The Lightning was as agile and maneuverable as a loaden truck. It lacked all aerodynamic premises to be a dogfighter, and the RAF never considered to be one. The Lightning might have had very good acceleration, climb and top speed, but it did not outperform contemporary designs like the F-104 or MiG-21 by a wide margin.

I’m afraid you are totally wrong. Seeing them at airshows, from a first hand point of view, they would not have been far short of sticking with an F-16.
The RAF were delighted that it could dogfight resoneably, not the orginal plan, but due to the large excess power.

http://www.thunder-and-lightnings.co.uk/lightning/memories.html

An interesting comparison. It does highight however how much a gap there is between it and the F-15/later F-16 etc..

“The first P.1 performed its initial flight from Boscombe Down on 4 August 1954, with the famed test pilot Roland “Bea” Beamont at the controls. Beamont had flown the SB.5 beforehand to familiarize himself with the peculiarities of the configuration. The second flying P.1 prototype performed its initial flight on 18 July 1955. Both prototypes were powered by two Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire Sa.5 nonafterburning axial flow turbojet engines. Even with the nonafterburning engines, the prototypes were able to easily exceed the Mach 1.2 specification.

Although the P.1 was officially a research aircraft, it had been designed to be close to an operational fighter configuration. Performance was so outstanding that the decision was quickly made to proceed on an operational version that would be capable of Mach 2. In fact, the second P.1 prototype featured items such as a bulged belly tank and fit of twin Aden Mark 4 30 millimeter revolver-type cannon, bringing it closer to operational specification. “

from http://www.vectorsite.net/aveeltg.html

Another interesting comparison from an American exchange pilots view. Note look at the very bottom few paragraphs. Says better turn rate and acceleration than f-104 etc..

http://www.lightning.org.uk/archive/0507.php

Scorsch Can you tell me how the lightning doesn’t compete with the F-104 and mig-21 in a dogfight?

http://www.lightning.org.uk/archive/0412.php Read, comparsion against the f-104 😮

About the 9g capability. I have heard it mentioned a few times, just give me a little time to find a good source.

Another interesting read to demostrate the performance, with more F-104 comparison

http://www.lightning.org.uk/archive/0410.php

and again http://www.lightning.org.uk/archive/0409.php

Just reading through, discounting the eagle saying its an interceptor. Thats it’s job, cannot be dissadvantaged for it. We should judge the fighters on how they performed in their particlular job, F-15 interceptor, F-4 muiltirole etc..

Sheer performance wise the EE lightning beats just about everything apart from the F-15.

The mirage in isreali service was awesome in day time AtoA engaements, downing hundreds of planes.

For the multirole types I think the main contenders are Viggen, F-4.

saudi tornado IDS, or saav Viggen

An airticle in air international this year interviewed an SR-71 pilot about flying over the soviet union. The article went along the lines of saying when the SR-71 was in its upper tier of performance the mig-25 couldn’t touch it, nice try, but no. Doesn’t that make it a failure for its main objective goal?

And the mig-25 being manouverable 😮

Lets take a little break from all this 😉

complementory vid, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-2beKRtdao

u cannot impart Supermaneovrablity, range, high altitude performance of Flanker into Phantom. and new Flanker is made extensive of titanium so likely it will have long life compared to aluminium/composite construction under similar operational condition.

stop using the term supermanouverablility!!!, it’s not agile, it is just manouverable.

You could make the same arguement between a WWII Zero and Wildcat. Yet, the latter had a kill to loss ratio of something like 7 to 1….As a matter of fact the Zero was more agile than just about any Allied fighter during the Second World War.

hmm, o.k

F-18E/F vs eurofighter, hmm bit of a diversion there.

Typhoon has better performance in basically everything, a list :):

1.) Turn rates, sustained, instantaneous, in supersonic, subsonic regimes.

2.) Better situational awareness, will have better mssiles by 2012, HMS, IRST-T, ASRAAM combination is unstoppable. Metoer by 1012 sorted.;)

3.) Range on the SH is less, especially when starting to load them both up, although IFR can make this point obsolete.

4.) Speed, acceleration, climb, any kinetic performance the typhoon in alot of respects is leaps and bounds ahead. oh altitude aswell.

5.) IRST, aid with BVR.WVR combat. PIRATE.

6.) Weapons, SH has advantage in terms of it being ready right now, however in a few years the typhoon will carry anything that can and more. Taurus, storm shadow, meteor etc…

7.) Cost in SH favour, depends if you want to win or not, SH may be cheaper but is likely to be downed by su-35bm, typhoon not so. (still under discussion but we all know the real answer ;)). Quantity vs quality.

8.) Radar do not know that much 😮 here, ANY one willing to inform, please do. 🙂

9.) Radar cross section, typhoon is 3rd smallest of any fighter, especailly when you start loading the SH up, the positions of its pylons are rather relvealing arnt they. Also SH is bigger physically.