streakeagle

Paraphrase of a comment from a modern armor miniatures game (an older game called Close and Destroy): The Redeye was never very good at hitting anything. The SA-7 was fairly accurate, but it rarely did enough damage to take an aircraft down. If the US and USSR engineers got together, they could probably make a missile that would rarely hit and do almost no damage if it did hit. The Stinger was a huge leap forward for shoulder launched weapons. Has it been surpassed by anything newer?

Go here to read more: http://www.mektek.net/projects/mw4/ I have this installed and running on two Win 7 64-bit PCs. Works great. Played multiplayer online and via LAN too. Comes with mission editor. Has updates beyond original Microsoft box game. Whatever complaints there may be about MechWarrior 4, it is free and runs great :)

I was working my way up to BVR. If I can't get past IRMs, how am I ever going to handle BVR? Helmet mounted sights give the MiGs an edge. They can fire when they otherwise couldn't because their nose can't pitch up enough. The patch didn't make a huge difference, but it is noticable. It took me longer to come around on the MiG-23 and MiG-29 if I let my speed bleed down, but I still win almost uncontested. The Su-27 is where I really felt the difference. Got smoked twice before I managed a 1 vs 1 gun kill. In reality, I wouldn't expect an F-15 to ever get his guns on an Su-27 unless during a head-on pass, or the Su-27 lost siutational awareness. But I can clearly force him to overshoot and hold him in front of me long enough to generate lead for solid kill shots if I don't lose sight of the Su-27 after the initial pass. I enjoy the guns only fighting enough that I would buy and play this sim soley for this purpose. The terrain looks awesome.

I can't believe someone came up with a simple fix to getting Jane's Fighters Anthology to run correctly on Win 7 64-bit. The fix was actually created for another game (Starcraft), but someone else figured out that FA was suffering the same problem and therefore could be fixed using the same solution. Simply use a batch file to start the game. The original batch file posted for Starcraft didn't work for me, so I deleted parts that did not apply to me and edited the rest to fit Fighters Anthology. This is the text of the batch file I am using: rem First kill Explorer.exe, which messes up the colors taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe rem Change to the application directory cd C:\JANES\Fighters Anthology rem run the application FA.EXE rem Wait for the game to quit, press Enter to continue pause rem Restart Explorer.exe start explorer.exe exit

It would appear that I was smoking the AI in gun combat because the F-15 was turnning better than it should below Mach 0.4, as this was a fix in the new patch. Will try it again after patching and see if there is any difference in the results.

AIDE is mainly useful as a flight model viewing tool. Unforutnately, a bug creeped into it while I was trying to keep up with TK's patches. It used to work well with multiple documents open at the same time, later it got very unstable... presumably a memory leak. I intended to make a new version from the ground up to overcome some limitations of the original design and add a few more features. But I started traveling and working a lot of hours, then had a son enter the picture. I am just now starting to get the time and motivation to do any kind of modding/programming, but I am partially held back by the fact that I spend all day at work programming and/or trouble-shooting computer control and communication systems for water/waste water plants... in other words, my mind is pretty fried by the time I am picking my son up from day care. As for a tutorial, good luck! Either you understand the numbers in TK's data ini files or you don't. My tool helps see those numbers graphically and helps reduce the amount of time you have to spend flight testing to verify the effects of edits. A couple of college semesters on aerodynamics is what it takes to get moving in the right direction (or doing a lot of independent study of books covering the same material). Essentially, AIDE in its present form is for those who already know how to do this stuff by hand using spreadsheets. The math is mostly linear algebra with a bit of trigonometry thrown in for good measure. Of course, if you are good at vector math, it is even easier. I developed and tested the equations used in AIDE with Excel and screenshots of in-game flight test data. Whenever I didn't get the result I expected, I went to TK and asked for help. Over time, several people bothered TK about many aspects of the flight model data ini files. Most of those posts are still available at the Third Wire forums. From these posts, you can learn a lot about Third Wire flight models and real-world aerodynamics in general. I bumped up one early post by Wild Elmo in the SFP1 forum as an example, but I could not find the master post that had copies of all of the other posts integrated into it.

The F-86/MiG-15 are missing if this is going to be a jets only list. Otherwise, all the "best" fighters from WWI to the 1960s are missing. "Best" would have to mean personal favorite given the arbitrary list of 60's to modern jets. Based on looks, I think the Flanker gets my vote. It looks like a wonderful blend of the US teen series yet retains some of the Soviet accents that clearly distinguishes it from any US/NATO aircraft. I very much dislike the F-22 and F-35, they look like overweight caricatures of high performance fighters thanks to the need to have large internal bays. If there is any airframe I like better than the Su-27, it is the F-23. I am very disappointed that the F-23 will never go into production. The F-22 looks like an inflated Eagle bent into a stealthier shape. The Eagle really looks good from some angles (espeically top views), but its main fuselage is essentially a square box. Blended body technology looks much more appealing. There are too many good looking 1950s and 1960s jets to mention, but none of them have the refinement of the Flanker and the F-23 looks like it is some kind of starfighter from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century... Which leads me to my honorable mention, a design that actually inspired a space ship in the Star Wars movies: the SR-71/YF-12. The SR-71 was prettier, but since the post said fighters, I think the YF-12 qualifies. If it were actually a fighter instead of a recon plane, I would make it my number 1 choice for "best fighter".

