That's what we worked on with my trainer at the F4 RAG, but we had a heavy emphasis on Visual ID engagements with Sidewinders, due to the ROEs at the time and the lack of Sparrow reliability in hot humid climates.
Cheers,
Wes
The Greatest Fighter Jet of All Time. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter 102first_hussars
- Start date
Cheers,
Wes
Déjà vu. The Air Force F4 OTU at MacDill had to ask the Navy F4 RAG at Key West to stop hassling their pilots. Their BFM training area abutted our ACM training range out over the Gulf of Mexico, and a certain amount of "border jumping" was taking place that was hurting AF trainee morale. They had to keep scraping the wax off their tails.
Cheers,
Wes
Last edited:
Was this about mapping their command structure?
They couldn't see everything well enough? There was this book called "Clashes" and they talk about matters such as the collected data being unable to be sent to the fighters.
In some cases it was due to secrecy regs.
No...got information from Westinghouse Linthicum Heights Md.
They developed AWACS with help from NRL Radar and Wave propagation division at Bolling AFB.
USAF did not have a radar system to see Migs taking off.
Did have them for Defensive use not for offensive.
The Navy could see them after they took off and got some Altitude for the coastal missions they flew.
Navy also adopted AWACS early warning systems.
When it was implemented US Fighters could be staged to meeting them.
That is when the Vietnamese started losing a lot more fighters.
Actually the terrain...the sea did not have mountains or high terrain that a plane could hide behind and the horizon behind that.
On the sea issue you got the earth and tall enough Radar to see over the horizon..
The ELINT birds were full spectrum snoopers. They could monitor and record just about every form of electromagnetic emision generated in their assigned area. Everything from broadcast radio and TV, all kinds of communications, microwave, navigation, radar, IFF, remote control signals, missile steering signals, you name it, they got it on tape. They carried linguists, cryptographers, communications specialists, intelligence analysts and spooks of all stripes onboard, and could record just about any event in real time. Needless to say, they could track and record MiGs as they intercepted strike forces, and by listening on aircraft frequencies, could hear them being vectored for attack runs. They knew which bases the MiGs were coming from by their communications long before they could see them on radar.
BUT, being on the intelligence side, not the operations side, they were reduced to spectator status. Part of their effectiveness stemmed from most of their "targets" being unaware they were being watched. Needless to say, coming on the air to play fighter director would compromise their effectiveness and make them a target.
Both the airborne radars south of DMZ and the Lima sites in Laos had too much terrain between them and the scene of the action to see low altitude targets. It didn't take the NVAF long to figure this out, so they would approach their targets at high speed on the deck, then pop up under their victims and shoot. The AI and terrain mapping radars that the Americans carried had a hard time painting a fast mover in the weeds in look-down mode and of course, no coverage at six o'clock low. The only folks in the know were the helpless spectators in the ELINT birds and they could only hear and mostly not see.
These were the E2 Hawkeyes, commonly known as "hummers". Their primary mission was task force protection and AirTraffic Control, but they could see much further into "feet dry" territory than the ship based radars could, and they didn't have the intelligence constraints the Willy Victors did.
Cheers,
Wes
Last edited:
Basically, it had the chin intake feeding an engine that exhausted out the back, a variable-incidence high wing, a low stabilator, and a single vertical tail. It also had cheek mounted missiles, but the airframe was totally different in addition to the engines.
The airframe was much cleaner overall, the plane was substantially heavier based on the need to fly faster and further (and carry a bigger engine), which resulted in bigger wings. The larger wings had a lower angle of incidence when raised, the leading edges had double-drooped leading-edge flaps, the flaperons were drooped more than the flaps, and the trailing-edge used BLC on both the leading-edge and trailing-edge.
Early on the requirement was 3 AIM-7 (early on called the AAM-N-6, all the way until 1963, the missile systems still differed); as the design evolved, they specified that it carry both together.
Never installed at all: While Vought wanted to install them, the USN had little interest, and as the design went from the earliest configurations
- The nose had its characteristic shape, but the intakes weren't swept forward initially
- Wing shape seemed established, but variable-incidence was the same early on as the F8U-1/2
- Radar was a modified AN/APQ-50 (this version was also used on the XF4H-1 prototypes), with a 24" radome.
- Armament was now: 3 x AAM-N-6, or 4 x AAM-N-7 (AIM-9), no air-to-ground provisions.
- The ferri-intake was added
- Wing-incidence was lowered, flaperon deflections increased
- Armament remained the same
- Bypass doors added (possibly during flight test) which served as auxiliary intakes at low speed
- Reconfiguration of cooling air system: The original arrangement had less air to the engine, and more for cooling (acceleration was inadequate)
- Auxiliary intake added at base of tailfin (provided additional engine cooling capability)
- Inlet contours re-designed to deal with airflow disturbances that would occur at supersonic speeds, possibly at altitudes above 47000' while subsonic
- A new glass fabrication technique was used for the nose, to effectively allow for higher temperatures and provide a bullet-proof glass effect.
