When the Foxbat was the rage, we often practiced "snap-up" intercepts
in the F-4 and, as you indicate they were extremely critical regarding
geometry. The key was getting as close to head-on as possible so as to
be at R-max in your pitch-up.

How true. I've run simulations where target aspect just got away (and it
wasn't much to begin with). And even with horizontal geometry solved being
a bit late for the pitch one would never get the nose up fast enough to
center the dot. With Sparrow, it was imperative the missile get off in
medium altitude autopilot gain and with a lead-collision geometry wired at
launch. Any major inflight guidance corrections by the missile would drive
PsubK from fair to non-existent.

R / John





Getting scrambled off air defense alert in Korea (Kunsan and Taegu), and
sometimes nothern Japan (Misawa) in the early 70s against high speed targets
was not all that unusual. The tracks were at 50k'+, south or eastbound
headings, usually near the NE corner of S Korea by the DMZ. Presumably
Foxbats. The tracks were usually M 1.5+, always out of N Korea and were, in
all likelihood, just probing of our tactics and reaction times, or else their
own quick reaction alerts protecting Bears transiting the Sea of Japan. GCI put
us on a max performance TO and burner climb to 25k', directly head on with the
track We continued the climb to 35k', started the pull at M 1.2 in a shallow
dive, took the Judy as we started the pull.. The bogeys never came near the
DMZ and almost always broke off just after we started the snapup maneuver.. I
am a little hazy on the details of the intercept geometry but I recall the
setups looked do-able up until we/they broke it off off. Seemed to happen once
a month or so.

Generally on AD alert out of Kunsan you had a good probability of getting
scrambled so it was interesting duty. You didn't often get put against a
potentially hostile track, though.. I suspect we got scrambled to protect
intell assets (EC-121, 130, or Navy ship) operating in the Sea of Japan or the
Yellow Sea as we usually got vectored to an orbit. Usual load was 4 x Aim-7 and
4 x Aim-9 though we carried the gun if the mission was predesignated to protect
drones and or destroy them if the controller lost the link.

We practiced snapup attacks with F-4 targets but at much lower altitudes. An
F-4 target could harely fly at 45k'.with three bags at mil power. I don't
recall those being a particlar challenge.so long as you got head-on early and
only had to snap 10k' to fire. I guess if you train for it several times a
week you got the hang of it..