Another quote from the same page by the same guy countering the F-8 guy's claim that F-8s were still smoking F-4s in 72: One more that is really important: The margin between the planes had to be small, because it is very clear from this statement that this F-4 never lost to an F-8 over many fights. It is always more about the pilot quality than the plane. I would like to know if any of the F-8s they beat were flown by well-known quality F-8 pilots... Oh wait, I forgot, all F-8 pilots are aces because their plane was so good. Except that the only Navy aces were an F-4 crew? Forget the F-4/F-8 debate, just go read those forums. Real pilots telling their day to day life during Vietnam era. Sad, but fascinating.

As far as number of seats go, some would argue one seat is too many with modern technology. Pull more g's without a pilot. No more POWs. But any aircraft that has a high workload still gets two seats: F-14D, F-15E, F/A-18F. If it didn't cost so much weight with a corresponding increase in drag and decrease in range, most planes would still be two-seat. You can tell the USAF created the F-22 and strongly influenced the F-35: single seat.

I found a real gem in favor of F-4 was better once pilots were trained from here: http://dukecunningham.org/forum/read.php?f=1&i=1425&t=1425 For every F-8 pilot that believes the Crusader was best, there will be an F-4 pilot AND RIO that disagrees :) They also mentioned that having a backseater made paperwork chores when not flying much easier.

Can anyone who believes that the "F-8 was a much better fighter" post even one FACT (not opinion) learned from talking to people or studying books that supports or better yet proves this belief other than quoting someone else who said the same thing? In F-14 versus F-15 discussions, all of the facts are there and the only problem is agreeing on what makes a better fighter. But with the F-8, the only facts readily available to favor the F-8 as a better fighter than the F-4 are: 1. It has an internal gun. 2. It is smaller and doesn't smoke, therefore somewhat harder to visually detect. 3. Its smaller size and lower weight allowed it to operate from the older, smaller carriers. 4. It turns slightly better than the F-4 (and per the above posts I can show reasonable estimates that the margin might be so small as to be irrelavant). 5. Safer and more predictable at the high AoAs required for ACM. Compared to the F-4's advantages over the F-8: 1. Faster across the entire envelope. 2. Better rate of climb. 3. Better acceleration. 4. Heavier payload. 5. Much better radar. 6. Dedicated radar operator. 7. 2nd set of eyes when radar isn't needed. 8. All-aspect medium range missiles. 9. Safer during carrier landings. Combat radius is hard to compare as it is very much affected by the loadout and mission profile, but the available data favors the F-8 for profiles using subsonic cruise at high altitude to get to and from mission objectives while the F-4 is better for supersonic intercepts. "The F-8 IS and angles fighter vs the F-4, and it does outclass it in that arena"... back it up with a factual reference, not a quote or paraphrase of the same statement.

If I could only have one of them, I would have a tough time choosing between SF2V and SF2I as both are historical and have great planesets. I would lean toward SF2V for the carriers and Naval aircraft. But historically, the SF2I environment had a lot more air-to-air combat over a much wider time frame presenting a lot of interesting matchups. Fortunately, I don't have to choose only one and have all of them in a merged install.

