Who said that Serbs were poorly trained? Iraqi pilots may have had some issues but who said that they were poorly trained either?

BTW Is there any source that has archived the evidence (including but not restricted to gun camera footage, HUD camera footage, wreckage, official admissions of losses etc) for each and every A2A claim that the USAF made during IIPGW?

Harry,
I don’t mean that for every conflict my points apply. But if compared to their western counterparts (not in general, but regarding the pilots that flew the CAP missions) they had less training.
However, it should be possible to understand that under these conditions with symmetric circumstances (so no North Vietnam scenario) a victory without air2air-losses is possible.
There are a lot of factors determing the result of an air2air-battle. If one is zero, the overall result is zero. Most of the time the factors are not zero, but very small:
– F-15C vs MiG-29A (‘the special down-rated non-WP member version’)
– USAF choice vs the few Serbian pilots
– NATO E-3 vs ground guidance under attack
– Sparrow vs barely working avionics
– Surpreme numbers vs 12 (how many working?)
Is that really surprising? Is anybody’s pride hurt bis this? Isn’t this just fact vs fiction?

In every conflict throughout history, well recent history, pilots flying outdated fighters have engaged and destroyed superior aircraft, I draw ur attention to the success of VPAF pilots flying MiG-17s against the F-4, the Royal Navy Seafury pilot who shot down a MiG-15 over Korea, Egyptian MiG-21 pilot downing Libyan MiG-23s during the border dispute there back in the eighties.

And every conflict is different. The MiG-21 downed the Lybian MiG-23MS with a Sidewinder missile, the MiG-21 was anything but a underdog in this kind of engagement.
The MiG-17 profited from poor American combat training and the rules of engagement. Note the strong decrease in MiG-17 kills in the later years of conflict.

There were no Harriers downed either. Maybe UK government betraying you all? If the Argie’s had MiGs instead of Mirage, I am pretty sure we would talk about the issue because some Russian TV show or “reliable source from PVO” gave information about kills. In case of the Falklands and the Harrier it would actually been more likely than in Iraq 1991 or Kosovo 1999.

I was browsing the thread on F-15 losses that was recently posted here and started wondering, why are we so quick to believe US reports and claims and so quick to dismiss Russian reports and claims?
Is it so hard to believe that a Syrian pilot flying a rusty old MiG got lucky and squeezed off a missile that actually hit an Eagle??? After all that is the whole point of air combat isn’t it?
In every conflict throughout history, well recent history, pilots flying outdated fighters have engaged and destroyed superior aircraft, I draw ur attention to the success of VPAF pilots flying MiG-17s against the F-4, the Royal Navy Seafury pilot who shot down a MiG-15 over Korea, Egyptian MiG-21 pilot downing Libyan MiG-23s during the border dispute there back in the eighties.
So why are we so quick to jump at the slightest hint that a Syrian or Serb or Iraqi pilot may have gotten lucky and bagged an Eagle, Fighting Falcon or Nighthawk???
Ok, u can easily all justify the claim that it is simply propoganda because there was no wreckage displayed, but then again, how many civilian airliners go down without any wreckage being found??? Does this mean they disappeared into the Twilight Zone or were nabbed by aliens???No it means we can’t find the wreckage, simple!!!
All I’m saying is that we should be more open minded toward these claims by the Syrians, Serb’s and Iraqi’s and maybe ask a few more questions when it comes to counter claims by the Yanks and Israeli’s.
….Oh, one last thing…going back to the Vietnam War, at one stage American losses air-to-air were so bad that the US began stating the aircraft lost were due to AAA and technical failures when infact they had been hit by MiG’s….just something for u to think about… 😉

Actually it is a rather unreflected question ingnoring all the details presented in the according discussions. For all conflicts mentioned (that is mainly Lebanon 1982, Iraq 1991, Kosovo 1999) there was evidence and opinions presented that reason the correctness (within an error margin) of western claims and losses.

