthy F-15SE prototype) in almost 40 years.

Counter that with the F-4 with its drooping tail and upturned wingtips that, whilst admittedly very cool, are only there because McDonnell made a total hash of the original design.

Separately, possibly the only other jet fighter, apart from the F-15, with a 100 per cent A2A combar record is none other than.....................................




The BAe Sea Harrier!

TA DA!

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Dream on.

In what way? Did I write something that is factually incorrect?

The success/claims rate of Harriers during the Falklands war and F-15/F-16 over Bekaa valey made me to make a more throughout research for reasons of that. So far I've come to some conclusions (some already noted by fellow members, but not all).

Israel AF made a textbook approach to the battle. They either destroyed or jammed Syrian radars, denying the force multipliers for them. So Syrians sent their planes only when their ground forces got bombed by IDF, relying on visual means to get a picture of enemy forces.
On the other side, Israelis made a good use of E-2 Hawkeyes to guide their planes, so their force multiplier was working as advertised.

Another issue are weapons used. Syrians had AA-2, AA-8 and AA-7 (both IR SARH versions). The 1st two lacked all-aspect capability, while Israel's Python 3 featured it. With IDF planes making a 1st attack, Syrian planes would be seldom in position to launch a tail-chase missile. The AA-7 SARH could do the head on attack, but it was not present in numbers (majority of Syrian fighters were MiG-21 and non-AA-7 capable MiG-23 verions). How well radar of MiG-23MF functioned within hostile jamming is questionable at least, while AA-7's range (in R-23 version) was comparable to AIM-9L/Python 3 and not to AIM-7. Look down-shoot down capability of Syrian radars were close to non-existant for most of Syrian planes. It's questionable if Syrians had some creditable decoys to use vs. missiles, and having them coming from all angles must've been a shock.

Then we have training. Few people would object that Israely pilots belong(ed) to top 3 in world. Syrians lagged behind notably.

Finally, the planes confronted. No one with brain would say that MiG-23 was in league with F-15/F-16 as an airframe, while other systems (radar, missiles, other supporting electronics) were also one generation behind. When we count in the MiG-21 swept away from Lebanese sky, the tech gap becomes even wider.

So Israelis had it all: fighter planes, radars ( both on fighters and on AWACS planes), weapons, jammers, training, initiative, doctrine. Syrians really had nothing to compare with, not even numbers of planes deployed. So if we substitute F-15s with F-4s, and F-16s with Kfirs, results would be hardly different.

Waynos said:

In what way? Did I write something that is factually incorrect?

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You were spot on.

Thanks, though I still don't know what specifically Syscom was disagreeing with

I don't think he was disputing the Sea Harrier record, but rather the operational scenarios. I don't want to put words in Sys' mouth, but I suspect he would say that there are many battle tested fighter planes who have a clean record that can also be disputed as being technologically uncontested.

I think that was Pauk's point too.

Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.

Sea Harrier's position on Falklands war could be compared with Syrian fighter planes position in Middle east in 1982 - they were defenders. But here the similarity ends. Training (with a smaller margin then Israelis enjoyed), missiles and surface radars are on a plus side here for FAA, while Argentinians were not able to conduct electronic warfare like Israelis did in same year. On the plus side for them were numbers, while raw performance of jets involved was either greater or similar. The comparably lower range speed did not allow Sea Harriers to pursue enemy far beyond it's CAP zone. The Argentinian doctrine seems lacking in my eyes, since they did not try to lure away Harriers into traps, nor didn't mount a large scale attack with intention of crippling them. All despite having both numbers and performance. As for initiative, it changed hands many times.

So I'd say that Sea Harriers fought vs. much greater opposition (when compared with Israely position in same year) , and came with upper hand.

Matt308 said:

I don't think he was disputing the Sea Harrier record, but rather the operational scenarios. I don't want to put words in Sys' mouth, but I suspect he would say that there are many battle tested fighter planes who have a clean record that can also be disputed as being technologically uncontested.