So everyone agreed with me from the start that the F-8 is not an angles fighter at all and does not clearly outclass the F-4 in horizontal performance? With a 10% advantage and a sustained turn rate of say 8 deg/sec (perhaps generous for the 30,000 feet altituded needed to get the 10% advantage), that means the F-8 could do 8.8 deg/sec. So, if the F-4 started on the F-8's tail, the F-8 would have to turn for 450 seconds to get all the way around back on the F-4's tail, or 11 full circles. To put it in perspective, under very similar conditions, the F-16 gains 90 degrees on a slatted F-4E in 1 circle and would only take 3 more circles to get the job done. The upengined late MiG-21bis was within 10% of F-16A turn performance. So, in an F-4 vs F-8 match, the pilots' skills outweigh the the performance differences and if the pilots are perfectly matched, the odds of victory are about 50/50 in a close in dogfight. If either the F-4 or F-8 had to face a MiG-21bis, they had better hope they MiG pilot sucks or doesn't ever see them. Funny, I never programmed my F-4B flight model based on how it felt. Having never flown an F-4, how could I ever know what it really felt like anyway? FMs are lists of aerodynamic coefficients. To be accurate, the numbers must either be calculated or tweaked until the in-game performance matches some known standard. The F-8 manual doesn't quantify very much of the performance in ways that help out with calculating the FM or even provide very many perfomrance curves that you can try to tweak the FM to match. The lift curves I found last night were part of the section on how to pull out of a dive without hitting the ground. There is a 1g level flight envelope for max speed that can be matched, but should drag be increased or thrust decreased to avoid crossing the Mach limit for a given altitude? Or is the limit a self imposed one to protect the engine? It takes tons of data to get the performance curves to match, not just min and max speeds at 1g and the sea level static thrust of the engine. The F-8 manual mainly has a lot of data used for planning missions: fuel-burn rates, time-to-altitude, etc. In the above posts, I made the best estimates I could with what little info was available. Actual flight data will probably be +/-10% of what I guessed if I interpreted the table correctly, but could be off by +/-50% because of other variables not reflected in a simple CL versus Mach table. I even have some problems with the F-4 tables as they have some conflicts with the NASA data. One of the two sources is using less accurate data, both are using measured data mixed with wind tunnel results and faired in data points, so how do I decided which one is based more on measured data and which one was cheating by using basic equations to fair in points? So, even with charts in hand, there is room for errors even if you do all the math without any mistakes. I prefer detailed flight manual charts--these had to be as correct as possible because pilots lived and died by them. NASA data is usually gathered by some engineer type doing a study. Some of these studies are very focused and detailed perhaps even better than the flight manuals, but many are done using the same methods I used above: simple linear equations with extrapolated data to fill in the blanks. I may criticize TK's stock flight models in many posts, but TK made all of his flight models from scratch. I merely used his FM as a foundation and tweaked it to fit the curves I have derived from the flight manuals and NASA data. So, I have the utmost respect for TK's aerospace engineering expertise. But he has to divide his time between programming tasks and an entire catalog of aicraft. Whereas I can afford to pick one aircraft and build a massive library of data on it. Duke's problem vs. the MiG-17 was that when he pulled into the vertical, the F-4 pulled out in front of the MiG-17, who would then start to pepper him with gunfire, forcing him to evade and disengage. Energy tactics are not to zoom up in front of guns. They are to get above your opponent while not in his gunsight and force him to stall trying to reach your altitude. An angles fighter's only defense against a high energy fighter is to pull a tight circle every time the energy fighter tries to make a pass, which could result in a stalemate. But the energy fighter can leave at will. Whereas, if the angles fighter has to leave first, he gets an IRM up the tailpipe. First, Duke assumed the MiG-17 pilot was typical and would either go into a flat turn or disengage when he zoomed. Then, he entered into a vertical rolling scissors at point blank range. The object of a scissors is to force the target to overshoot, not zoom past him. I think Duke was lucky that the pilot was not a better shot. After the first time the MiG-17 flew so agressively in the vertical, Duke should have extended, climbed, then come back rather than keep repeating co-altitude head-on passes followed by more vertical scissoring. Fortunately for Duke, he avoided the gunfire and forced the MiG-17 to disengage first. If you fly an F-105 vs the MiG-17 in SF2, you get an idea about how difficult it is for an energy fighter to beat and angles fighter, but if the energy fighter is flown correctly it will never lose, only win or draw. When you fly an energy fighter and try to use only tail-aspect heat-seeking missiles (such as the F-8 or F-4), the job gets even harder since you not only need to be on the target's tail, but the target needs to ease off his rate of turn a bit to helpt he missile track and hit. It sounds really hard to do and in SF2 where the AI can see you even in its blindspot it is even harder, but with a little patience and luck, the enemy will make a mistake. This is the "Iceman" school of dogfighting. It is tedious and boring but reduces your risk to near zero. Attempting to scissor with the angles fighter and relying on the enemy to be surprised and overshoot when you chop your throttlles is the "Maverick" school of dogfighting. It worked out for Duke, but most people who chop their throttles while in front of a gun armed opponent find out that the gun solution is much easier to solve when the target stops and fills your windscreen.

The number crunching is actually the most important part. If the right nubmers show up, they can be used to "calibrate" the stock flight models. I don't even need an FM editor, just an Excel spreadsheet to dial in the lift, drag, and thrust curves. This technique will never get exactly the right numbers on the indiviudal components, but the sum total will behave almost identically to the performance charts. If the numbers don't matter, TK should just use one flight model for all of the aircraft. Screenshots would look just as good and it would make TK's job much easier. Graphics are nice to have, but having unique detailed realistic flight models is what makes a FLIGHT sim fun for me. Of course, it used to be more important to me when I played online multiplayer all the time.