Then I have a question: Why is it so hard to understand that outdated aircraft with substandard weapons, guided by unappropriate (or even non-existing like 1982 and 1991) guidance systems, flown by poorly trained pilots under the outdated doctrine of fallen empire, will perform extremely bad against a choice of western pilots/aircraft/equipment (please note that they always send the best into war, not the ANG F-4Ds)? Is that due to propaganda?

I sounded like you were blaming the Japanese for not taking the correct steps to reduce the impact of radiation… a bit harsh considering even the creator of the secret bomb knew very little about radiation at the time.

No, that is not my point.

For every person that died within hours of the explosions another person died later… weeks or months or years from the radiation. Further people are still effected with higher than average instances of birth defects and rates of cancer.

The years that followed showed a very small increase in cancer rates. The additional dead by cancer are in a magnitude of 1000. I have no information about birth defects.
Data of Tschernobyl showed only little to neglelible increase in cancer, too. The popular opinion that many people died of cancer in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not proven and most probably wrong.

I wouldn’t underrate it either. Even with an airburst that doesn’t touch the ground the tremendous heat generated will suck a vortex of dirt and material up to form the mushroom cloud. That material will be irradiated and lifted up into the atmosphere and eventually come down as rain. The most dangerous radiation is also the most short lived, but the lesser radioactive materials, if they enter the food chain or water supply can “effect” people hundreds of miles from an explosion in many incidious ways… getting burned alive might sound like an easy release to the parents of a child 100kms downwind of a nuke born with no arms or legs that is unable to see or hear or speak.

I wanted to express that the radiation problem can be decreased with some very simple steps that are even not too expensive. All he burned people have very low survival rates and die a horrible death. Even most modern medicine cannnot help them. Radiation victims can be avoided by
– avoid local food and water
– iod tablets!
– wash houses, cloth
– screen radiation
– bring pregnand and young people out of hots spots
– use simple masks against dusk for a limited time
These simple steps will drive down radiation victims and long terms effects by a magnitude.

I know this might sound harsh but I think the radiation probably caused less suffering than the frightful flash burns from the actual detonation. Considering the Japanese cities were large concentrations of paper and wood, which was exploited with incendiary bombs, I really don’t think a nuclear weapon was really a greater evil.

That was my point, thank you for explaining it further. The people that died shortly after the explosion were mostly burned victims and otherwise injured. They were only limited number of radiation victims. In popular media every death after the explosion was “due to long term effects of radiation”. However, we should not belittle the long-term effects. They were there and Japanese society was sometimes unable to deal with it. Many people were discriminated due to radiation/bomb injuries.

In a time of war at the end of a desperate campaign I doubt either germany or japan could have had evacuation + water and food storages that would be protected from radiation or transportable enough to be deployed to whichever city was hit, and a citywide catastrophy like a nuclear attach will always stretch medical systems as I think you will find the hospital in most cities would be close to the centre and likely hit by the blast itself.

German cities are completely different: less dense populated, concrete buildings. A nuclear bomb on a German city would have caused less horror than in Horishima.

I am definitely against any usage of nuclear bombs and will not deny the many victims due to their use, test and production (which includes victims of nuclear accidents in bomb facilities). But I am a big supporter of nuclear energy.

Again, I have to repeat, not everyone is obsessed with throwing guided bombs around. What you have written might well apply for large airforces of global playing countries. But there is a large number of small countries who have totally different requirements. For example, I cannot imagine a situation in which Slovak Air Force would need laser guided bombs.

Right.
See similar discussions on the real needs of small air forces. People tend to look at USAF and downsize its needs to small countries level. The result is at best misleading.
Therefore the A-standard Gripen would do for most users. Please note that modern avionics need “well-priced” maintenance. Precision ammunition is very expensive and cannot be used by small air forces in a beneficial manner.

The gap between the sometimes feeled capabilities of air forces (and aircraft) of some users here, compared to those fielded in most air forces are considerable.

Edit: In other words what I am saying is the power of a nuclear weapon is measured in tons of TNT equivelent. In other words when you increase the size of the bomb from 1kt to 1MT you are increasing its explosive power 1,000 times, but not the amount of radiation it emits 1,000 times. Explosive power increases quicker than radiation levels.

