sainzwould expect exclusive info and gorgeous, first-hand photography.
But why not start with an easier aircraft, say, MiG-21
You’re kidding.
MiG-21 – Gorgeous first-hand photography ???
Never before seen operational shots? Vietnam, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Cuba, the operators of the type in Africa, Cold-War era first-line Soviet units in GDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary etc….it’s a real challenge till today…
– A lot of pilots previously operating these types in combats have retired, they are more than willing to share their stories if you ask them nicely.
The ‘problems’ of a German author >
Sad enough the former Russian military community wasn’t a great help so far. I am under the impression that even historians on their side (if there are any working on the matter) haven’t a clear picture at all – even 20 years after it all changed! Russia still has a somewhat “disturbed” relation to history, my experience (!)
It’s 2014 and they have no clear picture which subtype at which airbase and when. Photos, hahhh…for 25 years in GDR, nearly a dozen Soviet airbases gave home to about 1000 MiG-21s, and there is no book with a single nice photo of 16.VA MiG-21F-13, -21SM, -21SMT, -21bis etc. Not to mention something ‘special’ like an armed QRA plane, nice flightline shots etc.
For 25 years till 1989 our little staff checked and re-checked every bit of available information and personal findings not only once. By doing so and in respect of thousand little bits, peaces and glimpse it was obviously not possible to correct all “false data”. Our intention was, and still is, to document the enormous activities of the Soviet Air Force (SAF) in Germany over the period of 50 years – not an easy task at all!
For example, it’s something like: you have no any photos of Spangdahlem’s F-4C, F-4D, F-4E, F-4G…If you are guessing only: the 52nd TFW converted to F-4D or not? Or they changed their F-4C’s to F-4E’s? When? etc.
sainzWell, Luftwaffe F-4F was only retired earlier this year after 40 years service, while 1970s built F-15 are still flying with USAF and IDF. This must certainly say something about the technical reliability and durability of both types, don’t you think?
Pffffffff……..that stats. for the MiG-23M is from 1978. The type was relatively new then.
The F-4F was an older design, but newly produced, delivered in the same period. The F-15A was brand new then. Their stats vs the -23M!s at least say something.
5 losses out of 16 original aircraft, 31% loss rate – a disasterous record. Most aircraft losses are caused by the pilot anyway. Why did Hungarian pilots crash 20% of their Mig-23 in a space of 15 years??
11 years with only one loss(tech malfunction). All the others happened after the end of the Cold-War. For example -23UB mid-air collision with Su-22 1995 etc
How many NATO logbooks would you be happy with?
>
The logbook of only 1 pilot – it’s not enough to make any conclusions.
😎
Still I am waiting for at least one from the late ’70s, ETO fighter, the yearly data from three consecutive years is fair.
sainzAgain, few words from a Soviet MiG-23M pilot, who flew in GDR(sorry, quick google translate):
” By 1979, the MiG -23M in the 16th VA considered obsolete type (and it’s just five years after receiving them! ) . In other fighter regiments already received far more advanced MiG- 23ML “
” after 1982 the MiG -23M as a fighter in the ETO is already outdated finally , and the 35th Aviation Regiment became a fighter- bomber . Accordingly, changed the content of his training, radar scopes on airplanes have been disabled , and the former pilots now practiced interceptor missions to destroy ground targets. “
sainzThose statements means that for an X total amount of failure events (let’s say, the total number of failure events that the MiG-23M fleet suffered in 178 was XXX) airframe and aircraft systems amounted “23%” of that total, while engine amounted “1,8%” and avionics “36,2%”.
What this means must be correlated with the total number of failure events and the fleet numbers. In a first sight this could mean that avionics were a bit unreliable, while the engine was reliable. If, “PER EXAMPLE” (this is a supposition) the total number of failure events in 1978 for the soviet MiG-23M fleet was “1000 events”, it means that you have 362 failures related to avionics, 18 failures related to engine, 100 failures related to aircraft armaments and the so.