I am a Crusader fan as well, have one hanging right next to my F-4J and MiG-21PF on my ceiling. TK's sims are a blessing as they focus on the the aircraft and time frame I love the most. Third party addons cover the gaps really well too... complete set of Century fighters and MiG-21 cockpits, plus 1950s aircraft. I just wish the flight models could be tuned to be as close to dead on as possible within this engine so that I could better enjoy the subtle differences between types. If you look at the F-8, it was a total dog when WoV first came out, then it replaced the MiG-19 (back around SP1/SP2a) as the unbeatable UFO in online multiplayer. The F-4 flight model has always been too generous, especially in the drag department. Just tuning the Cd0 and CDL tables will give you a very credible F-4 experience minus the nasty departure behavior. I have tons of data on the F-4 on XB-70 that I have yet to translate into FM tables. NASA data could help me do detailed F-104, A-7, A-4, F-106, T-38, F-5, F-105, and B-58 exceeding the quality of my original F-4B FM. It just takes more time and focus than I have to convert all those charts into Excel graphs and then derive co-efficient tables from the graphs, then extrapolate the missing points and fill any remaining gaps with DATCOM estimates or faired in values from similar aircraft. Now if someone were paying me good money to do that for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, that would be great. But why am I going to spend 8 to 10 hours a day at work on computers and control systems and then come home to do what is the equivalent to boring college theoretical engineering homework. I am at the point now where I would rather just play the game as it is.

The missing component for sustained turn performance is drag. The best I can do on short notice is take the two readily available CD0 numbers: F-4: 0.0175 for the F-4B/C, 0.0224 for the slatted F-4E (slats came with a heavy price) F-8: 0.0133 I have no precise way of comparing induced drag. Tons of info on the F-4, almost nothing on the F-8. But the F-4 has a terrible zero-lift drag. 0.175 / 0.0133 = 1.316 or 31.6% worse drag with no induced drag. Aspect ratio is the best relative indicator: A = b^2/S, where b = wing span and S = wing area For F-4: 38.3^2 / 530 = 2.77 For F-8: 35.2^2 / 385 = 3.22 3.22 / 2.77 = 1.162, or possibly 16% more drag for the F-4. Of course, both of these aspect ratios are reasonably close to the typical 3.0 for supersonic jet fighters. If there really is a 16% diffence in induced drag, the the F-4 should be able to compete at sea level with its 24% thrust advantage more than compensating for the drag penalty. But up high, the F-4 will lose in both instaneous and sustained turn performance by about a 10% margin.

I verified the contents of the F-8D/F-8E NATOPS FLIGHT MANUAL NAVAIR 01-45HHD-1 (Change 1 March 1968) and its performance supplement, NAVWEPS 01-45HHD-1A. I found one extremely useful chart that can be directly applied to the game to get CL correct: Angle-of-Attack Relationship figure 4-8 (Sheet 3) which plots CL vs AoA for several different Mach numbers including 0.2, 0.6, and 0.8 (the latter two representing combat speeds). The AoA range is capped off at 20 degrees and there is no indication of the usable limits, but by the scale at the bottome of the graph, it looks like 18 degrees/320 mils was the practical limit. At 20 degrees, the CLmax tops off at 0.89 for Mach 0.8, 0.9 for Mach 0.6, and 0.96 for Mach 0.2, these numbers may be unattainable, but give an upper limit of what the number actually is. I have data for the F-4 that shows the usuable CLmax not only varies with Mach, but also decreases with altitude (this explains why the F-4 can beat the MiG-21 down low but loses up high). At sea level, the usuable CLmax is about 1.02 over the entire subsonic speed range until it is limited by max load, the lowest co-efficient of 0.90 is at Mach 0.8 at 30,000 ft. For a fixed speed, the aircraft which can pull more g will turn tighter. Mach 0.6 is about 396 kts, which is a good speed that both aircraft would want to use in combat. The g load is = CL * q * S / W, since both aircraft are at the same speed and altitude, the only variables that matter are CL (lift coefficient), S (wing area), and W (weight), so to compare the two aircraft, lets ratio the F-8 to the F-4 and if the resulting number is 1.0, the aircraft turn the same. If it is greater than 1, then the F-8 is pulling more g (number - 1 x 100 to get percent advantage), otherwise, the F-4 will pull more g. Using S and W from above and using the sea level number for the F-4: ( 0.9 * 385 / 25,000 ) / ( 1.02 * 530 / 38,000 ) = 0.974 Keep in mind, this does not affirm that the aircraft can sustain this many g's, this is max instantaneous. But note, that at sea level, the F-4B actually has a 2.6% victory over the F-8E. Factor in the F-4s thrust advantage, and I think you will find that the F-4 will not only be capable of pulling more g, but also of sustaining it. Also note, that engine thrust has not been included in the thrust equation. Both aircraft are pulling about 20 degrees of AoA, which means 34% of the thrust can be added to the lift and gives the F-4 another edge. If g's being pulled are around 7, the F-4 might be pulling 7.30 including thrust while the F-8 would be pulling 7.06 including thrust. At best, a negligible 3.4% advantage for the F-4. This isn't speculation or some kind of wild ass guess. These numbers are real. If you want to do the math, you can actually figure out exactly how many g's each aircraft is pulling. Per the F-4 manual, it should be pulling 7.6 g at that speed and altitude at CLmax, so my approximation was close enough to make my point. Now, let's put the F-4 up high, where it does the worst: (0.9 * 385 / 25,000 ) / (0.9 * 530 / 38,000 ) = 1.104 Notice that since the CLmax numbers are the same, this is really just a ratio of wing loadings. This is why wing loading is used to predict relative performance. But it only works well when both aircraft have similar planforms that result in similar aerodynamic coefficients. At this altitude, thrust will be about 30% of what it was at sea level, so it will contribute less than 1/3 of what it did at sea level. This leaves the F-8 pulling at best a 10% g advantage. At this altitude and speed (about 344 kts), the F-4 will be pulling 4.4 g, which cannot be sustained. That puts the F-8 at about 4.875 g. At medium altitudes, the performance should be close enough, that neither pilot would be able to tell which aircraft has the advantage. But, the F-4 pilot has to be alot more careful about using his max lift, if he overshoots too far, he will depart controlled flight and probably lose the aircraft. The F-8 will do a nasty roll and stall if pushed to hard, but is far less likely to end up in a non-recoverable flat spin. Aside from stability differences, it would seem the two aircraft are aerodynamically very similar. Not surprising since they were built by two companies that had been continuously offering competing designs to meet the same types of specifications. Now all of this is based on that one simple AoA chart in the F-8 manual. If someone can produce a V-n diagram similar to the one in the F-4, I will gladly overlay the two for direct comparison. But I have never seen such a thing for the F-8. If you want to prove that the F-8 was better, "show me the money". I am sure there is some sort of manual that has the data I want, but good luck finding it.

