Yeah, I was aware of that. An F-104A also made a record setting flight topping out at over 100,000+ feet. I was referring to the posted figures, however. Service ceilings and such.

Logan Hartke

…and that conversion has been carried out on some A/B models, both developmental and I think some of Hungary’s were originally A/Bs with C/D wings and air-to-air refueling.

Logan Hartke

The F-4 was a generation after the F-104. It was able to build off of the lessons learned from the F-104. Compared at least to the early F-104s… It had range, the F-104 didn’t. It could carry a significant payload, the F-104 couldn’t. It had a good radar, the F-104 didn’t. The F-4 also had better performance, being faster and possessing a higher ceiling.

Basically, the F-4 was a true multi-role platform, one of the first in the way that we think of it today.

The F-4 was far more forgiving, as well. It could take more of a beating, serve more roles, and do nearly any job better.

In its defense, the F-104 was designed for an entirely different role. It was a single-pilot aircraft, requiring half the number of skilled aircrew, and it was significantly cheaper to build and operate (not counting losses). It was great in point defense, especially, having a higher rate of climb than the F-4 (one of the few areas of performance where it was better than an F-4).

The F-104 had very temperamental performance characteristics. In the right hands, it could outfly most anything in the sky, using its power to control an engagement and its internal 20mm Vulcan cannon (another area it was better than the F-4) to slice and dice. Read some of the manuals on tactics devised for the aircraft in the Vietnam War. They just never got to prove themselves in that conflict in the air-to-air role. Unfortunately, most pilots never achieved the skill level required to take advantage of the aircraft. It just was never suited for it. It was such an export success because it was so cheap yet offered amazing performance. These same factors combined to produce an aircraft that has probably earned the nickname “widowmaker” and “flying coffin” in more languages than any fighter in history. Novice pilots kept getting plopped in this high-performance, challenging aircraft and graduating from F-104 flight school as craters in the ground.

Really, the F-4 was just better in so many ways. It could fulfill almost any mission asked of it. From carrier aircraft to ground pounder to MiG dogfighter to interceptor to reconnaissance to Wild Weasel, the F-4 could do it. Due to its pathetic range and radar, the F-104 could hardly be a good interceptor or strike aircraft, let alone anything else.

Logan Hartke

It depends on the load. The C-27J can carry the US Army’s vehicles. The C-295 can’t.

Logan Hartke

Interestingly enough, it used to be exactly the opposite.

High-wing aircraft were preferred for passenger aircraft, and low-wing aircraft were preferred for use in cargo aircraft. There was a story, I can’t remember what it was from (I’m thinking the Chaco War), but it was commenting on the use of Junkers Ju 52s compared to the high-wing trimotors of the time. A piece of heavy equipment-an artillery piece, if I recall correctly-was loaded into a Ju 52 and flown somewhere. The same load was attempted with a high-wing trimotor (possible a Ford Trimotor, but I’m not certain), and it fell through the floor of the aircraft and was deposited on the ground beneath it.

In earlier aircraft, when the structure was lighter and planes were smaller, the low-wing configuration was preferred in cargo aircraft since the wing box was an area of great strength, on which particularly heavy cargo could be placed. This allowed a low-wing aircraft to safely carry much heavier loads. Often, cargo was loaded directly from trucks, whose beds were conveniently at that height.

High-wing aircraft, however, were still preferred for passenger aircraft since they placed the fuselage closer to the ground, therefore making ingress and egress of passengers far easier and not requiring airfields to have stairs on site. They also afforded the passengers better, unobstructed views.

After World War Two, aircraft got larger and ramps became all the rage on cargo aircraft. Soon, it became more sensible to lower their overall height. Their cargo quickly became whole vehicles, which obviously needed to load at ground level, not four and five feet off the ground.

Conversely, the choice of a low-wing configuration for such modern airliners as the DC-4, Connie, and all of the follow-on jets soon made stairs impractical due to the height they would have to be, and passenger loading bridges became the preferred method for handling passenger traffic at modern airports. Since there was no longer a need for passengers to load and unload near the ground, the obvious aerodynamic advantages of a low-wing configuration made it the preferred configuration for passenger aircraft, and that is the main way it’s done to this day.

Interestingly enough, for modern passenger aircraft designed to primarily fly into smaller airports not equipped with passenger loading bridges, the high-wing configuration is still popular, partially for the advantages of being closer to the ground. Examples of this are the BAe 146, the Dornier 328, the Dash 8, the ATR 42, and the An-148.

Logan Hartke

Pushers are used to get “clean” air over the wings and in turn get higher fuel efficiency during the cruise phase.

That’s also the reason that the B-36 opted to use that configuration. It was one of the few aircraft big enough at the time to putt that off without disrupting the airfoil or putting the aircraft in the fuselage and coupling them to a complicated shaft arrangement. That’s the main reason why pushers aren’t used more often in multi-engine aircraft. Some newer business aircraft have adopted the fuselage-mounted podded pusher prop configuration. Although this necessitates some serious structural engineering, it does offer one of the few non-pod & boom multi-engine propeller configurations that keep the engines off of the wings, keeping the wings free of engines and allowing the design to benefit from all that is entailed with clean wings.

There are a number of very good reasons why you don’t see it that often. if you look at the rear view of you average aircraft and take away everything that you see with a control surface, there aren’t many spots left for you to put an engine. One of the few is the very rear of the fuselage. That didn’t use to be an option since most aircraft were tail-draggers at one point in aviation history. Even with tricycle gear, it isn’t easy to rotate with the prop mounted at the rearmost portion of the airframe.

Interestingly, enough, for the brief period in time when propellers were still king and tricycle gear became more commonplace, pusher aircraft suddenly became far more popular. Even discounting the more traditional pod & boom pusher aircraft (such as the Saab J 21 and Vultee XP-54 Swoose Goose), there were a number of advanced pusher designs, such as the Curtiss XP-55 Ascender, Northrop XP-56 Black Bullet, Dornier Do 335 Pfeil, Kyūshū J7W1 Shinden, and Douglas XB-42 Mixmaster. In the case of those fighters, the pusher configuration allows all of the guns to be placed up front, right in front of the pilot, the most natural and accurate location for a gun to be on a fighter. It is interesting to note that the top-scoring aces for the US, Germany, and the USSR in WWII all flew aircraft whose armaments were primarily in the nose. If you read what those pilots like Bong and Hartmann thought of the configuration, it’s clear that they attributed part of their success, and much of their accuracy to that layout.

As a final chapter in the late-WWII pusher craze, it is interesting to note that this configuration also allows an aircraft to be relatively easily converted from propeller to jet configuration, such as the Saab J 21, XB-42/43 Mixmaster/Jetmaster, and Northrop YB-35/49. We’ve seen this happen again in a few UAV designs that have gotten larger and decided to switch from propeller to jet propulsion.

Logan Hartke