definitely check on the Sabre of Korea vintage, as well as the Skyhawk of Vietnam. The A4 Skyhawk was the last stick and rudder fighter, as far as I can tell, that was flown in the traditional manner. The F4 was the first of the more sophisticated planes of the type we have now, but it was a step removed for the pilot from the "old days."
The F104 was a significant plane in the development of modern aircraft design as well. My favorite fighter that never was is the YF71, the fighter version of the SR71 blackbird reconnaisance plane. It didn't have guns on it because it was faster than the bullets it would be firing and would catch up to them before they could hit the bad guys. Not a good plan. They developed the Phoenix missle for that test platform, which certainly would have been the ultimate high altitude interceptor. Russia dropped the high altitude bombers it would have gone after to there was no reason to develop it further. The Phoenix lived on, and as I understand it, they built the Navy F14 around the missle, rather than the traditional other way around.
It didn't have guns on it because it was faster than the bullets it would be firing and would catch up to them before they could hit the bad guys. Not a good plan.
True; that is a consideration in the operation of a gun on any jet. When pulling G's you'd wish that your cannon was installed with significant elevation in its aim--but in level flight that would be disasterous. And even with a gun with a modest elevation, the pilot must have his wits about him to avoid inadvertently flying under the path of bullets he has recently fired.They developed the Phoenix missle for that test platform, which certainly would have been the ultimate high altitude interceptor. Russia dropped the high altitude bombers it would have gone after to there was no reason to develop it further. The Phoenix lived on, and as I understand it, they built the Navy F14 around the missle, rather than the traditional other way around.
The Phoenix missile was designed in the 1960s and was crucial to Robert McNamara's specification of the F-111 aircraft, a "fighter" so ponderous that the ability to fire that big missile at a long range was its only realistic claim to an air-to-air capability. The F-14, OTOH, is nobody's patsy in the ACM arena notwithstanding its integral provisions for the Phoenix and its high internal fuel capacity.A test pilot told me that "You show me a plane that's as fast as the Blackbird, and I'll show me a plane that's not a fighter." He explained that the requirement to withstand the heat induced by hypersonic flight was too much of a constraint on the design to allow for excellent subsonic maneuvering, yet even if the combatants started out at higher speed combat maneuvering induced so much drag that the engagement inevitably became subsonic anyway. On top of the thrust and drag considerations, fuel consumption would become a problem in no time at all. And beyond that, the arena of combat was usually geographically limited compared to the turn radius of a plane in hypersonic flight. I guess he was right!
The Hughes Phoenix was actually derived from the Bendix/Grumman Eagle. Which was the missile for the F-111B predecessor, the Douglas F6D Missileer. The F6D looked like the A-6 Intruder and was even more a non=fighting patrolling launch platform than the F-111B, and would have been better fot the task, since it wasn't compromised by also having to punch through the air at tree top height while carrying a "special store" eastward from West Germany on Day One of WWIII.
At the same time the F-111 was compromised by using the F6D engine, the TF-34, originally an airliner engine selected for low fuel consumption at altitude. It was never expected to power a manouvering fighter. But then JFK brought in Bob McNamara as SecDef and the rest is history.