Similarly, higher turn rates and, thus, higher g sees the trading off of potential energy for maintaining kinetic energy. For example, to achieve a turn rate of 9.5 deg/sec under MAX power conditions @ 0.95Mach has the aircraft at 5 g with an initial descent rate of 400 ft/sec (24kft per minute).

This is not somewhere you want to be for very long (for obvious reasons) and more particularly when up against an opponent in an aircraft that can generate that same turn rate in level flight let alone one that can sustain over twice that turn rate in level flight.

Excellent point.

The Ps values can be used to compute a different form of performance…the positive or negative Ps value can be expressed as a gain or loss of speed (knots per second). For example, in the situation above, a -400 value works out to be a speed bleed of around 8 knots per second. For most of us, using this speed loss technique was a more practical way of describing Ps.

As the speed bled off, then the jet’s position on the chart moved down and the left, resulting in even less performance.

I’m not really sure about this at all, other than i’ve read of a phenomena of ‘nose heaviness’ at supersonic flight.
Do you know the root to the phenomena ?
i would guess on a change in air flow myself inducing a pitch down moment, but why and how ?
In your experience, how much of an impact did it have on turn sub vs supersonic ?

I don’t remember this happening. We have all heard of the stories of what happened to WW2 fighters as they experienced compressibility at high speeds but this may not be what you are thinking of.

This is something that may well have happened…perhaps to specific aircraft…but I don’t recall any examples. In my experience, going through the mach was hardly noticeable at all.

Turn rate and radius, thanks.
Actually i’d value to hear Your flying priorities and general thoughts under this condition,
as well as other pilots

Sure! Back in my day, most air combat took place at lower altitudes…what may have been seen in the designer’s eyes, didn’t happen as real life turned out.

The F-104, for example was designed for superior performance at higher altitudes…meaning climb rate, max altitude, and max speed. As it turned out, air combat was flown at much lower altitudes.

From the pilot’s point of view, the most important airspeed is indicated airspeed (IAS). Our ability to pull g is a direct function of IAS (not true airspeed, TAS). As altitude increases and for a given mach number, IAS decreases…so mach 1 at high altitude will be less IAS than it would be at low altitude.

But, the jet flys on IAS…so if mach 1 at a high altitude works out to be 350KIAS, the jet handles like it does at 350KIAS at lower altitudes…for a F-104, this would be kinda sloppy! The flip side of that is that a mach number that would seem ‘high’ at lower altitudes might be too slow at higher altitudes. If anyone has read the Korean War air combat text “No Guts, No Glory”, they may recall the warning to “keep your mach number up”…meaning keep indicated mach up so that the IAS was high enough to allow maneuverability.

I can’t speak for today’s fighters, but from the 50s to at least the 80s, most fighters could sustain turns at high altitude with about 3 gs or so. They might be able to instantaneously pull more, but the energy loss was high. The F-104 could hit 7gs at 35000′ but only sustain about 3.

Maybe folks here might have heard stories about 50s and 60s era fighters not being able to turn with bombers at high altitude. The reason was simple. The bomber would be cruising at a IAS that for it was reasonable…but that IAS for the fighter was too slow. So, if the bomber started a turn, the fighter could not follow it at that speed. The fighter would quite literally ‘fall out of the sky’.

How does a F-22 handle at high altitude? Don’t know. My guess is that it has better sustained ability…mostly due to more wing and thrust. But, at some point, the F-22 pilot ends up with the same concerns that we did…he has to carefully manage IAS to keep his turning capability as high as possible. My guess is that today he can do this at higher altitudes and lower IAS than we could…but eventually he runs into the same wall as everyone else.

I’m hoping to get a data base here on various fighters agility at 30.000 ft,
preferably with a speed of Mach 1. (or above)

What do you mean by “agility”?

Acceleration?

Turn rate and radius?

Instantaneous versus sustained turning?

Pitch and roll rate?

Most books I recall reading said the pilots hated the radar sight.

And this is the problem with discussions like this…posters make claims based on something that they think they remember reading in a book or seeing on TV. Too often, these posters (like you, I imagine) do not have any actual experience with the subjects, and so what we get is typically a lot of opinion unsupported by fact.

This page said that it had problems and some pilots liked it, some didnt.

LOL!! In my career in fighters, there were a lot of things that some liked and others didn’t!

But one thing was pretty much true. We didn’t have much time for bar talk or BS.

Know what I mean?

Lets be honest, a jet does not hardly maneuver at 400 kts, certainly you could not describe the kind of turn you would do at 400 kts as a “hard turn” in any kind of jet, g-force being the limiting factor keeping jets at large sweeping arcs of direction change.

A ‘hard turn’ is generally meant to mean any turn at moderate or relatively high g. In the time of the F-104, a hard turn typically meant turning with approx 4 to 5 gs…and often was used to describe an energy sustaining turn as well. A hard turn was not a break turn.

At or below 10’000′, a F-104 could sustain 6 gs in an A/A combat configuration…and this was done at about 400-430KIAS. This produced a relatively tight turn radius for the time and was the main reason why at TOPGUN the F-104 managed to successfully engage an F-5 in a horizontal scissors.

The radar ranging gunsight was worthless and ignored by pilots who instead used the “gum sight”, a piece of gum stuck to the inside of the windscreen to serve as a target redicule.

Interesting. I’m sure you have references to back up that statement…and will show them to us.

Otherwise, please understand this. Nobody ever used a piece of gum as a sighting reference. It’s just an expression that refers to estimating the fixed gun line of a fighter. I’m sure that I probably used it when I taught A/A gunnery as a Fighter Weapons School instructor…but, in no way was I actually suggesting that this was a valid technique.

It wasn’t necessary. If the F-86 pilot wanted a reference to his fixed gun line, all he had to do was cage the sight…as was the case (and still is) with any fighter that has a lead computing sight.

It was true of the F-104. We taught fixed sight A/A gunnery to our weapons school students and flew training flights where we practiced that technique.

you have no idea what youre talking about

to say the least

You maintain that the Draken was a more versatile aircraft than the F-104.

In what ways?