Posted on 01/11/2014 8:25:52 AM PST by Sir Napsalot
Over the last century of military aviation, several fighters have earned the nickname “flying coffin.” Military aviation inherently pushes up against the limits of technology and human endurance, particularly where fighter and pursuit aviation is concerned. Flying a fighter is remarkably dangerous, even when no one is trying to shoot you down.
Engineering a capable fighter plane is also a struggle. Relatively small changes in engine, armament, and airframe design can transform a clunker into an elite fighting machine; many of the best fighters in history were initially viewed askance by their pilots. But elite status rarely lasts for long, especially in World War I and World War II. Fighters that dominated the sky in one year become “flying coffins” as technology and tactics move forward.
And thus the difference between a great fighter and a terrible fighter can be remarkably small. As with the previous list, the critical work is in determining the criteria. Fighters are national strategic assets, and must be evaluated as such:
· Did this aircraft fail at the tactical tasks that it was given? Did it perform poorly against its direct contemporaries?
· Did the fighter show up, or was it in the hangar when it was needed? Was it more of a danger to its pilots than to enemy fighters?
· Did it represent a misappropriation of national assets?
So what are the worst fighter aircraft of all time? For these purposes, we’ll be concentrating on fighters that enjoyed production runs of 500 or more aircraft (listed in parentheses); curiosities such as the XF-84H “Thunderscreech” need not apply.
(Click through the pages for the *top* 5 list)
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
Robert McNamara wanted the USAF and USN to share a common aircraft to save costs. The Navy never wanted the F-111 because they didn't want a USAF airplane.
In an attempt to kill the project the USN insisted that the design have a swing-wing, side-by-side seating, escape capsule and an internal bomb bay.
The USAF had no need for a tactical fighter-bomber with the above specs. They wanted tandem seating with conventional ejector seats, external bomb loads and conventional.
But, the USN's insistance on the above feature set meant the aircraft would never meet the weight goals they, themselves, set. Since it never met the USN goals, the F-111B was canceled.
Because the politicians were in charge, they went ahead with the F-111A and made the USAF integrate it into service.
I recall F-105s, A-4s, F-4s, AC 130s and all manner of helicopter gunships from the rice plains and mountains of I Corps. But there must be a few I’ve forgotten. I can still see them flying their missions. Will they be remembered as personal memory dies? Or carried forward as documentaries that reflect what they tried so valiantly to do?
The latter is the key.
You would think that the O2 thing would have been fixed by now, but even the F-22 was having problems with its SOTA O2 concentrator...
The Vigalante looked great in the air, though.
The “Screech” was designed to take advantage of new supersonic propeller technology and theoretically would have had better acceleration and range than its F-84 platform with a turbojet. What wasn’t anticipated were the intense harmonics of that prop and thunderous noise. Made everyone violently ill in a wide radius, including the pilot! Not a great idea.
The dimwit who wrote up that list wanted to include the F-4 Phantom? What an idiot! Like many others, I owe my existence to some well-delivered close air from a Marine Phantom. It took brass balls the size of regulation bowling balls to fly that thing in combat - but so what? We had those guys in spades.
As a civilian, I think the F-4 Phantom II looks really cool.
The Canadians that flew them called them lawn darts.
There is a resemblance...
haha, ya had the turning radius of a mid sized country, but it sure served it’s purpose.
I can’t remember which plane it was, but in Desert Storm, a pilot was talking about a fly-by-wire plane where each input by the pilot had to “go before the committee” of three flight-control computers. Sometimes the pilot was out-voted.
I wish I could remember which plane it was. They called it “The Lawn Dart” because it had a tendency to get the pointy end stuck in the ground.
That's interesting. I thought the reasoning for the capsule was that the 111 was most likely to be doing its thing supersonically, and conventional ejector seats weren't going to give the crew much of a chance?
In fact, even with the capsule, it had to be retrofitted with an air bag to give the crew even more protection.
(FWIW, the SST Columbia original had SR-71 ejector seats for its first few missions. Go figure)
Don’t know if it was carrier specific but there is one parked on the Midway at San Diego.
