"Chad Irby" wrote in message . com...
In article ,
Stephen Harding wrote:

The "best" plane will be best due to reasons having little or nothing
to do with how well it flies!

That might not even come into play. Look at the F-20 Tigershark. Very
nice plane, flew as well as just about anything in the air at the time,
and had *big* advantages in maintenance (as low as one-third the cost of
the F-16 to support). In some fields (interception and scramble
flights), it was better than anything (from the time the pilot hit
"start" to 30,000 feet was about 2.5 minutes).

Nobody bought any.

This thread isn't about 'best'. It's about 'very clearly superior for it's time'.

You can argue the F-20 was better or worse than the F-16, but it was not
very clearly superior. To use a naval example, I'm looking for
Dreadnoughts and not Queen Elizabeths. Revolutionary designs and not
just good planes.