Any comparable data >
and the average time between one failure in flight was 482 hours.
for the new NATO planes in that period? F-4F, F-15A…
sainzAnyway, it’s a classic here on this forum again. A small piece of real WP-data appears, and what are you doing?
In the past I had some serious debates with Mr. ‘Sens’, but in this case his opinion is more than fair:
All NATO pilots were trained for more than one mission and from that came the demand for more training missions. The training ranges were seldom close to the base compared to the situation in the East. A typical training mission in the East was 30-45 minutes. To have some comparision at all, we have to compare the number of landings for every pilot.
More myth than reality without the related details. In the former GDR the Russians got trained pilots into their regiments. Each squadron within that had a different level of profiency and related demand in flying hours to reach the demanded level of first class pilot.. From class two level pilots, the class one level pilots up to the “snipers” or “experts” the number of flying hour differed. The one not up to the required level or assumed political not firm were sent back to the SU. Elder ones had desk jobs and were honored with some refresher hours per year to keep in touch with front-line flying in the GDR. The span in flying abilities was not different to that of US flyers. Just the role within the kind of warfare (doctrine) was different as were the allowance for tactical freedom. An airforce without real combat to verify the own ideas becomes rigid over the years. Here the influence of the SU was much higher in the WaPac than that of the USA within the airforces of the NATO. Just from the 70s the value of tactical flying outside the atomic warfare became more and more important for the SU again. All the claims about Russian flyers are limited to a given time-scale. The high numbers of Russian pilots will give a sizeable pool of high quality ones alone.
sainzI am not convinced about that “log book”.
Oh, sorry! 😀
It doesn’t look like any log book I’ve seen.
Because you did not see the pages of the WP pilots log books never…
Secondly a single log book doesn’t make it a rule for Magyar Légierő that all pilots shall flight 180h a year. During communist era …
Who told you they flew 180 a year????
You have serious problems to handle some real data, simple numerical facts, which does not fit perfectly in your opinion.
The general view:
Warsaw Pact air force combat pilots flew around 100 – 120 hours per year.
That HuAF guy had 147 hours as average for the 1977-79 period. +27 hours, ehhhh…that!s not an other dimension, when you have own wings and can fly like an eagle.
The general view is something like: WP pilots flew x, NATO 2x
200 hours annually is about the normal flying time for most NATO air arms.
most Warsaw Pact air force combat pilots flew around 100 – 120 hours per year.
Simply I would like to see that large difference on NATO logbook pages from the late ’70s. It is the ‘fair-trade’. What is the problem with this?
So please quote some real data from the same period, from the real pilot-logbooks of USAFE or Luftwaffe F-4 or RAF Germany Lightning etc. fighter jocks Three consecutive years is fair. Thanks in advance!
sainzAn interesting question is the quality and quantity of simulator training – how do NATO and WP compare to each other? What sort of simulators did they have in the Warsaw Pact anyway?
Just a small public detail again. 1978, the Soviet 35.IAP. GDR, Zerbst, MiG-23M, the first live firing with H-23 missiles(sorry, google translating):
” Well, you can throw bombs after the theoretical training, but how to let the H-23, which never tried ? Therefore pilots sent to Grossenhain regiment fighter-bombers, which had a ground simulator for training in the H-23 missile. Each had to be done before practical launches of 1000 starts on the simulator. Pilots stayed there two weeks sitting on the simulator from morning till night, but still managed to make only 700-800 ‘starts’ “
While – for example – 1st H-23 live firing exercise for HuAF MiG-23MFs went by training documents only, and the result: hmm…inefficient or a kind of ‘disaster’
sainzIn which case he has a completely different opinion…
Where is my opinion above? Please quote!
Are you trying to quote ‘Mean Time Between Failure’: MBTF?
I have not tried anything. Simply I gave the official numbers for the Soviet MiG-23M fleet in 1978. Public from 2003…
The statements above are completely ambiguous – 23.0% and 1.8% of what?
23.0% + 1.8% + 10.0% + 36.2% + 29.0% = 100% 😀
The MiG-23 suffered horrendous losses in the Czechoslovakian and Indian air forces – a real ‘lawn dart’.
