That is one of the things I agree with. In Germany manhours are expensive, while replacement parts are cheap in comparison, so that manhour intensive MiG-29 coudl have been more expensive to operate, then the F-4. In countries in which manpower is less expensive the outcome could be very different.

I do realize that. But I am not doing comparison here.. I am looking at overall simple picture. Vietnamese with a relatively rugged Soviet equipment managed to shot down hundreds of F-4s. A horrible record if you ask me. How would F-4s have performed over Soviet defenses in case of war? I don’t even want to think about it..

Better by all means. The F-4s would have been free to use their BVR advantage, they would not have been forced to evade SAMs that they were not allowed to attackm, as their was some holy duckpond close by.

Vietnam was ufkced up by the politicians and no weapon system could change that fact. Look how the F-105s were beaten.

I seriously think that any lighter aircraft of whatever origin featuring lower wing loading and better capabilities to evade incoming SAMs would have had a greater chance to survive..

Yet would not have the range to reach Hanoi in the first place.

That was also Phantoms Achilles’ heel. If performing SEAD or CAS missions it still was forced to carry all the unnecessary A-A equipment around, or vice versa. At that time, enhanced A-G capability was not a matter of 10,000 pages of software, we are speaking about hundreds of kilograms of specialized black boxes.. IMHO, Phantom was too big and too heavy and too underpowered.

Onyl unneccessary if your opponent refuses to fly offensive missions. Do you think the WarPac would have been as passive as then NV ?

As I said, I am looking at the whole picture, not details.. For me it is sufficient that according to reports from GW1 Tornado were complaining about high wing loading which resulted in difficulties to evade even the old SA-2 when low and fast. The particular pilot giving the interview expressed his reluctancy to continue with Tornado and rather wished for something less sophisticated, lighter and more nimble like the Jag for the same mission. Maybe he was comparing apples and oranges, too.. 😎

Yes, as the Tornado was optimized for low level work. And the enignes lack power when fully loaded at medium alltitudes. The F-4 in form of the F-4G, F-4E and RF-4C however worked at medium alltitudes with ease.

Multi-role capability was an obvious and logical thing to come, with or without Phantom. Mirage F1, Viggen and MiG-23 were not even inspired by PII, they went a completely different approach of more specialized versions of the same type.. At that time, it was a much better solution than to design one huge, lazy and lurky thing that could do theoretically everything but was a master of nothing. Finally, if rusty MiG-17 and SA-2 must be consider as a threat for you, then you are probably sitting in a wrong aircraft.

That is just wrong. The Russians do agree that the MiG-23 was developed as their answer to the F-4. And both are remarkably evenly matchend when you look at their flight chractersitcs, even though their outer appearance it very different.
Even Dassault acknowledges that the F-4 forced him to replace the Mirage III with a more modern F.1.

The Swedes were obviously not directly influenced, apart from genral developments in the aircraft industry.

Got exact numbers?

It was around 25.000 DM for an F-4 in 2001 and around 34.000 DM for a MiG-29. Tornado being around 22.000.

The full report is on the site of the Bundesrechnungshof, which is down at the moment.

The F4H that has flown in 1958 was an empty hull, not even resembling actual in service F-4s. Let us look at series versions, that will give us a better impression.

F-4C May 27, 1963
F-4D December 8, 1965
F-4E June 30, 1967

series Mirage F1C March 20, 1969
AJ37 February 8, 1967
JA37 September 27, 1974

MiG-23 10 June 10, 1967
MiG-23MF came 1972
MiG-23ML came 1976

I would say Phantom II is somewhere in the middle of two generations, newer than MiG-21M, Mirage III or J35 and older than F1, AJ37 or MiG-23.

Absolutely agreed.

Why do you forget the F-4B. Later versions of the deisgns I mentioned als saw later in service dates. However they are perfectly suited to show the greoth potential the F-4 had.

I hope we agree, that the Mirage F1, the MiG-23 and the Viggen were all designed with the F-4 been known and with the F-4 being a kind of benchmark fr their development.

Not again.

And if you want to copmare the F-4, perhaps you should compare it toe Mirage III/V, J-35 and MiG-21 / SU-15 and not planes that were designed when the F-4 was lfying for over 5 years and were meant to counter and better the F-4.

MiG-21 (YE-04) first flew on the 6/15/55
F-4 05/27/58
Saab J-35 25/10/55
Mirage III 01/30/1957

Those planes are contemporariers, the fact that you compare the F-4 to the successors of mentioned planes, speaks for itself.

Having to choose between the fpur planes in the first posts, and considering we are speaking of a mid 1970ies timeframe, I would pick the following list :

1. F-4 as it was the most multirole
2. MiG-23 at least a bit multirole and a decent fighter
3. J-37. Not multirole, but every variant was ok
4. Mirage F-1, a medicore fighter with medicore AAMs not multirole (did get better later in service though)

For the Falklands / Malvinas just one question – are they worth the years of that sanctions that would follow a military solution ? The answer is no.

The French ships are excellent solutions for peace keeping support and disaster relief operations. Do not need large ports, can carry helicopters.

We have always stated our MiG’s are better than your F-16’s but you don’t believe, so according to your Latest Issue (Jan-2006) “Combat Aviation” (an American Magazine) East German MiG-29’s have defeated WESTERN aircraft in exercises threw out the 1990’s.

Have defeated and have been defeated. That is exactly the point of such trainign missions.

We should not forget, that after the first evaluation the US never asked for simulated BVR fights, as they won them hands down. Most nations flying against the MiGs asked for close range dogfight, the area in which the MiG-29 excels and still is better then any western aircraft of the same generation. Add the selected pilots of JG-73 (most had exchange tours in F-16,F-18, etc.) and you get a really good agressor unit. However do not forget that even the US agressor squadrons flying the F-5 to simulate 1970ies MiG-21 do regualary beat current US fighters n air to air combat.

If you are interested I am sure that NATO would have had its butt kicked in an conventional conflict with the Warpac. Luckily you did not try, as we would not be discussing thsi question today, if they had.

Russia needs to moderinze their forces and to modernize theri tactics starting at the small unit level. They still believe in huge formations and on large numbers in their basi vattle plan. However they are unlikely to be fighting war in which these tactics will be usefull. the cold war is over, NATO Tanks are unlikely to come rushing up the Ukraine and threatening mother Russia, as NATO is a divided and spent force, hardly capabel off defeating poor third world countries.
There 2 possbile threats to Russia. The first one is radical islam with the islamic monority in Russia trying for a islamic state. That is the likely war, the war they are already fighting in Chechnya. First lessons from that conflict have been learned, but imho not enough. For exampel T-90 is a nice tank, but T-72 with ERA is just fine for an RPG armed enemy. However an RPG save APC would be needed.
The other option is a war with China, which is unliekly and would probably go buclear anyway.
So on a politcal scale Russia needs to get its economy running again and get the situation in europe straightened out. It can not be that the EU has more power in the Ikraine, the Russia. Then they must stopp selling themselves cheaply to the west. Russia has gas and oil, let the west pay higher prices and you get more money for the army.

That will open the option for the third war, the war Russia should want to fight. Re built the Soviet Union under Russian control. In 10-15 years the US will be in policat slef imposed isloation again, after being beaten in the middle east and being betrayed by leftist Europe. Europe will continue to become inceasingly leftist and peace loving, with an dying economy and an old society. Then will be the time for Russia to gorw again and once again dominate europe.