coming in real low

A glider pilot makes a fast, low run to the airport only to have a near miss with a low flying Black Hawk helicopter. Only the first 20 seconds of this video is low level. I recommend watching in full screen to get the 3D perspective view effect.

One wheel touch&go in the P-51

I guess this is the target:

(source https://www.usni.org)

or this
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1. Mirage 4000 or Rafale: Choose the 4K earlier, which probably wouldn’t have led to the development of the Raf, or go with the Raf like what happened

I doubt the M4k would have sold well in comparison to the M2k. Funny how the Rafale is supposed to be a lighter, cheaper more efficient version of what the M4k is but is way more expensive. The cost of eurocanards is out of wack and made artificially high to capture the high cost that western aligned arab countries will pay to avoid US fighters and the high cost of fighter acquisition for western european nations. If France was smart they would still sell the M2k and M4k as a low cost option to the Rafale, but theyre not.

2. Mirage G or Mirage F1: 1 year apart, one chosen. would you have gone heavy or was it correct to stay light?

Id be curious what a fixed version of the Mirage G would be like, with the wing angle frozen at mid-sweep. The wing loading of the F-1 was too high, but it was still a good fighter. But maybe a fixed version of the G would have been better.

3. EAP or Typhoon: Should Britain have gone alone?
4. EAP/Typhoon or Rafale: Should UK and others have allowed France to have their way for the design?

Having a single country development instead of multinational does not make any difference. The Rafale and Gripen had just as many delays and cost overruns as the Eurofighter. The only way to make affordable fighters is to have competition with multiple designs.

5. YF-23 or YF-22: was the YF-22 the right winner for ATF?

Both should have gone into production. Both jets were quickly developed from drawing board to prototype, but as soon as the F-22 won LM purposely created problems for the design to make cost overruns and dragged out development so that the program cost many times more than was planned. That wouldnt have happened if there was a competing fighter.

F-16XL obviously, honestly surprised no one has considered ordering it

and I think the F-8 would have beat out the F-4 if it had a better high aspect ratio wing (not a supercritical wing like the pic but something conventional with more sweep)
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garryA:
I dont see how well balanced the aircraft is has anything to do with how much thrust required to overcome drag in a turn.

Me:
I never said the purpose of distribution of lifting surfaces reduced drag

garryA:
You said this :

Me:
The fact that the Tomcat could get away with such small tail surfaces indicates how well balanced the aircraft was in the way that the wings and tail surfaces leveraged the large lifting area of the fuselage. So lots of thrust was not needed to maintain energy in a turn like jets with high wing loading like the F-16,

Admittedly when I say “well balanced”, that is kind of vague terminology. What Im saying is that tail surfaces can produce a huge amount of drag if they have to produce an undo amount of force to turn a plane. Tail surfaces or canards that only have to deflect a little bit to change the AoA of an a/c will usually always mean that it turns with less drag. Remember that the F-14 was pre-FBW and so did a very good job of changing and maintaining AoA using light control forces compared to other jets of that era that bled speed horribly in a turn.