I think that was Pauk's point too.

Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.

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Not going to shoot at all Matt, but I am interested to learn a bit more about what you mean? My comment was merely to say that, as far as I am aware, there are only two fighters in the world with 100% air combat records (ie none lost in air combat but a significant number of victories ie double figures at least) and these are the F-15 and Sea Harrier. If there are lots more I'd love to know what they are, that was kinda the reason I posted it. What is it you mean by 'technologically uncontested'? Sorry for being dim.

Tomo, a major failing in the RN's operation in the Falklands was the lack of any AEW at all (hence the post war creation of the Sea King AEW, now called the ASaC.7) and also the total disregard shown by the Hermes air group for the low level CAP instructions from HMS Invincible. It is worth noting that every British ship lost in the conflict was lost from within Hermes group that operated its CAP cover from 20,000ft while Invincibles low level CAP strategy had a 100% success rate, with post war analysis revealing that the Argentines ditched their bombs and returned home every single time they encountered Sea Harriers at low level, and only 801Sqn from Invincible was doing this.

Waynos said:

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Tomo, a major failing in the RN's operation in the Falklands was the lack of any AEW at all (hence the post war creation of the Sea King AEW, now called the ASaC.7) and also the total disregard shown by the Hermes air group for the low level CAP instructions from HMS Invincible. It is worth noting that every British ship lost in the conflict was lost from within Hermes group that operated its CAP cover from 20,000ft while Invincibles low level CAP strategy had a 100% success rate, with post war analysis revealing that the Argentines ditched their bombs and returned home every single time they encountered Sea Harriers at low level, and only 801Sqn from Invincible was doing this.

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Yep, I know about lack of AEW for FAA, sorry for not mentionig that

The stuff about Hermes air group is news to me - was anyone sanctioned because of that? Why FAA employed two dissimilar approaches for CAP in same time-space?

Hi Tomo. It was this way because of one or two related factors. Firstly it was agreed that Invincible would be in mainly in charge of air defence and Hermes would be in charge of attack ops, but these definitions were not mutually exclusive and each group was supposed to cooperate with the other, so, although Hermes would get its cap instructions from Invincible, it would use its own aircraft (and vice versa of course).

In addition to this 801Sqn on Hermes had only just become operational while 800Sqn on Invincible had been using the Sea Harrier operationally for over a year, therefore while 800 knew its aircraft and its capabilities, 801 had not yet fully come to grips with it, and even regarded te Sea Harrier as impractical and its radar unreliable as they had not yet learned to use it properly. According to Sharkey Ward (hopefully in jest) the Argentines knew more about the Sea Harriers abilities than 801Sqn did

Because of this 801 decided to disregard Invincibles orders to conduct low level caps as they thought it was unworkable, so they patrolled at 20k instead, this meant that even when the incoming threat was detected the enemy had conducted his attack before he could be engaged. An example of 801's lack of faith in the radar was when, on 4th May, a Sea Harrier on CAP was despatched for a visual check on a non existant 'target', despite the aircrafts own radar correctly showing there was nothing there, while it was gone the Etendard that sank HMS Sheffield passed through the gap it had left.

The Argentine order was to ditch bombs and run whenever a SHar was encountered at low level, hence the success of Invincible in protecting its own ships compared to the horrendous losses of Sheffield, Coventry, Ardent et al from Hermes group. 801 was also providing the CAP at Bluff Cove and we all know what happened there.

801's aircraft were also under instruction to return to the ship with no less than 2000lbs fuel remaining, the figure for Invincible's 800 Sqn was 'no more than 800lbs', thisd meant her aircraft were on station 'up threat' for 20 mins longer per sortie.

The shocking thing for me is that, although Invincibles instructions were plain enough, and worked for them, nobody has had any blame attached to them for Hermes wilfully leaving the gaps in the CAP screen through which every single successful Argentine raid passed.

Thanks for the insight

Some questions:
Was the SHar's radar capable to detect sea-skimming A-4s, Exocets et al from 20kft? Have the 801's planes managed to catch any retreating plane (using higher altitude to increase speed while diving?) and score hits?

