(Kirk Stant) wrote in message . com...
Just for fun, off the top of your heads, which post-WW2 combat
aircraft (any country) have NOT been used in their intended roles in
an actual shooting war (or police action, or soccer riot, or whatever
it's called these days)?

And why?

Some ROE:

1. Combat aircraft means it was designed or modified to employ
air-to-air or air-to-ground/ship/boat weapons.

2. Combat means someone was activily shooting back (or really wanted
to) while the aircraft was performing it's mission.

3. Let's leave out recce, that just gets too complicated!

To start things off, here are my USAF candidates:

B-36 - Held back from Korea for Nuke mission.
B-47 - Too early for Korea, too late for Vietnam (remember, no recce).
F-84F - Too early for Korea (ef considered a separate aircraft from
straight-wing F-84s), too late for Vietnam. Combat use by other
countries?
F-89 - Too late for Korea (?), not needed (no bomber threat).
F-106 - Not needed in Vietnam - F-102s deployed instead.
F-101 (Yeah, I know about the RF-101 in Cuba and Vietnam). Don't know
why F-101Cs weren't used early in Vietnam. Being phased out by then?

There was only one wing of them (81st TFW at Ben****ers), tasked with
deep penetration (read "nuclear") missions in support of SACEUR; I'd
imagine that the powers-that-was decided that we still needed to keep
a credible force facing the Sovs while other forces were sent to
Vietnam.


Everything else got lots of chances to do their thing.

At first glance, looks like the US taxpayer is getting a pretty good
deal for his money!

Kirk
(tired of all the non-mil av bull**** on this group)

The Avro CF-101--closest it came to combat use was when the Belgians,
who operated the type for some six years, sent four of them to the
then Belgian Congo where they performed at an airshow and did the
"show the flag" bit.

Grumman F-11F Tiger

McD-D F3H Demon--unless you count its deployement to the Quemoy/Matsu
area during 1958--but I don't know of any actual combat.

All of the Saab fighters (J35 and J37, along with the J39 to date),
minus the J29, which did see some use in Africa under UN auspices.

Douglas F4D Skyray

Gloster Javelin

De Haviland Sea Vixen (?)--Unless it saw some kind of use during the
UK's involvement in SEA operations?

Vought F7U Cutlass

North American FJ1 through 4 Fury--Deployed to support the Lebanon
Crisis in 58 (FJ3), never saw combat.

The Japanese F-1

ROC Ching Kuo

I think you will find that there are a few Soviet types that have
never seen active combat (even the Su-15 only ever "fought" a couple
of airliners...).

Brooks