The MiG-21 and MiG-17 were both more maneuverable than the F-4, yet the F-4 could and did beat both with whatever weapon the pilots could get to work. Agility makes it easier to convert angles, but does not win dogfights, otherwise, how would the much less maneuverable F-8 consistently beat the MiG-17 that could clearly out turn it and get out of AIM-9 parameters at will. My argument is that the F-8 was not a very agile fighter. It was probably marginally more agile than the F-4 in the same way that the F-4 was marginally more agile than the F-104. The key to the F-8's success was neither its guns nor its "agility". It was flown by pilots that utilized its strengths. Now, if the F-8 can beat the MiG-17 because it is a better enegry fighter, why wouldn't the F-4 beat the F-8 for the same reason? Is the F-4's energy margin large enough to overcome its turn rate disadvantage against the F-8. The answer lies with the MiG-21 and F-5E. The MiG-21 is smaller and faster than the F-8, but suffers sustained turn performance disadvantages due to its delta wing. The F-5E has about the same speed capability as the F-8, but is much lighter and far more agile. F-4 pilots were trained to smoke A-4s and F-5s as proxies for the MiG-17s and MiG-21s they would actually face. So how is the F-8 going to consistently beat the F-4 with agility if the pilots are equal and the F-4 has already proven that it will win most of the time against aircraft that are far smaller, lighter, and more agile than the F-8? The aircraft that the Israeli F-4 pilots feared was the MiG-21bis and any other derivatives using the same engine that beat the F-4 at its own game with superior power to weight AND was more agile. If the better MiG-21 pilots in the mid east had ever gotten a missile comparable to the AIM-9D/G/H to use against the F-4, the F-4's air-to-air record would have been much worse. I have the pilot manuals for the entire F-8 series and quite a few other fighters. Like most other aircraft, there are no detailed performance tables that would permit me to create an accurate flight model, or I would gladly do so. I have great data for the F-4 and F-104, though. They can be modeled to the limits of TK's game engine. Most other aircraft prior to the F-15 have limited turn data. An overlay showing the relative turn and climb performance of the MiG-17, MiG-21, F-8, and F-105 would tell a great story. MiG-21 data is somewhat available, but the early variants I only have in Russian. The bis I have in English. I don't just know a lot about the F-4. I have studied all the aircraft. It's not like I am claiming that the F-4 should be able to clobber the F-16 in ACM. I will say that an experienced F-4 pilot could hold his ground against inexperienced pilots in the F-14 and F-15. The F-14's performance advantages over the F-4 were similar to the F-4's performance advantages over the F-104-better across the board, but not by a huge amount. The F-15 was crippled in agility by a lack of a leading edge high lift device. It turned little better than the F-4, but could match the F-4's best turn rate using only military power, which meant that with afterburner, the F-15 could climb while the F-4 struggled to maintain a level turn. If you design an aircraft to have low transonic/supersonic drag in the quest for speed, you will not get an agile fighter. The F-16 uses modern technology to maximize the lift of a delta design in the form of LERX, body blending, high thrust-to-weight turbofan, and lightweight construction to make it agile despite the supersonic capability. It also omitted variable geometry intakes knowing that the engine was so strong that even at reduced efficiency the aircraft could push Mach 2. No matter what the Navy called the F-8, it was a Mach 1.5 limited equivalent to the MiG-21. Lacking the tables I prefer, consider the following: F-4B: 38,000 lbs combat weight, 530 ft^2 wing area, 34,000 lbs A/B -----> 71.7 lbs/ft^2 wing loading and 0.895 T/W F-8E: 25,000 lbs combat weight, 385 ft^2 wing area, 18,000 lbs A/B -----> 64.9 lbs/ft^2 wing loading and 0.720 T/W MiG-21PF: 15,000 lbs combat weight, 247 ft^2 wing area, 13,490 lbs A/B -> 60.7 lbs/ft^2 wing loading and 0.899 T/W At a glance, the MiG-21 should be dusting both aircraft, but these numbers don't reflect the effects of drag, aspect ratio etc. Suffice it to say that the F-4B took all the time-to-climb and speed records because its specific excess power outclassed anything flying at the time by a safe margin. the MiG-21's delta wing made for good supersonic drag and good climb. The induced drag was higher than a straight wing like the F-8, but even with that penalty, it still managed better sustained turns at altitude against the F-4. The MiG-21 could be out turned by the F-4. With the F-8 having a wing loading about midway between the F-4 and MiG-21 while at the same time having drastically less power available, I would question the F-8's ability to sustain much higher rates of turn than the F-4 over certain portions of the envelope, particularly at the higher subsonic speeds where I would expect the F-4 to have its most signficant power advantage. I am not arguing that an aircraft is better because I like it best, I am arguing that the F-8 has an overhyped reputation for agility that would be easily deflated to a large extent if the pertinent data was available. Would it be fair to say that most WW2 fighters were built to be close combat day fighters? The US always chose speed and power over agility. The F-8 was built to win using speed and power, not turn fighting. Whether you are talking about WW2 or Vietnam, the US almost exclusively fielded larger/heavier, longer ranged, faster/more powerful fighters versus smaller, lighter, more agile opponents. We beat the A6M with boom-n-zooom, pilot quality, attrition, and tactics. The F-104 and F-8 were supersonic successors to the single seat boom-n-zoom air superiority fighters minus the bubble canopies because no one wanted to pay the drag for them. If the Navy were trying to make a turn fighter, shouldn't it be able to out turn at least one opponent it was expected to face? You will never sell me on the idea that the F-8 was built with the goal of agility being a priority. Speed, rate-of-climb, and range were the big three for most US designs until the F-16/F-17.

