arquebusIf you dont mind if I throw in a side-question. Ive heard that there are parts on the Me-109 engine that are impossible to reproduce today. Is this really true? I cant understand how with manufacturing methods far in advance of what were available in the 40s that it could be possible they could have made anything then we cant make now. At some point I would think it would be economically viable to produce exact replicas of Me-109s from scratch.
arquebusGreat insights so far. Every single BoB documentary I see on tv makes the matter-of-fact statement that the RAF was near to being defeated only to be relieved by raids on cities. This is an obvious oversimplification.
The only thing Id like to add to the discussion is that the US would certainly have joined the war even without a russian invasion and stationed both bombers and fighters in Britain and conducted a bombing campaign just as they did in actual events. The US would still have most their production tied up to fight in the pacific theater. The only difference is that they would have had to match fighter production to that which the Germans deployed in Russia. As we all know the Germans only used bombers in the ground attack role against russian ground forces, the Russians succeeded in moving all war production to the Urals. So the russian campaign was pretty much fighter vs fighter dispersed over an extremely large front. If you were to concentrate that fighter strength to the area of southern Britain then all of a sudden you end up with what I believe would be airspace so choked with fighters so that no bomber campaign on either side could have succeeded.
arquebusNot fair? I think MiG-23MLA was far capable aircraft than F-16A; better acceleration, better high supersonic maneuverability and better climb performance at most of the envelope, and BVR capability, at the cost of less horizontal maneuverability when low and slow.
I think the 1 to 1 thrust to weight ratio of the F-16 is only thing that gives it an edge on the Mig-23. If they had made the Mig-23 a fixed wing, the weight savings could have put the thrust to weight ratio near to that of the F-16
arquebusIt wasn’t operational in the 1950s, & top speed does matter, a lot, for a fighter. If you can just about reach 800 km/h, something which flies at up to 1100 km/h can choose whether to engage or not, & when it does, it can attack & be gone again before you can do anything about it. Someone in a much faster aircraft doesn’t get into a dogfight.
The Zero could run circles around a Hellcat or Corsair, but a competent Hellcat or corsair pilot didn’t get drawn into that sort of fight – & could choose not to. Same with an MB-326 against an F-86, Hunter, MiG-17 or Mystere IV.
Notice I said low level interceptor. The advantage for the mb-339 would be at low altitude, there is no speed advantage as escaping at supersonic speed is no longer a factor at low altitude.
What???? If you mean it could pull tighter than a F-15 at low airspeeds, maybe. But that does not make it the “best” fighter or interceptor. A good or great plane at airshows, does not automatically make it the best fighter. It was a lead in trainer and secondary strike role- really not a fighter at all. You are putting too much onto a slow speed knife fight.
The advantage in a dogfight at low altitude has more to do with sustained turn rate. The mb-339 does not have hardly any drag induced by high AoA turns like those induced by the knife edge airfoil of the F-15. In the very thin air of high altitude this kind of drag is not as much of a factor and so the mb-339 loses this advantage
Except that both MB 326 and 339 were designed from the outset as trainers.
there are a lot of subsonic jets, not designed as fighters but still prove to be very potent adversaries in dogfights
Well I can tellit to ya.
Remember the engagement of a F-86 and a PO-2 in Vietnam ?
no, I dont ~remember~ that, and I dont really want to hear about it either
arquebusHave we ever discussed which fighter could have turned out to be the best fighter of the 70s.
The planes to consider would be
viggen
mirage f1
mig 23
su 22
f-4 ?
f-14
f-15?
kfirCan we have a discussion on which one would have been the best ?
The F-15 needs to be removed from this list to have an interesting discussion as it simply outclasses all the others without question. It would not be fair to include the F-16 either. I think the F-5 and Jaguar should be added to the list. I would pick the Jaguar as the best all-round choice. I think the Mig-23 could have shown more promise if it was designed as a fixed-wing.
arquebusBecause of the 146 km/h stall speed ?
no, and Im not gong to lower the intelligence level of this thread by venturing to guess why you would think that would be a factor
arquebusThe best fighter of the 50s would have been the mb-326. There is no advantage to having swept wings at subsonic speeds, the 500mph is fine against any swept wing fighter. The mb-326 when fitted with guns and missiles would run circles around any other swept wing fighter. To this day the mb-339 is the best low level intercepter, not even an F-15 could stay with it.
arquebusWatching that Dickenson video I can see the airbus flight controls go way beyond FBW, basically the plane is always being flown on autopilot and the control stick does nothing more than to tell the plane “go that way”. So if somehow the plane were put into a flying condition outside the permitted safe zone, the autopilot would be on its own to recover from such a condition.