Wife and I toured this carrier a few years ago. Plan on an entire day if you go aboard.
Good and accurate summary.
Note that this “expert” author never flew a fighter.
And the F-16 is an adequate match for the F-15 in the air-to-air role, and also is superlative in the air-to-ground role, which the F-15 does not do.
Yes, the F-15 Strike Eagle is a bomber, but it is different than the C/D versions and less maneuverable with the extra weight.
Although as yet untested in combat and its capabilities still mostly classified, the F-22 is the most superior airplane ever built. Be glad its on our side, if in too few numbers.
A poor article. The F-102 was good at what it was supposed to be good at, which was NOT dogfighting. The Mig-23 was not supposed to be an F-14. The article gives Dishonorable Mentions to the F-111 & F-4. Yet the F-111 turned out to be a decent light bomber, and the stupidity was pretending it was meant to be a fighter. IIRC, F-111s took out more tanks during GW1 than A-10s did. And the F-4 was also never intended for dogfighting. But during the late 80s, the F-4 squadron I was in held its own in air combat against the F-15...not easily, of course, but they were different generation fighters.
Dogfighting is not the end goal of every aircraft with a “F” designation. Interceptors, escort aircraft, ground attack - these are all roles that an “F” designated aircraft can take on, and that provides value.
For the record, my Dad flew P-47s & P-51s, but also flew F-86s, 100s, 101s, 102s, 104s & 106s (and some bombers and helicopters). I was a WSO in the F-4 & F-111.
“The F-111F night “tank plinking” strikes using 500 lb. GBU-12 laser-guided bombs were particularly deadly. On February 9, for example, in one night of concentrated air attacks, forty F-111F’s destroyed over 100 armored vehicles. Overall, the small 66-plane F-111F force was credited with 1,500 kills of Iraqi tanks and other mechanized vehicles...
...Although F-111F’s flew primarily at night during Operation Desert Storm, F-111 aircrews flew a particularly notable daytime mission when two GBU-15 precision guided munitions were used to destroy the oil pipeline manifolds at the Al Almadi pumping station, effectively shutting down the Iraqi-made oil slick in the Persian Gulf and averting an environmental disaster. On 26 January 1991 DIA received details from the Kuwaiti military resistance on the facilities that control the oil flow to the sea terminals (after Iraq released millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf). Using this information, two F-111 aircraft attacked the Al Ahmadi oil manifolds the next day and stop the flow of oil into the Gulf.”
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/f-111-pgw.htm
“Each aircraft was loaded with four GBU-12 500-pound, laser-guided bombs. Each bomb was to be dropped on any tank, APC, truck, artillery piece, command-and-control bunker, or supply dump that crews could find in their box. The two initial sorties were so successful that planners scheduled forty-four more sorties for the next night. They sent two-ship and four-ship formations into kill boxes to fly medium-altitude attacks against the enemy’s field army. This mission was a radical departure for F-111 crews, but it proved so effective that F-111Fs flew 664 successful sorties over twenty-three days...
...For operational security reasons, videotapes of tank plinking never made CINCCENT’s evening press briefings, so the extent of the devastation was not known to the public in the days leading up to the ground operation. In the nineteen days preceding the start of the ground operation, F-111Fs, F-15Es, and A-6s flew hundreds of tank-plinking missions. On several occasions, two F-15Es carrying a total of eight GBU-12s destroyed sixteen armored vehicles on a single sortie.”
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/1993/October%201993/1093plinking.aspx
Good tip.
The USS Lexington is parked at Corpus Christi, I should probably go and visit it sooner than later. Only 171 miles from here.
The Battleship Texas is on display 200 miles from me.
Actually doing both would be an awesome road trip.
Should have included the AV-8A Harrier. Lost several friends/acquaintances to that aircraft.
Bookmark
879 built, and it DID see combat.
And pilots were quite happy to fly it.
It’s the F-16 and your description about the pilot being out-voted is not quite correct.
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