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
Thanks for a lively discussion.
I KNEW our FReeper In House Experts can fisk the article to threads .......
Good stuff at post 55!
I was not a pilot, but grew up in the military and was in the Army for many years. The F-4 was a very effective airframe and mentioning it on this list was ridiculous. Every aircraft has flaws in some performance parameters, but few logged as many hours as the Phantom and like others have said, they are still going!
Regarding current aircraft it is obvious that the F-15 and F-16 are terrific planes and they may eventually rank up there with the P-51 (for most measurements) although (thankfully) they will never achieve the overall combat record.