While I love the F3H as an ancestor of the F4H, the F4D is simply an elegant aircraft. All tailless deltas have major aerodynamic issues, but they sure look cool. The F3H may look a bit odd, but if it had the engine power and weight it was supposed to have, it would have been a decent design. As things turned out, the F4D was better. But both quickly became irrelavant. Once you have the F-8 and F-4, you have aircraft that are among the best for over a decade instead of just 2 or 3 years (look at all the fighters that came and went between 1945 and 1960!). The point of my thread is not to bash the F-8. Its combat record speaks for itself. I simply disagree with the assessment that it would have been a better choice for the fleet than the F-4, especially based on the idea that it was somehow magically more agile than it really was. For instance, by the numbers, I can show how the F-4 is significantly more maneuverable than the F-4. But Andy Bush is a fighter pilot who flew both extensively. In his opinion, the turn performance differences between the F-4 and the F-104 were negligible. He actually preferred the F-104 and even beat an F-15 in a mock dogfight while flying one. Now does Andy's anecdotes override published data from the manufacturer's? I doubt it. He may have been one of those rare pilots who would win no matter what aircraft he was flying and would be happy with the performance of his aircraft since he was able to win. Steve Ritchie praised the AIM-7E2 and F-4 Phantom, but how many other pilots got the results he did when given the same opportunties with the same equipment? The F-8 pilots in Vietnam were almost the only well trained air-to-air pilots on either side. The USAF had some awesome WW2/Korea veterans mostly at the beginning, and both the USAF and PVAF had some lucky and/or talented newbies, but by far, most of the pilots flying F-4s, MiG-21s, and MiG-17s were inexperienced and poorly trained leading to a lot of missed kill opportunies and/or unnecessary losses. The fact that F-4 pilots who completed Top Gun generally did as well or better than the F-8 pilots make it painfully obvious that you don't win a dogfight because your aircraft turns a little tighter or climbs a little faster, you win it by making better decisions than the enemy in the tradeoff between speed, altitude, and angles given the particular aircraft being employed and the initial conditions.