That fuel issue is just illogical, to say at least.

Aircraft yes, missiles no. The FA2 was the major upgrade to the SHar that included BVR 'look down-shootdown' capability against aircraqft and missiles approaching the fleet, a capability we have now voluntarily given up.

Almost all of 801's intercepts occurred in the manner you describe, unfortunately it was always too late for the target vessel

What's wrong with MiG-21 ? That's my bet !

http://http://cgi.ebay.com/Fighter-Performance-Practice-Phantom-versus-MIG-21-/290443813778?cmd=ViewItem&pt=US_Texbook_Education&hash=item439fcce392

michael82 said:

What's wrong with MiG-21 ? That's my bet !

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Despite its superior performance in certain flight envelopes, it didn't fare well in combat, a lot of that was due to pilot training and tactics.

The MiG-21 is a very neat airplane with some real liabilities. It has C/G problems when you punch off the center line tank (later models) and even with tanks did not have long legs. Visibility to the rear was almost non existent.

Landing at over 180 MPH is not endearing to the survival of newly minted pilots from the third world. I personally like the MiG-21 but consider some of its operational liabilities and its combat record, it comes out to less than mediocre.

I put the F-15 due to it's versatility. Although I don't know too much about it, from what I've read and seeing them fly, a properly trained pilots could knock any other plane from the sky (that was up there) other than the new generation fighters. It had at least eight variations, included air superiority and ground attack versions. It was first introduced in '74 and is just now starting to get replaced along with the F-16 by the F-35 and F-22.

You're quite right, FLYBOYJ especially noting the reason for combat record (if claims are true !)...
Of course, it is smal aircraft of the '50s, '60s era and therefore limited in equipment and useful load...
I'm not sure what do you mean about CG problems, with any internal fuel load and A-A armament CG is withing limits, at least graph says so. I understand that only with small internal fuel load and bombs/rocket launchers/external load it is somewhat unstable.

It has high landing speed, only because overnose field of view and angle of attack is about 8 deg. That corresponds to land.speed of 168 mph at normal weight..or higher at lower alpha for better visibility.

michael82 said:

I'm not sure what do you mean about CG problems.

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You can't fly the aircraft clean without having the center of gravity shift to the extreme aft, this starts occurring when about 1/3 of the internal fuel is used. Especially true for the later models.

FLYBOYJ said:

You can't fly the aircraft clean without having the center of gravity shift to the extreme aft, this starts occurring when about 1/3 of the internal fuel is used. Especially true for the later models.

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It is not easy for me to understand this cg problems in air-to-air configuration. You can see from MiG-21 bis cg graph that with any fuel load cg is within 29-33 % mac limit.
On y-axis is % cg, bottom is allowed range. On x-axis is aircraft weight with ammo 2 AAMs. Scale above is fuel used and scale at top is fuel left, all in kilograms.
Dotted line is with land.gear extended, full line with retracted,
Ammo out moves cg aft 0.5 % mac and AAMs influence on cg is negligible.

Just received a book ordered from Amazon entitled, "F-14 Story" by Paul T Gillchrist, Rear Admiral (USN, Ret.) Book was copyrighted in 1994. I have in other threads tried to explain (poorly) the reasoning I have heard why the Super Hornet, (F18-E and F) was a poor choice for the USN (and the USA) over the new manufacture Strike Tomcat. Gillchrist has the same opinion. I have not digested the book yet but early in the book Gillchrist says that the Tomcat " has evolved into the most lethal fighter plane in the world!" I am somewhat familiar with Gillchrist's career in the USN and he has much experience flying fighters. Once I have read the book I will try to explain Gillchrist's reasoning. I, in the nineties had a long conversation with an F14D driver at an air show in, of all places, Gunnison, CO. He stated that the F14D could defeat any other fighter in the world at that time. Maybe he knew of what he spoke.

I've heard that ^ said many a time, too.