And ? I quoted Soviet data for the MiG-23M…
HuAF: 16x MiG-23MF,UB. Lost 5(3x MF and 2x UB):
2x UB pilot error, 1x MF lightning, 1x MF pilot error, 1x MF tech. failure. Typical? Yes. No. You can say: does not matter, HuAF had a too small export fleet. But technically the safest fighter in HuAF ever, lost only one by malfunction.
By the way Czechoslovakia:
mishaps and crashes of all Mig-23(U, BN, MF, ML) in former Czechoslovakia. You can count 9 crashes within 25 years of service, just three of them due to a/c malfunction. Does it speak for poor safety record of Mig-23 at all?
MiG-23BN #9142 – hard landing due to blocked front landing gear leg. Aircraft saved, pilot OK
MiG-23BN #9140 & #9138 – mid-air collision, one pilot KIA
MiG-23BN #5746 – autopilot failure, pilot ejected
MiG-23BN #9859 – engine stall, pilot ejected
MiG-23MF #3921 – engine fire, pilot ejected
MiG-23MF #3888 – failed landing by a novice pilot, aircraft repairable
MiG-23U #7721 – ground impact due to misorientation (overcast night), both pilots KIA
MiG-23U #8327 – crashed due to pilot error, both jocks KIA
MiG-23U #8325 – entered flat spin during a dogfight with MiG-23ML, both pilots ejectedThat’s exactly three crashes due to technical malfunction.. IMHO, that’s a very good safety record…
I always believed that most Warsaw Pact air force combat pilots flew around 100 – 120 hours per year.
Don’t bother… he is on an obvious path to prove the ex-Warpac countries…flew more than anybody else on the world 🙂
AFAIK I am the only one here, who published some real data, the facts from a WP pilots logbook, the flights and flight hours from the late ’70s. 3 years in a row.
You do not need to respect me for that…But at least I would like to see similar pages from NATO pilots logbooks from the same period. Thanks in advance!
But I do not understand, what’s the problem with a simple quote with Soviet stats. from 1978?
Where is this data:
the average time between one failure in flight was 482 hours.
compare with F-4F, early F-15A etc.?
sainzThe complexity and unrealiability of the early MiG-23s were not well liked
As of 1978 failure statistics for the MiG-23M in the whole Soviet Air Force as follows:
– Airframe and aircraft systems 23.0%
– Engine 1.8%
– Aircraft Armament 10.0%
– Avionics 36.2%
– Aeronautical equipment 29.0%
While only 3.1% of all failures were manifested in the air, and the average time between one failure in flight was 482 hours.
sainzHuAF – the smallest and poorest WP airforce.
From the logbook of a young captain who flew on MiG-21bis. The yearly flight-hours in the late ’70s >1977 – 133h 36m
[ATTACH=CONFIG]216407[/ATTACH]1978 – 171h 3m
[ATTACH=CONFIG]216408[/ATTACH]1979 – 139h 17m
[ATTACH=CONFIG]216409[/ATTACH]Repülések száma = Flights
Nappal = Daylight
Éjjel = Night
Befüggönyzött kabinban = under curtain
Felhőben = in clouds
Korlátozott látás… = at restricted visibility
For these data, 2x USAFE F-4 and a Dutch F-104 pilot wrote to me the same:
” In general, his number of flights were about what I flew in a year…”
All NATO pilots were trained for more than one mission and from that came the demand for more training missions. The training ranges were seldom close to the base compared to the situation in the East. A typical training mission in the East was 30-45 minutes. To have some comparision at all, we have to compare the number of landings for every pilot.
sainzI’v read a couple books that have some dealings withe pilot training in the cold war era……..”From Tailhooker to Mud Mover” by Dick Lord has some pretty interesting pages on USN air combat training.
Top-Gun – for the mentioned early years I prefer:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1309582.Scream_of_Eagles
“Mig Pilot” by John Barron has some interesting insights of Soviet pilot (VVS) training.