A comparison can be drawn with the F-18, the first FBW carrier fighter. We all know taking off in a conventional a/c off a carrier requires that the pilot fight the a/c in very quick pitch maneuvers caused by conditions that the plane is instantly flown into. The moment the jet leaves the flight deck the pilot quickly has to make instantaneous adjustments to put the a/c in proper AoA. This cant be done with a FBW jet, the pilot would not be able to tell which pitching was being caused by the FBW autocorrecting and which pitching is caused by the physics on the a/c. So the first few seconds of a carrier takeoff has to be handled by the autopilot.
Extreme stall conditions are not handled well by FBW, especially in a fighter like the Gripen with a lot of forward AoL. And the Airbus solution of simply not allowing the jet to get into those conditions in the first place seems to be a pretty precarious way of dealing with the situation.
arquebus[ATTACH=CONFIG]234952[/ATTACH]
arquebusmoderators- Shouldnt this thread be moved to the ‘Commercial Aviation’ section of this board?
In answer to the question, FBW a/c have CoG directly over CoL so that there is no forward weight moment to pitch the a/c aircraft in a stall. So if the FBW system fails, Im not sure what kind of manual override systems they have in place. Even if the FBW system does not fail, FBW aircraft can be difficult to control in turbulent situation because the flight controls dont directly input into the control surfaces but rather only tell a computer which direction that you want the a/c to go. The biggest problem with deep stalls in a FBW a/c is with the Gripen because it lacks aerodynamic stability that other jets have with tail surfaces and delta wing planeform wings.
arquebusactually, you din’t just spray and hope something hits the target unless you’re fighting in an arcade video game… with only seconds of fire available, you do tracking shots and short bursts when you’re pretty sure your aim is good, and you want your oponent killed ASAP.
So, the hitting power of your gun is an essential data.
tracking shots? short bursts? thats a pretty vague description of how point of impact was calculated in deflection shots. In most situations the enemy are going to be fired on at angles, the target has to be lead, and the plane will fly through an angled stream of bullets. So with greater angle of deflection shots there is going to be hire hit probability with a denser stream of bullets.
In Israeli service, the Mirage III was credited with 190 gun kills from 1966 up to the end of Yom Kippur War (end 1973), making it their most efficient weapon. detail here:
http://campagne.sv.free.fr/images/Kill-losses_rates.jpg
compared to the 4 gun kills out of 19 total of the Crusader, one can hardly consider the DEFA as less effective than the Colts, even 4 of them
It should be noted that isreali mirage pilots had a ~problem~ of their cannon rounds passing the target fuselage to each side (amazing when you consider how close together the cannons were mounted) and they had to correct by centering the impact point out to however many yards they were taking their shot. So that tells you they were shooting dead on, directly behind the target. So if you can maintain those kind of standards then yes the large cannon is the superior choice, but most fighter pilots cant line up those kind of shots.
arquebusNot only were the 20mm Colt guns unreliable, 4 of them are also less powerful than 2 DEFAs.
That might be true if the fighter was sitting on the ground shooting at a stationary target. But when you are trying to hit a moving target flashing across your windscreen you have much greater hit probability by having a denser pattern of bullets for the target to pass through.
Even today the americans prefer the 20mm gatling gun vs the european preference for 30mm cannons. It really depends on the engagement style of the pilot as to which kind of round will be more effective.
In reply the question asked at the start of this thread I think they made the best choice for them at the time the decision was made.
There is just no way that the F-104 could be called a better choice over the Super Tiger. The Germans were considering the Super Tiger
arquebusmeddle- I hope you did not let the guitar sit outside like in a cold garage to cure, because it will never cure in cold temperature. I worked briefly in the boat building industry and have seen weeks of work get broken up and thrown into trash containers because the area was not properly heated. Once it gets down to around 40F degrees, no matter how much catalyst you put in the resin it will never cure.
arquebusThe Tornado was simply designed wrong and never reached its potential. It should have not been a swing-wing. FBW completely negates the need for swing-wing as you dont have to compensate for shifting cg with FBW like you do in a conventional a/c. The wing loading for the Tornado was too high, the plane flys like a hog and is completely unresponsive to maneuver. The Mirage 2K on the other hand is still a top notch fighter even compared to eurocanards.
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