- Radar replaced from AN/APQ-50 to the AN/APQ-72 (32" radome used on F-4) or -74 (34" listed in some sources): Other changes included the USC-2 datalink, and a redesigned fire-control system.
- To keep the nose contours as close as possible to the earlier design: The radar antenna was repositioned further back in the nose; electronics were repositioned either behind the radar, or in the fuselage.
- Fuel capacity was actually reduced, but it was felt that the fuel capacity was still considered adequate
- Armament now changed to 3 x AAM-N-6 + 4 x AAM-N-7
- It was also possible to carry 4 x AAM-N-6 + 2 x AAM-N-7 as an alternate loadout
- There were proposals to carry up to 5 x AAM-N-6 (I guess the idea was similar to the F4H-1/F-4B's 6 x AAM-N-6 layout)
- Provision for air-to-ground included up to 6000 lb. of bombs
- There was a flush mount added that could include a 2000 lb. "special" (i.e. nuclear) store, an extra fuel-tank, or a gun-pack
- IRST added on the forward lower fuselage on at least one side, if not both.
- Nozzles extended slightly aft to permit a set of speed-brakes like the F-105's
I'm not sure if was exactly melting, so much as losing structural strength. From what I recall, it would probably take a few minutes at high speed before it would seriously endanger the aircraft's structural integrity (I wouldn't want to be the pilot on that flight). There was also an issue with the glass itself turning opaque at high speeds. Ultimately, the proposal was to use a different type of glass, and use a new lamination technique.
That said, the XF4H-1 had issues with the canopy too (in fact both had issues with the canopy and inlets).
That was actually the biggest problem, more so than the number of engines. I'm not sure by how much, but that was something that really had them concerned. Interestingly, the F4D/F3H both used single-seaters and seemed to have given a good account of themselves.
Multi-mission capable was probably the bigger of the two, though it was possible to fit up to 6000 pound bomb-load to the aircraft.
As Bill Nye once said (He had this show in the 1990's when I was a kid): "Consider the following"
- There's naturally a favoritism for an aircraft that have an innate ability built in: The F4H did, the F8U-3 didn't
- The F4H-1 had an interesting design history
- Early on, it was designed as a fighter: In this configuration it had a secondary air-to-ground capability.
- Later on, it was re-classified as an attack aircraft (basically, the money in the fighter-budget ran out; so they shifted it into the attack budget until more budget came in), and more air-to-ground capability was added.
- The aircraft was then moved back into the fighter-budget and interceptor capability was either added at this point, or re-added. The air-to-ground capability remained. I'm not sure if all the armor and fire-protection systems remained, as I was told the F-4 didn't have good damage resistance compared to the A-4, F-105, A-6, or A-7.
Last edited:
That was the radar in my trainer, and with all its bells and whistles, operating it was a full time job. A pilot trying to do that and engage in combat would be seriously task saturated.
No it wouldn't. We built gunpacks at GE to strap onto gunless F4s, and they worked great on the ground. In the air they were useless, as they couldn't be rigidly enough attached to the airframe to garauntee bullet strike on the aiming point with flight loads applied. Pilots described it as "a loose fire hose".
Cheers,
Wes
Possible, but the automation the F8U-3 had would have basically computed interception vectors automatically and relayed that into a steering dot.
While many radar intercepts required a person to be looking constantly down at the scope, it had one of the first HUD's: It wasn't like the kind that exist now with a heading up top, speed on the left, altitude on the right, and the pitch ladder and everything where it is now; it was basically a radar scope displayed.
In some ways, it's automation was less than the F-106 in the prototype stage: It didn't automatically fly the airplane into the intercept position. The steering dot gave the pilot what he needed to position himself (that said, it had a mach-hold auto-throttle, which I'm not sure the F-106 had). The USC-2 datalink, however, would have been similar to SAGE and might have had a few features it didn't even have (If I recall the datalink would allow data from the radar to be transmitted back to the center, where as with SAGE, the data seemed to come only from the ground, which was used to direct the plane), though both had auto-land features.
The upgraded fire-control system proposed by the pre-production/production stage might very well have been similar enough to the F-106, however (unsure).
Well, that's a gunpod and it was attached to a thin pylon: The F8U-3 proposal called for a semi-submerged kind of configuration, which would probably have fairly little wiggle room compared to the F-4's set-up. That said, I could be wrong as I could envision some vibration setting up.