Belenko served in the PVO
sainzI am tired of mixing reports. On the USAF side we talk about the experience of one pilot.
Yes, there is no co-author 😀
I think his career is not an average one: ‘NAM, 2x Fighter Weapons School instructor, later F-15 sqn. co. at Bitburg, Tyndall, F-15E etc.
He said: ‘In 1974’ ‘typical F-4 pilot’(USAF)
” In 1974 the Air Force reassigned me from an overseas assignment in USAFE to Nellis. When I arrived I had over 1,200 hours in the F-4, including 365 combat hours. I had never flown a dissimilar air combat sortie. I had never carried a training AIM-9, and have not even seen one since my combat tour four years earlier. I had never used a gun camera. The only tactical formation I had flown was Fluid Four/Fighting Wing. I had never intercepted a target at low altitude. In other words I was a typical F-4 pilot with a combat tour. “
No matter if you can not accept, great reading:
http://books.google.de/books?id=3bABwDOExOMC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=dogfight+f-4d&source=bl&ots=cb1d-tGhBT&sig=R3hvIDyx6WRpbK5FwwHwmEYYBls&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xydSU8umBoasO7yMgKgM&ved=0CCwQ6AEwATgU#v=onepage&q=dogfight%20f-4d&f=false
The Luftwaffe for example had TCTP training regime long before the 70ies. It includes DACT and flying the plane to the limit. If you do not believe this read “Mit Überschall durch den kalten Krieg” in which a Marineflieger pilot describes his time on the F-104 in the late 1960ies.
Please tell me the annual flight-hours(and no. of flights) at the Luftwaffe F-4F fighter units in the mid-late ’70s!
Scanned evidence from at least one pilots logbook is fine 😎
If you say that is average, I believe in you…
Or we can talk more about books 😀
sainzHuAF – the smallest and poorest WP airforce.
From the logbook of a young captain who flew on MiG-21bis. The yearly flight-hours in the late ’70s >1977 – 133h 36m
[ATTACH=CONFIG]216407[/ATTACH]1978 – 171h 3m
[ATTACH=CONFIG]216408[/ATTACH]1979 – 139h 17m
[ATTACH=CONFIG]216409[/ATTACH]Repülések száma = Flights
Nappal = Daylight
Éjjel = Night
Befüggönyzött kabinban = under curtain
Felhőben = in clouds
Korlátozott látás… = at restricted visibility
Any chance for some same pages from the logbooks of Luftwaffe F-4F and USAFE F-4 pilots from the same period?
More than 30 years old story, there are no secret details on these pages 😎
I am ready to share some pages with the daily flight trainig data also…
sainzBy 1972 most USN F-4 pilots deployed to Nam had been through Top-Gun or similar DACT training. Some sources say all pilots, but I believe that there must be some junior or replacement pilots coming back from flying a desk, who did not. The USAF was a little slower in that regard though.
I just read:
Sierra Hotel -flying Air Force fighters in the decade after Vietnam >
” In 1974 the Air Force reassigned me from an overseas assignment in USAFE to Nellis. When I arrived I had over 1,200 hours in the F-4, including 365 combat hours. I had never flown a dissimilar air combat sortie. I had never carried a training AIM-9, and have not even seen one since my combat tour four years earlier. I had never used a gun camera. The only tactical formation I had flown was Fluid Four/Fighting Wing. I had never intercepted a target at low altitude. In other words I was a typical F-4 pilot with a combat tour. “
‘a little slower’ – 1974, 5 years after Top-Gun & Soviet ‘500s’ started…
sainzContrary to that link. That RB-66C was shot down by 2 MiG-19S from 33 IAP based at Wittstock/GDR. Hptm (~Captain) F.M. Sinowjew started his intercept from AB ‘Altes Lager’ /GDR. His MiG-19S was No 25.
Captain Федор Зиновьев – Fedor Zinoviev(?) – at right, shortly after the ‘incident’ with his sqn mates at 33.IAP.:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]227809[/ATTACH]
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