F-15 Eagle and F-14 Tomcat

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 01:45:16 GMT, Mike Marron
wrote:

"John A. Weeks III" wrote:

Or the F-8's in "Thirteen Days".

Speaking of which, F-4's in "The Great Santini" (although in the book
version the Santini flew F-8's).

F-86 in "Blast From The Past"

Alan Dicey wrote:
Nobody's mentioned Flight Of The Intruder (A-6 of course) yet? Why
could that be?

Best thing about FOTI is that one stunning low pass by the Spad...
speaking of which, there's going to be one flying here in the Boise
area this weekend. I am in serious lust.


Top Gun has some nice A-4's in it too.

Always good for an old Scooter jock to see.



Jeff

In article , Alan
Dicey wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote:

Iron Eagle shudder F-16s
Air Force One F-15s
Top Gun F-14s
Independence Day F-18s
Behind Enemy Lines F-18E (and a missile evasion sequence that makes
Iron Eagle look like a tape from Red Flag for authenticity)

How about "Jet Pilot" with John Wayne? Yeager did the stunt flying in
the F-86. T-33As double for Russian Yaks. Great stuff!

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050562/trivia

- James

In article , James Lane
wrote:

In article , Alan
Dicey wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote:

Iron Eagle shudder F-16s
Air Force One F-15s
Top Gun F-14s
Independence Day F-18s
Behind Enemy Lines F-18E (and a missile evasion sequence that makes
Iron Eagle look like a tape from Red Flag for authenticity)

How about "Jet Pilot" with John Wayne? Yeager did the stunt flying in
the F-86. T-33As double for Russian Yaks. Great stuff!

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050562/trivia

- James

And a cameo by an F-89 IIRC.
Pugs

In article , Allen Epps
wrote:

In article , James Lane
wrote:

In article , Alan
Dicey wrote:

Scott Ferrin wrote:

Iron Eagle shudder F-16s
Air Force One F-15s
Top Gun F-14s
Independence Day F-18s
Behind Enemy Lines F-18E (and a missile evasion sequence that makes
Iron Eagle look like a tape from Red Flag for authenticity)

How about "Jet Pilot" with John Wayne? Yeager did the stunt flying in
the F-86. T-33As double for Russian Yaks. Great stuff!

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0050562/trivia

- James

And a cameo by an F-89 IIRC.
Pugs

And to correct my own post... What I meant to say was an F-94

Pugs

On Thu, 08 Jul 2004 11:50:59 +0100, Alan Dicey
wrote:

From the comfort of my armchair, I have always had a sneaking feeling
that the use of "the right tool for the job" (ground attack, including
at night or in bad weather) should have paid dividends over hanging
bombs off of the previous generation of fighters, which seems to have
been the way the majority of tactical bombing was done (correct me if
I'm wrong). There are posters here who did it for real; what is your
assessment of the A-6? Was it better at delivering the ordnance than,
say, an F-4 or F-105? Defining better (roughly) in terms of factors
such as bomb weight delivered on target, accuracy of delivery, and
chances of completing the mission in one piece?

I'll be happy to accept your invitation to correct you if you're
wrong. And I'll admit at the start that these terms will be in
consonance with your "roughly" parameter.

First, let's be sure to define the period. Your blanket "the majority
of tactical bombing" by hanging iron on the previous generation of
fighters certainly wouldn't fit B-25s and B-26s or A-20s or Stukas. It
really doesn't even fit the Century Series of US jets which were
multi-role aircraft designed from the start to deliver nukes, iron and
fight air/air.

Since you've specifically mentioned A-6, F-4 and F-105, it needs to be
noted that the F-105 was a mid-'50s design while the A-6 was coming on
board in first iteration at about the time that the -105 was leaving
the business in SEA. The F-105 was (except for the limited number of
T-Stick II conversions) designed as a "system" bomber for nukes but
delivered conventional bombs strictly by manual dive-bomb, i.e.
calculate dive angle, delivery airspeed, altitude above the ground,
wind drift and weapon ballistics to determine a sight depression, then
make all the parameters come together from a totally random position
in space while the entire population of SE Asia is shooting at you.

The A-6 was designed for radar delivery and had a huge radar to do
that job. The airplane grew in the role through several generations
and undeniably was excellent at all-wx, night attack. It carried a big
load, delivered it well and had good range/endurance. It also was
surprisingly fast despite lack of reheat.

The F-4 came in a lot of flavors. The C was a manual bomber, the D was
a automatic delivery first-step and the E, when properly tweaked as
they did at Korat (thanks to Dweezil and his cohorts), was a pretty
good system bomber. But, it was doing the ranging and release
calculation off of what was essentially a visual delivery. See the
target to place the pipper. (LORAN and ARN-101 versions did a better
job of all-wx, night, but didn't compare to the A-6.)

The F-111 was designed from the beginning to correct the USAF lack of
an all-wx, night penetrator. It really didn't achieve it's potential
until the F-model.

All four of these aircraft carried substantial loads. All had adequate
range, but only the AF birds came with afterburner, and as far as I
was concerned there is nothing that replaces an extra bunch of go-fast
in your left hand. It means survivability when you need to get out of
Dodge or recover energy after an altitude/energy losing defensive
maneuver.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8

There are posters here who did it for real; what is your
assessment of the A-6? Was it better at delivering the ordnance than,
say, an F-4 or F-105? Defining better (roughly) in terms of factors
such as bomb weight delivered on target, accuracy of delivery, and
chances of completing the mission in one piece?



This is more like one of those questions along the lines "Will a (insert name
of a fighter) beat an (insert another fighter) in in (insert an adjective)
combat. The answer is "It depends".

The F-4 with laser guided bombs in the last stage of the VN war was the best
bet in your last two categories if you are talking daytime visual sorties. The
105 could drag a lot of bombs but probably not as good as an F-4E with Dive
Toss. The A-6 was a better night and blind bomber but I am not certain it had
the survivability as the other two in a daytime. There were also planes used
in VN like the F-5, AT-37, A-1, A-7, F-111, A-26, and B-57 to name a few.
Each worked better that anything else in certain circumstances.

The real question might be what plane was/is good at more things than the
others and my answer would be the F-4 though it didn't carry the biggest bomb
load, wasn't the most accurate, but may have been the most survivable thought
that debate might never be settled.

Steve

From: (Smartace11)

snip

The real question might be what plane was/is good at more things than the
others and my answer would be the F-4 though it didn't carry the biggest bomb
load, wasn't the most accurate, but may have been the most survivable thought
that debate might never be settled.

Steve

I used to w**k on F-4Es at Hahn. We tended to refer to them as a jack of all
trades and a master of none.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

I used to w**k on F-4Es at Hahn. We tended to refer to them as a jack of all
trades and a master of none.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

What I liked about flying it was it yuo didn't like the kind of mission you
flew on one day, just wait until tomorrow because you will be flying a
different one.

James Lane wrote:

How about "Jet Pilot" with John Wayne? Yeager did the stunt flying in
the F-86. T-33As double for Russian Yaks. Great stuff!

I remember that. Janet Leigh is Russian pilot with twin 40's IIRC.

-- Charlie Springer