Best dogfight gun?

In message , Chad Irby
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
Trouble is, all the guns you like won't stop #4 of one of the escort
sections getting an unseen Atoll up the tailpipe

And all the missiles won't help much in this case, either.

Why not? An aircraft diving away in afterburner is an excellent missile
target.

Now, AIM-9B lacked the range and clutter rejection for that scenario,
but it was a 1950s design; and the AIM-7D likewise wasn't useful but was
also a 1950s design.

Try that same attack against modern aircraft, and you'll still avoid the
guns shot: but you'll get a late-model Sidewinder for your pains, or an
AIM-120 as you extend.

On the other hand, the M61 cannon isn't effective in either scenario.

and won't help you chase that MiG-21 down and kill him.

Actually, that's *exactly* what it would do, if you're out of missiles.

There seems to be this romantical view that fighter pilots, out of
ordnance and committed to their mission, will drop everything for a
fangs-out pursuit of a fleeing foe.

Do you have the fuel for the prolonged tailchase required to get into
guns range, manoeuvre for the kill, then get home? Remember, the enemy
aircraft is ahead of you, out of range, with a substantial speed
advantage.

Where is he leading you, as you try to accelerate and overtake? Are you
being lured into a SAMtrap, or is his another MiG lining up for a shot
as you fixate on that target? You'll cover a lot of ground before you
get him into 20mm range, and he's most unlikely to be leading you
towards _your_ friends.

Didn't you have somewhere else you needed to be, such as dropping chaff
or dropping bombs?

What happens when some of his friends join the party, you being down to
guns only?

So produce some numbers. Relative SAM losses per sortie, for instance?
I'm open to data, I just get wary about assertion and anecdote.

If you want to find that out, find it yourself. *You're* the one who
wants that data. Let us know how it goes. Until you do, that other
comparison is still pretty useless.

In other words, "don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up".

This aircraft has Sparrow and Sidewinder, and by the time the F-4E is
flying they're demonstrating performance (the Sidewinder was up to 50%
Pk in its AIM-9G form). Yet it's making a quarter of its kills with
guns? Where did that battery of AAMs go in those engagements?

They got used up. You see, there's no magic formula that makes a
missile magically 100% reliable or accurate. And if the other guy
discovers a weakness in your missile systems, you're screwed.

Especially when your tactic dictates firing "all available weapons" in a
salvo of whatever you had selected.

Even carrying four and four (on the Phantom), that gives you only four
long range shots and four short range shots. In Vietnam, it was a
fairly sharp distinction, since the Sparrow kinda sucked at short range.

Once those are gone, you're done. No more shots, go home or fly around
and hope nobody shows up.

Given that Sidewinder was achieving nearly 50% kills-per-shot by war's
end (AIM-9G, fifty fired for 23 kills) and the actual number of firing
opportunities, that's less of a problem than you'd think: the number of
times an enemy aircraft dances temptingly in front of one's own is much
less than most flight-sim games would have you believe.

And what do you do if something goes wrong with your radar,

Then your gun is in a lot of trouble, since it depends heavily on the
radar to generate its fire-control solution.

or if you're
in the middle of a dogfight with a bunch of your guys and a bunch of
other guys (we still lose fighters to fratricide from radar and IR
missiles, you know)?

When was the last air-to-air combat fratricide (by which I mean a shot
taken at an enemy aircraft diverted and destroyed a friendly)?

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk