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Subject: Mig-15 v. F-86
RockyMTNClimber    6/13/2010 10:40:31 AM
I think this is one of the more interesting historical aviation stories. At the conclusion of WWII the allies divied up the available German engineers and combined them with talent from their bench to create our first generation of jet powered combat aircraft. This happened just as Ole' Smokin Joe Stalin became frisky and decided he could take over the universe. The net Russian result was an airplane that was fastest in level flight, had the highest combat ceiling of any at the time, and could turn with anything the west had in a horizontal fight. Then, the Mig was produced in numbers that boggled the 1950 mind. When the whistle blew over Korea the US had very few assets in place to hold back the Red Tide. Initial combat fell on the F-80 and what WWII piston aircraft that were still stored in the region. The Mig quickly proved itself a vicious killer of B-29s and it could stay outside of any UN fighter pilot's weapons envelope he wanted to. In spite of this, the F-86 did finally arrive and with it some of the best pilots the world has ever seen. The Sabre Jet established itself as a heat shield against the communist "Faggot" (the NATO code name for the Mig-15) and ran up at least a six to one kill ratio. When we compare today's PAC-FX against western types it would be well that we consider we have not always had the pure performance advantages to keep our side safe. Sometimes we have actually had to settle for lower performance and other factors to prevail against our despotic enemies "inferior" equipment. I think the Mig-15 v. F-86 makes an interesting case study that remains relevant today. Check Six Rocky
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Herald reply   6/28/2010 11:40:49 AM
 
Stay in your chair partner and ask yourself what the Israelis did with the Mirage series! Once you gain a specific performance level the driver has allot more to do with the ultimate score than the bird itself. Knowing how to use your weapon as it were.
 
Now you are scoring whom with a 2-0 loss against Mig 21s? We have already determined it wasn't the USAF so where do you need to go to get your pretzel on?
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
 
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Something everybody needs to remember....   6/28/2010 11:51:19 AM
 
This airplane was designed in 1954 based upon data Johnson collected from USAF Korean War veterans and expectations for future Soviet types. It remained in production through the early 1980's even though the original "A" model was obsolete by 1964 or so.  For it's day it was a pretty phenomenal ride but well replaced in USAF inventory with more modern types by the end of the sixties. 
 
It had a very respectable career.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
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Hamilcar    What lawyering?   6/28/2010 11:59:14 AM

1) Seems to be a lot of "lawyering" going on about it's Vietnam Service...Herald wants to credit too many A2A kills...A mid-air operational is NOT an A2A "kill."  If it is, then any DRVN a/c lost in take-off, flight, r landing to pilot error or maintenance issues is a US "kill."  And that's just silly.

2) BUT, claiming no one was shot down whilst escorted by F-104 is equally a lawyer argument...it seems NO ONE  was shot down, on those missions, or very few (because some B-66 ECM a/c were lost).  So whilst true no one was lost being escorted by F-104 is technically true, it is also, as the Vietnamese Colonel so eloquently put it, it is also IRRELEVANT as NO EC-131 was ever lost.

3) I said it before, the F-104 was withdrawn from Vietnam Service reasonably quickly, so I'd say the USAF didn't see it's value, relative to the F-105 and the F-4.  Only made two tours...and 14 F-104's were lost, 1 A2A.

4) It does seem safe to say that the F-104 was an INTERCEPTOR, and a rather poor one (in early versions), not an Air Superiority Fighter-type.  I'd think of it as a Spitfire, short-ranged and gun-armed...it flew quick, it climbed quick, it wasn't a turning a/c (so that's going to limit it v. the MiG-21, at least in so far that it wasn't going to be that much better than any other US a/c in a turning fight).  It took off, moved fast, climbed to altitude and made a kill, but having no BVR weapons made it in it's operational era, a limited platform.  An a/c with a 30 Km. Sparrow v. an F-104 with a 10 kilometre AIM-9 is going to cover 9 times the area of an F-104 (yes, I know that is VASTLY over-simplified).

5) Until the F-104S came along the F-104 is not a great interceptor, as compared to F-102/106 or the F-4.  The F-104's poor reputation seems to have come from putting into a multi-role mission and, in the Luftwaffe's case, over-loading it by a ton or more.  The F-104 is NOT a low-level a/c, is not a dog-fighter, or a A2G a/c and to use in such a role was to invite excessive losses.

Pointing out the rong design concept used the wrong way is not lawyering. Its an observed outcome.
 
For one thing we are still learning that reaction jet aircraft do not handle at all in combat like propeller driven aircraft. A certain amount of skidding and Dutch roll and Sabre dance us to be expected from pusher designs that you don't get from pullers. All of this goes directly to nose drift, the wing unloading at the worst moment at the worst velocity band and not really understanding how vertical  and horizontal stabilizers that operate well aft of a an aircraft's ballast point AND barely ahead of its thrust force applied instead of well aft affects a cylinder lift object.
 
If CJ really thought outside of the box (or anyone at Lockheed then) the F-104 would have sported a cranked fogtoothed delta with dyhedral sweep going up into the wingtip to cure the forward wing edge uneven stall tendency of swept wing aircraft, he would have bent the horizontal stabilizers a bit into an angle down to act as a pair of augmented lateral steering vanes to cure jet aircraft nose drift left/right up/down and he would have used TWO (smaller?) engines and oblated the cylinder  x to y to give himself a pronounced cylinder lift bias UP instead of sideways as he actually produced in the F-104. If the damn thing is going to be rolled into a turn anyway, because its too heavy to bank turn on the wings with the engines you have against Migs, then DESIGN for this! 
 
http://www.vfa32.navy.mil/pics/Phantom%20II.jpg" height="250" width="300" /> 
   
Dave Lewis took the failed McDonnell Demon and he LEARNED from it. Sometimes you don't listen to the pilots.
Sometimes you have to see what works in the wind tunnel and take responsibility to design for what you expect the plane CAN do and not what you think it can or what you wish.
 
USAF F-4 Summary for Vietnam War action
Aircraft Weapons/Tactics MiG-17 MiG-19 MiG-21 Total
F-4C AIM-7 Sparrow 4 0 10 14

AIM-9 S
 
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pdb       6/28/2010 7:15:55 PM
Nothing really to add, I just wanted to say... 
  5 kills driven into ground.
That is studly.
 
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Aussiegunneragain       7/1/2010 1:59:26 AM


The Starfighter's performance was the main reason the west wanted it. Nothing could catch a clean F 104 in climb and high altitude dash speed. That's what they wanted & paid for.

 
Nothing except for an English Electric Lightning which could rape a Starfighter in those performance parameters whilst being able to turn as well if it needed to.  

"His memories include the time in April 1984, during a squadron exchange at Binbrook, when he and XR749 participated in unofficial time-to-height and acceleration trials against F-104 Starfighters from Aalborg. The Lightnings won all races easily, with the exception of the low level supersonic acceleration, which was a dead-heat. This is not surprising when the records show that the year before on one sortie XR749 accelerated to Mach 2.3 (1500 mph) in September 1983."
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Electric Jet   7/3/2010 2:16:22 PM
 
The Electric Jet needed two engines to beat the F 104's one J79 (and more than twice the thrust, wet or dry). It's comensurate cost compared to the F 104A's $1.5 million. A European military could have almost as much performance for about half the cost.  It is worth noting that the British were supercruising with the Electric F1 way back in 1960!
 
It just goes to show that in the 1950's we had already reached the functional limit of combat speed and all we have done since is refine the technology for safety, reliability, range, and weapons.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
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Aussiegunneragain       7/3/2010 7:58:16 PM

 The Electric Jet needed two engines to beat the F 104's one J79 (and more than twice the thrust, wet or dry). It's comensurate cost compared to the F 104A's $1.5 million. A European military could have almost as much performance for about half the cost.  It is worth noting that the British were supercruising with the Electric F1 way back in 1960!
 
It just goes to show that in the 1950's we had already reached the functional limit of combat speed and all we have done since is refine the technology for safety, reliability, range, and weapons.

 Check Six

 Rocky



Crashing with monotenous regularity and getting shot by comparable opponents during a a war is a fairly non economical use of J-79's ... ;-).
 
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RockyMTNClimber    To be fair....   7/3/2010 8:57:49 PM




 The Electric Jet needed two engines to beat the F 104's one J79 (and more than twice the thrust, wet or dry). It's commensurate cost compared to the F 104A's $1.5 million. A European military could have almost as much performance for about half the cost.  It is worth noting that the British were super cruising with the Electric F1 way back in 1960!



 

It just goes to show that in the 1950's we had already reached the functional limit of combat speed and all we have done since is refine the technology for safety, reliability, range, and weapons.



 Check Six



 Rocky









Crashing with monotenous regularity and getting shot by comparable opponents during a a war is a fairly non economical use of J-79's ... ;-).



Germany's accident rate was just as bad with their F 84s/F 86s as it was later with their F 104s, a fact that seems to be ignored and one can hardly judge an aircraft's combat capability based upon twelve early "A" model jets flown by Pakistan. Had they been flying early F1 E-jets I wonder if they would have faired much better as the Electric was no easy ride to manage either (twice the power will get you into trouble twice as fast) and most of that action was at very low altitudes where neither the Electric nor the F 104 were optimal. The comedy of the 1971 conflict between Pakistan and India was that India claimed 10 Starfighters downed but the Pak's only had seven in their order of battle (two of those were B model trainers which were not flown in combat). Pakistan had A models to spare after the conflict so India was clearly playing it fast and loose with their numbers. Somewhere in my library I have a old analysis of that conflict where the best open source data at the time indicated the Indians over reported their air victories by a factor of about 1.
 
 Check Six
 
Rocky
 
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Aussiegunneragain       7/4/2010 12:05:31 AM


Germany's accident rate was just as bad with their F 84s/F 86s as it was later with their F 104s, a fact that seems to be ignored and one can hardly judge an aircraft's combat capability based upon twelve early "A" model jets flown by Pakistan. Had they been flying early F1 E-jets I wonder if they would have faired much better as the Electric was no easy ride to manage either (twice the power will get you into trouble twice as fast) and most of that action was at very low altitudes where neither the Electric nor the F 104 were optimal. The comedy of the 1971 conflict between Pakistan and India was that India claimed 10 Starfighters downed but the Pak's only had seven in their order of battle (two of those were B model trainers which were not flown in combat). Pakistan had A models to spare after the conflict so India was clearly playing it fast and loose with their numbers. Somewhere in my library I have a old analysis of that conflict where the best open source data at the time indicated the Indians over reported their air victories by a factor of about 1.

 

 Check Six

 

Rocky

I actually consider both Germany's very bad record with Spain and Germanies very good one to be outliers. If you look at the other airforces that operated the type the record was pretty poor as well. In USAF service it had the second highest crash rate after the Super Sabre. I note your suggestion that it was to largely do with engine failures but doesn't that suggest that there may have been some false economy in the one versus two comparison with the Lightning?
I don't think that the fact that the PAF was operating the F-104 in 1971 is a relevant point. They competantly operated their Sabres and F-104's against the Indians in 1965, the only thing that changed in 1971 was that the Indians now had Mig-21's instead of just Hunters and Gnats and achieved a 4 to 0 kill ratio against the F-104 in the type.
 
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Aussiegunneragain       7/4/2010 12:06:16 AM





Germany's accident rate was just as bad with their F 84s/F 86s as it was later with their F 104s, a fact that seems to be ignored and one can hardly judge an aircraft's combat capability based upon twelve early "A" model jets flown by Pakistan. Had they been flying early F1 E-jets I wonder if they would have faired much better as the Electric was no easy ride to manage either (twice the power will get you into trouble twice as fast) and most of that action was at very low altitudes where neither the Electric nor the F 104 were optimal. The comedy of the 1971 conflict between Pakistan and India was that India claimed 10 Starfighters downed but the Pak's only had seven in their order of battle (two of those were B model trainers which were not flown in combat). Pakistan had A models to spare after the conflict so India was clearly playing it fast and loose with their numbers. Somewhere in my library I have a old analysis of that conflict where the best open source data at the time indicated the Indians over reported their air victories by a factor of about 1.



 



 Check Six



 



Rocky




I actually consider both Germany's very bad record with Spain and Germanies Italy's very good ones to be outliers. If you look at the other airforces that operated the type the record was pretty poor as well. In USAF service it had the second highest crash rate after the Super Sabre. I note your suggestion that it was to largely do with engine failures but doesn't that suggest that there may have been some false economy in the one versus two comparison with the Lightning?


I don't think that the fact that the PAF was operating the F-104 in 1971 is a relevant point. They competantly operated their Sabres and F-104's against the Indians in 1965, the only thing that changed in 1971 was that the Indians now had Mig-21's instead of just Hunters and Gnats and achieved a 4 to 0 kill ratio against the F-104 in the type.
 
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