Ok, lets flip the coin. Instead of just two aircraft having a fight starting at the ideal range and altitude for the F-4 to win, lets take 4 F-4Bs versu 4 F-8Es all armed with only 4xAIM-9Ds. Are you going to claim that 4 angles fighters will beat 4 energy fighters? Even underpowered, less agile F4F Wildcats could successfully take the skies from A6M Zeroes when flown with mutual support. The agility of the Zero was largely nullified when you used more than 1 vs 1 scenarios. The four F-4s with 2 crewmen each could fight in the vertical, maintian better situational awareness and would probably win. Of course, if the F-8s truly have such awesome agility compared to the F-4, the battle might be a draw until someone runs out of gas and has to try to disengage... Like quite a few of the F-8 kills against MiG-17s (and surely a similar percentage of the F-4 kills). So which aircraft would have better endurance while using lots of afterburner for sustained hard turns and zoom climbs? In Top Gun, F-4 crews were taught to beat souped up A-4s and F-5Es in exactly the same sort of situations (as F-8 crews had already known how to do from the start). As I have never flown either aircraft in reality and can clearly show that the flight modeling in sims like the SF2 series is no basis for comparison, I can only judge by the historical record. Given everything I know, if I had to pick one aircraft to fly in combat any time from 1958 to 1975, it would be whatever the best F-4 variant that was available to me. If my mission might range from ground attack to air superiority, I would lean toward USAF variants as they always had better avionics for bombing in a given time frame while retaining the air-to-air capability. But, if my primary mission was air superiority, clearly, the Navy's access to better AIM-9 variants make the F-4B and F-4J the best choices. The F-4E would be much easier to fly and had a gun, but the F-4J's AWG-10 radar was greatly superior to the F-4E's APQ-120. Unlike the APQ-120, the look down feature actually worked and could find F-8s down in the weeds. While the Navy ultimately admitted that the slats were needed for safety, they never added the internal gun. It wasn't worth the weight, space, vibration, or loss in radar reliability (APQ-120s didn't like being vibrated by 100 rounds per second). SF2 makes the F-4E look better since its radar works just as well as the F-4J in the game, and it has slats and a gun, but consider the fact that in reality, even after the F-4E was widely available in Vietnam, that the F-4D was the aircraft of choice for USAF sweeps and CAP because of its superior radar. The SF series has come a long way, but aside from the slats and gun on the F-4E, all the F-4s seem about the same as long as they have been upgraded with a RWR. But in reality the F-4D was almost as good at ground pounding and a better air superiority aircraft than the F-4E and much better than the F-4B or F-4C in either role... as long as it isn't stuck with AIM-4Ds!

I can assure you France would gladly have traded their F-8s for F-14s or a French equivalent. F-4s are still in service because the countries flying them couldn't afford F-15s and F-16s much less F-22s and F-35s. The USAF and USN weren't even permitted to completely replace the F-4 with the F-14 adn F-15. Look at the Navy's budget in the 1960's though. They gladly replaced the F-8 with the F-4, only keeping some F-8s to serve on the smaller carriers. They Navy clearly believed the F-4 was the better fleet defence aircraft and had even learned to use it very well for air superiority, and once the skies were clear, it was a much better bomb truck. Apparently, things haven't changed much. When faced with major budget limitations and forced to pick one aircraft to perform every job, they picked the F/A-18E... a 60-foot long twin-engined aircraft with a 500 ft^2 wing, weighing 30,000 lbs empty, and an optional 2nd seat. Sound familiar? The F-4 actually had a bit more wing area (530 sq ft), but is darn close to having the same dimensions. The F-14 was not only too expensive, but too large and the F/A-18A/B/C/D was too small. The F-4 sized F/A-18E/F was just right. They were quite willing to give up some agility for the size increase, too. By giving up the cost of stealth and improving an existing airframe rather than trying to develop a new one, the Navy got a useful number of new airframes instead of being stuck flying the old ones untily they start breaking in half during ACM training.