Last edited:
Not exactly. It attached directly to the centerline hardpoint, replacing the centerline fuel tank, which meant a couple of wing pylons had to be rededicated from ordnance to fuel.
Our APQ72 did that too, through its (I forget the nomenclature) AP51?? fire control computer. That's pretty much basic to any AI radar of its generation. The problem was that the system had many different modes and options that had to be manually selected, and the antenna had to be manually steered in azimuth, elevation, and range in acquisition mode to highlight a target and enable lockon. The level of automation was severely constrained by the limited computation power available at the time. Circuitry was all tube-driven, and computation was all analog. Memory capacity was zero, so everything was in real time with no recall. No transistors, integrated circuits, or microprocessors.
The problem was that the steering dot led you directly to the weapons launch position for an immediate shot at the target locked on your screen, under the assumption that it automatically is hostile, and that you're using a forward quadrant flight path interception weapon like Sparrow. That's fine for shooting Bears or Bisons over the Arctic wastes, but in the sauna of rice paddy land, AIM7s were notoriously unreliable, and the ROEs required visual ID of targets before shooting. 'Winders, though bragging of a frontal aspect capability, tended to lose lock unless fired from behind their target, with a good view of its tailpipe. A loose 'winder in search of a heat source is not healthy for anybody nearby. Now the problem here is that once you've crept up to VID range behind your bogie, you're inside min firing range for the AIM9. If you shoot, you'll harmlessly scare the crap out of poor Nguyen as your missile zooms past his canopy, and he'll be out for bear. If he's in a 17, he'll "pull a Zero" and loop onto your tail, and if he's in a 21 and he's smart, he'll chop his throttle, pop his boards, slow down abruptly, and your Vc (closing velocity) will shoot you right out in front of his Atolls. The 21 is light and has gobs of thrust in burner, so can re-accelerate quickly as you skid past.
So how to deal with this conundrum? Teamwork in the VID. Wingman becomes "eyeball" and moves in, and Lead becomes "shooter" and hangs back. Once the "MiGs" call is made, eyeball exits the Sidewinder's lethal cone by the most expeditious route possible, and shooter waits for a solid tone from the missile's seeker head before squeezing the trigger. At the call of "Fox one" eyeball kills burner, chops throttle, and swings around to point his nose toward shooter and make his heat signature to the missile as small as possible.
Sound like fun?
Cheers,
Wes
Last edited:
From what I recall there were three hardpoints that could carry fuel, two could carry 370 gallons each, with the centerline carrying around 600 from what I remember (my memory's decent, but not perfect).
AN/APG-51?
By range, you mean selecting the setting on the scope, then moving the radar antenna onto that spot and locking on?
That was what both were designed for...
From what I remember, the reason for the ROE's was that we couldn't identify enemy IFF's (not sure if it was all USSR aircraft or exports), and we'd risk blowing up friendly aircraft. The F-8's seemed to do better in this regard because the plane was more maneuverable than the F-4, and they were more routinely trained in air-to-air combat because they were a gun-equipped aircraft.
That said, there were cases where F-4's managed to score head-on shots on MiG's with AIM-7's. One of the first few kills of the war (6/17/65?) involved a pair of down the gullet shots (Ironically they took out three to four airplanes, two were direct hits, the others were hit by debris from the damaged aircraft, one appeared to be viewed as a kill, the other seemed to be damaged but it wasn't clear what happened).
I thought the AIM-9J was the first to claim all-aspect capability?
Yeah, it was a simple infrared seeker, it didn't care what heat-source it homed on...
That was already an iffy proposition depending on aircraft.
- F-8 Crusader: The plane had a better rate of turn at lower speeds than the F-4 and, while not able to climb as well, possessed a rate of climb that could be useful, and because of it's gun and AIM-9 armament, still were well versed in the art of ACM. The fact that the F8C's had limited all-weather capability, the F8D/E were all-weather capable, meant that they were also pretty skilled in employing their missiles as well as their guns (unfortunately, the guns also jammed quite a lot).
- F-4 Phantom: One of the best climbers in the world (particularly at high subsonic speed), and able to eclipse the MiG-21 right on up to around 30,000 feet; turning rate varied from poor to excellent due to the corner-velocity being rather high-up (around 420-475), and the high thrust/weight ratio allowing a rather surprising sustained agility (around 7g) that might very well beat even the MiG-21 (if I recall they had better instantaneous response on pitch and roll, but lower sustained figures than the F-4 as long as you kept the speed over 400-450). The aircraft's problems seemed to be due to the fact that...
- The aircraft's lack of a gun meant that crews wouldn't have been as trained in close-in combat (this affected the USAF and USN in different degrees).
- There was an assumption that the F-4's long range radar (and the presumption that enemy IFF could be read) meant that they'd be able to engage beyond visual range with AIM-7's.