You can even say that radiation levels stay constant. Modern bombs are less dirty than Hiroshima bombs. A single air detonated bomb would not cause extreme causulties due to radiation. The long term effects are small. Hiroshima is as example always limited, as it used the unawareness of the people as weapon.
If in Hiroshima:
– people were inside shelter or basements during explosion
– basic precautions like evacuation, water and food storages were in place
– a more efficient medic aid (esp. for lightly injured people)
the amount of people would have dropped to 10% or less. This is not an excuse, it is actually more an accusation of the USAF to especially seek a city with exposed people.

The fall out is often overrated. If the bomb is air detonated most of the fission products will quickly divert to the upper atmosphere. Contamination is limited. The true nuclear consequences very much depend on weather, terrain and target chracteristics.
For some scenarios a nuclear bomb would be a reasonable weapon. For example a little fleet of ships can effectively destroyed or a “military installation” far of bigger cities (of course, some casualties will occur, but it won’t fit the common Doomsday scenario).

However, the possible abuse of them makes them unacceptable as weapon of war, especially for western countries. Threatening is also on the edge.

GarryB,
some quick remarks on structural design. A pylon is designed for a particular load, but this load is more defnition than a hard limit. The pylon will not fall apart if you load it with more. A combat aircraft needs some remaining agility to to some manouvers or withstand gust loads at high speed in dense air (pretty tough requirement). That all with an acceptable lifetime. So you define the limit of your pylon. You can allow more, if you restrict the flight envelope of your aircraft.

If an F-16 can carry 7 tons, it means it can carry a limited load without penalizing its flight envelope. It does not mean, that it was designed for 7 tons. These 7 tons were demonstrated once, but in general were never the focus of the design. they are a by-product of designing a pylon of good robustness for lower loads.

If you consider my words you’re remarks on the F-16 become pointless. The maximum figures given in books are demonstrated records and would always penalize the flexibility of the mission.

The oft-quoted superior lifting capability of the A-6 is based on adding up the maximum theoretical load of the pylons, i.e. 4 x 3600lb + 1 x 3700lb = 18100lb. However it never took off with that load. It could have done from land, but not with full internal fuel. And in any case, there don’t seem to have been any combinations of stores which would take the pylons up to maximum load. Adding up the weights of stores which were available & could be fitted on the pylons, you get a maximum real load of about 15000lb, which also nicely fits in between the maximum clean weight & the maximum T/O weight. It did actually carry – and drop – that load. The Buccaneer could originally lift 12000lb of bombs (limited by pylons), but by 1970 that had been increased to 16000lb, i.e. 16 x 1000lb bombs (3 on each pylon + 4 internal) – and with that the Buccaneer could take off with full internal fuel. The pylons were stressed to more, but I’ve not been able to find out what.

Sure thing. But we can agree that it still has more lifting power than a Buccaneer? A-6 flew combat sorties with 12 500lb bombs without air2air refueling.

They can change direction faster than anything else in the sky at ‘dogfight’ speeds, a function of the vertical landing capability. Only with thrust vectoring and what have you are the latest breed of fighters getting close to the Harrier’s ability to stop in mid air or step neatly out of the way.

Was this trained? I can only think that some test pilots figured it out. In normal combat that would be rather complicated thing to do. The question is, if against something like a Mirage III it would help. This aircraft would not searchs its luck in a turning fight, but use its superior power.

An F4 may well be able to do Mach1.2 at 500ft, I doubt it could at 150ft. Most aircraft can’t tolerate supersonic speeds at very low levels. Buccaneers used to carry a delay fuse bomb as a defensive weapon against fighters chasing them that low.

The chasing aircraft must be pretty close . 😀
Low flying aircraft are always a pain in the a##. Stories about crashing MiG when chasing a Tornado (or F-111?) in Iraq 1991 are well known. But for modern look-down shoot-down radar won’t be a problem.

I do enjoy arguing with you Schorsch.

Thanks. 🙂