I flew the F102 about 1500 hours and did just about everything that
can be done in that aircraft. (only did one one-turn spin, though; it
was accidental, and recovery was standard and quick). The F102 had
about 740 sq ft of wing and clean weighed about 28000 for takeoff.
(38#/sqft!) The aircraft could be flown down to 90 knots controllably
in what looked like level flight but starting just below about 115 you
were descending and the only way to break the descent and accelerate
was by decreasing the angle of attack. Tough if you're close to the
ground. At 115 KIAS you were close to 30 degrees AOA and at the limit
of one-G flight in full afterburner. At 90 KIAS you were going down at
over 6000 FPM. Here is where a lot of transitioning pilots got in
trouble; they'd fly a 360 overhead (VFR) pattern, get too slow on
final (lulled into complacency by the ease of control) realize at last
they were going to land short and now go to full military power to
either reach the runway or go-around, and pull back on the stick 'to
reduce the descent rate', thus increasing the AOA and the induced drag
to horrific levels. Afterburner might have allowed them to fly out of
trouble but being new and 'unadvised' they would be loath to call for
it until too late. Result - prang. The B58 had sinmilar problems even
with experienced pilots. (Paris Air Show - 2X). FWIW there were NO
stall warnings whatsoever in the F102. The airplane felt good and
solid all the way down the airpseed scale. The caveat in the Flight
Manual was that if aileron was used to control wing drop at 90 KIAS
the airplane could/would spin. It felt just as solid at 115 as it did
at 500. As for the MiG21 - I do not know the airplane but do know it
has a much higher wing loading than the F102 (its rotation speed is
about 50 knots faster (F102 clean - ISTR 144) and I presume the final
approach speed is about the same amount greater. 150 on final was
plenty for the Deuce; at about 135 or so you were close to dragging
the tail end, but it was still under fine control. So the MiG is a hot
airplane on takeoff and landing. It has to have lots of energy to
execute hard turns in any flight plane, including a Split-Ess. Any
delta will shed energy under high G so quickly it will catch
'unadvised' pilots by surprise. A demo maneuver for transitioning
pilots was to roll the TF trainer (tub - side by side ugly mother)
inverted at 30 degrees noseup and 250 KIAS at 25,000 and
simultaneously light AB and suck back the stick to 5G and execute a
Split Ess from 25,000. Result - level flight at 22,000 and 225-250.
Done at 3,000 AGL with an F100 on your tail resulted in shucking the
Hun. They dared not try to follow you. I suspect a lot of MiGs were
lost in air-to ground weapons deliveries begun at too low an energy
level. Also - what are the MiG's spin/departure characteristics? The
original 21 was a lightweight bird - the last models are pretty heavy
even clean. And then there is always - how current are the pilots? How
good is the maintenance? There was a negative comment in AVWeek
recently on the 21's engine maintenance. Obviously critical on a
single engined aircraft.
My two cents worth as an ex-F102A pilot/maintenance test/flight
examiner - Walt BJ