- The USAF had problems with training at the time: It seemed to have started when jet-bombers (B-47 in particular) came online with SAC, and then leached over into TAC through a combination of osmosis, and the fact that they felt air superiority wouldn't be needed (after all, by screaming in under the radar and lobbing nuclear weapons, there wouldn't be much warning). Around the time the F-4 came into service, General Sweeney took over TAC and began taking this up to eleven with the painful process of 'SACumcizing' (though when done shortly after birth, leaves little trauma, and makes women more likely to bump uglies), and the F-4's adverse yaw traits at high alphas (from what I recall, the plane was being rolled almost totally on rudder at high alpha, lower alphas merely required varying degree of rudder inputs), and mishandling could cause a loss of control (from what I remember, it'd gyrate and tumble a whole lot, then it'd cut out into a flat spin that was unrecoverable), particularly in crews that were inexperienced, or poorly trained.
- F8U-3 Super Crusader: While it's power-off stall might have been not all that different from the F-4 flaps-up, the maneuvering flaps probably gave it a considerable advantage in tightening up the turning circle, and it was likely more responsive on roll as well. Climb-rate was superior to the F8U-1/2, but inferior to the Phantom at subsonic speeds (at supersonic speeds, it was actually something like 3 times higher). It's hard to tell how training would have worked out...
- On one hand: Many of the former pilots would have been Crusader pilots, and the plane handled (in some ways) more docile than the F-8
- On the other hand: The plane had no internal gun and, whether the gun pack would have been more wobble resistant (it was mounted in a semi-submerged station) than the gun-pods, it's unclear if that would made any difference for training.
Without guns (or with guns that jammed), the issue was being able to gain separation if they ended up too close for a missile-shot, while stopping the enemy from turning the tables, or getting away.
There was actually a tactic used by F-104's called "sneak and peak". They'd come screaming in first, confirm ID, then the F-4's would go to work.
Elvis
1st Sergeant
fubar57
General
Right from the XF8U-1. Even the mock-up for the XF8U-1 had them
Last edited:
Elvis, I believe Zip was referring to the "Super" Crusader...
Vought XF8U-3 Crusader III - Wikipedia
- Guns: 4 × 20 mm (0.79 in) Colt Mk 12 cannon (planned; never installed)[8]
fubar57
General
Good thing it was never chosen, the butt ugly version of the F-8
michael rauls
Tech Sergeant
- 1,679
- Jul 15, 2016
Your not kiddin. I knew about the F8 of course but not that version. I actually kinda like the looks of the f8 so I thought how bad could this experimental version be so I headed off to Wiki to get a peak.........well I got my answer....... it really is that bad. Ouch!!
Of course, because their IFF circuitry aped ours, and their SIGINT folks monitored Hillsborough and Red Crown, and the Hummers and Lima sites, and copied the codes assigned to US aircraft by controllers, and relayed them to GCI, who then had their interceptors mirror those codes, throwing the entire strike package into confusion.
Those were probably Air Force birds carrying missiles newly arrived in theater that hadn't had time for the wiring insulation to deteriorate yet. In the heat and humidity of Yankee Station (the Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club), AIM7s deteriorated mighty quick.
For a clean, light, flight test prepped plane, maybe. Out in the fleet you'd never see a combat equipped bird do that.
Well you're right about the gyrate and tumble. That's pretty spectacular, but from inside the cockpit it's confusing, as it's not readily apparent whether you're stalled positive or negative, or what your net direction of rotation is. The trick is to focus on the AOA and Rate of Turn indicators, both of which are oscillating wildly, and average their fluctuations, while ignoring the visual and kinesthetic cues. Once you've determined the nature of the stall and the direction of rotation, apply the appropriate recovery technique. If you do this wrong, THEN you'll wind up in a blanked stabilator flat spin, and it's Martin Baker time.
This is what we worked on endlessly in the trainer, since every properly executed VID would result in the eyeball aircraft too close to shoot and fouling the target area for the shooter.
It was the first to claim 360° aspect, but a couple of its predecessors claimed limited forward aspect in addition to the traditional tail chase mode. I don't remember the nomenclature, but I do remember that the crews were a little dubious of those claims, and didn't trust that feature.
Cheers,
Wes
Last edited:
So their IFF circuitry mimicked ours because they were monitoring them, and relaying them to their interceptors?
What kind of SIGINT were they using? Aircraft, ground listening posts, ships, etc...
Nope, they were off the USS Midway...
From what I remember, the plane would have it's missiles, no drop-tanks, and 60% fuel.
That's good to know...
They were probably right...
Last edited:
The F-8's generally had guns; the F8U-3 didn't.
Users who are viewing this thread
Similar threads
