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the last all-British fighter in RAF & RN service was it not?
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Hmmm I didnt reflect on the “in service” part. So yeah SHAR was the last all British fighter produced AND in service for UK. 🙂

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It was the last all-British fighter in RAF & RN service was it not?
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Well technically the Hawk 200 was/is the last all-British fighter produced. 🙂

SHAR Phorever :diablo:

My photo of SHAR FA2 ZH801 @ Greenwich when i visited in 2006.

\Dan

Didn’t Illustrious or Ocean lose a towing vehicle off the side of the carrier and have a merlin pretty much hanging over the water on the edge of the flight deck? Last year or the year before, in the vicinity of Suez from memory?

It was in Istanbul on 14/05/08.

Here is Flight Globals report

PICTURE: Royal Navy Merlin helicopter survives freak deck mishap

This dramatic image shows how close the UK Royal Navy came to losing one of its AgustaWestland EH101 Merlin HM1 multirole helicopters in a freak deck-handling incident in Istanbul on 14 May.

http://www.flightglobal.com -:-:- picture-royal-navy-merlin-helicopter-survives-freak-deck-mishap

Just to clarify somethings and make some comments:

Because the USN aircraft (F-4B/J) were for air defence and had a pulse-Doppler radar with large antenna…

The F-4 was designed for FLEET air defence as primary mission defending against Soviet bombers threatening the fleet with nuclear weapons.

…Air-to-air guided missiles were needed to destroy the aircraft before the nuke could be detonated.

…The bombers were also equipped with radar-aimed cannons. If you were close enough to shoot the bomber with your cannon, then the bomber could shoot you too.

And just like djcross said shooting down the big radar cross section enemy as fast as possible meant BVR missiles would be more effective than a gun intercept.

…The slatted wing didn’t even get into the Navy versions until they upgraded their -J model to the -S model, near the end of the line.
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Money definitely played a role.

The slated wing definately increased turning performance but what was even more important for the navy was that it improved landing caracteristics.

During the Vietnam war USAF had some incidents during high g manoeuvres (dog fights) where the outer section of the tail would simply fail and fall off. If memory serves me right a structural stiffener on the horizontal tail was introduced as ‘early’ as 1973 on newbuild Phantoms. From 1975’ish and onwards this was retrofitted to older USAF models when they went through major overhaul. Even though it is a fairly cheap upgrade the US Navy never opted for this on any model.

Se pic for credits 🙂

In the 70’s the production of the Tomcat was underway. The A-7 Corsair would still be build up untill 1984. And although the F-18 was in it’s infancy it was planed replace the F-4. Diverting money from any of these programs to develop a Internalgun-CV-capabel F-4 would probably not be economical considering the end of F-4 service was relatively near. So in my view the us navy never backed down from the primary mission of fleet air defence against soviet bombers for the F-4. And considered it would be sufficient with what weapons it already had (sidewinder & sparrow) combined with training programs like Top Gun.

\Dan

I’m curious why the RNs F4Ks didn’t carry gun pods whilst the RAFs F4Ms did. Were the pods introduced post Ark Royal? Or was it something to do with carrier ops? By the way I’m not a fan of long nose Phantoms like the F4E on asthetic grounds.

I am gonna speculate on that since the Phantom was NOT cleared for wingtank cv operations the RN (and US Navy aslo) had to choose between a drop tank and a gun pod on the centerline. A droptank would be better suited in almost all missons.

I don’t think clearence would be a problem for a centerline gun pod for cv operations like Batman’s claims.

\Dan

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There were two Mig-23ML scraped in Monino when I visited it last time in 2007. You can see another tail of Mig-23ML b/n. blue 125….

Hmm… Why english stencils? Is it because it was for export? I thought russian export a/c would have russian stencils.

..Reason it lost was mostly because of the technological risks …

No political consideration at al? Consider if the X-32, then Boeing would practically have monopoly on building military aircraft in the US. Fort Worth would close down. LM would’t have any product to build. US is to big to have ‘only’ one military aircraft builder.