Show me the data from the manufacturer or NASA that shows F-8 turn performance at specific heights, loadouts, and speed ranges before claiming how it was more maneuverable. I have have never seen more than pilot anecdotes. Anecotes can't accurately specify heights, speeds, weights, or how well each pilot hit their aircraft's performance sweet spot whle denying the opposition his. Plenty of pilots from WW2 will tell you how plane x was better than plane y during one or more of their engagements while another group of pilots will tell you they experienced exactly the opposite. From the cockpit in a close-in dogfight, pilots cannot accurately ascertain angular rates, velocity vectors, or even ranges, much less specific excess power or other key ACM parameters. They are too busy fighting for their life to act as flight test data collectors. In certain specific geometries and initial conditions, a more agile aircraft will appear or even actually be out turned by a less agile aircraft. Likewise, a less powerful, slower aircraft may appear or even actually out accelerate or out climb a much more powerful, faster aircraft. Aircraft performance cannot be estimated accurately enough to compare relatively similar aircraft based on weights, sea level static thrust, stall speed, max speed, etc. Even detailed wind tunnel data doesn't fill in all the blanks. It takes carefully collected flight test data to draw valid conclusions. Air combat ranges like Red Flag measure all this data then replay it for all pilots involved so everyone can learn what really happened instead of just what they thought they saw. The F-8 wasn't even close to being optimized for ACM. Was it as maneuverable as an F-86 or MiG-17? Did it have a bubble canopy? Like all post WW2 jet fighters until the F-16, it was designed for speed and climb first at the cost of maneuverability. The F-8's wings were clearly swept for speed. For comparison, the F/A-18's nearly straight wings are far more optimized for ACM. Its swept wing and high wing loading gave it landing characteristics that were absolutely terrible, even worse than the F-4 despite having the variable incidence wing (which really only enhanced visibility by lowering the nose and screwed up manually moving the engine throttle to vary rate of descent). Above landing speeds it was a lot more stable than the F-4 at combat AoA, but that came from not being designed to fly Mach 2+. So, the F-8 gave up supersonic drag and a bit of power-to-weight to have a less delta like wing which meant a bit less induced drag. Now, did the savings in drag overcome the lower power-to-weight? Ps charts partially answer this, but it would really be nice if Vought had provided tables in the same format as the F-4. The one envelope you get from an F-8 pilot's manual is the Height-Mach diagram showing the 1g steady state flight envelope, which fits neatly inside the F-4 envelope. Where the F-4 was limited by dynamic pressure and temperature (if had enough excess thrust to go faster than Mach, but without modifications, the engines would melt down if it did), the F-8 was limited by drag (not enough power to exceed Mach 1.5). This implies that at higher altitudes and higher speeds, the F-4 would actually have better sustained turn performance than the F-8 as its lesser power-to-weight was cancelled out by zero-lift drag. Without much better data than is available to me, all I can do is speculate which aircraft would handle better at a given height and speed based on aspect ratio, wing loading, thrust loading, etc. If someone else has better data that can prove my best guesses wrong, feel free to post it here. As for the F8U-3, it was apparently superior to the F-4 in every performance aspect, but the Navy wasn't buying a dog fighter or a drag racer, it wanted the best fleet defence interceptor it could afford to protect its most valuable asset: aircraft carriers. The Navy concluded that for an interceptor to be effective, it had to have the best radar available and carry as many as practical of the best missile available that could be hauled up to high altitude and reach Mach 2 as quickly as possible. Equally important, the Navy decided that the aircraft must have a dedicated radar operator to ensure the narrow windows of time and distance between detection, lock-on, and minimum firing range were not missed. Apparently, the F8U-3 lost the competition because it had only one seat and carried at most 3 Sparrows to the F4H's maximum of 6 Sparrows. The same formula that led to the selection of the F-4 led to the rejection of the Missileer (too slow/underpowered despite having an early version of the AWG-9/Phoenix system). The F-111B almost met the criteria, but it weighed too much and Grumman had leveraged their inside knowleged and newer technology to wrap the engines, radar, and weapons of the F-111B in a lighter package that out performed the F-4 it was to replace in all aspects (F-111B performance was inferior to the F-4 in all ways except speed). The F-14 was the F-4 concept with better radar, better missiles, supposedly better engines (TF30s ended up never being good fighter engines), better cockpit visibility, and variable geometry wings. Notably, the F-14 retained the 2-seat configuration. The Navy was sure that the additional weight of a RIO was a huge advantage in both radar interception siutations and close-in visual range knife fights. The Navy really didn't give up on the fluid four formation, they just made the welded-wingman an integrated part of the element leaders, permanently in formation 1 meter behind them. USN F-4 pilots that successfully utilized their back-seaters had proven their worth. The F-4s had a 2nd set of eyes, which helped greatly in both defensive and offensive situations. Notably, the F-15 reverted to the single seat configuration, which the USAF justified by the digital improvements to radar operation. The USAF never wanted a 2-seat in the first place and waited a long time before doing anything to encourage a good relationship between the pilot and the "navigator" in F-4s. The F-15 was the size and configuration of a heavy interceptor/multirole fighter bomber (like the F-14 and F-4) but retained the single seat and lack of ground attack systems that would be expected in a small lightweight day air superiority fighter. Meanwhile, the small lightweight day fighter, YF-16, was purchased to replace the F-4 as a heavy multirole fighter-bomber. I am I the only person confused by these decisions? In my opinion, USAF leadership criminally negligent in their duties to defend our nation as best as possible within the available budget constraints during the 1960s. The USN did a lot better job of identifying and correcting its mistakes over the same time frame. In 1972, USN F-4s almost exclusively went straight into close range dogfights while USAF F-4s struggled to achieve BVR kills. It is pointless to argue which was more effective, since the most effective course of action would have been to use both. The USAF and USN finally came to this realization after Vietnam was over, working together in the AIMVAL/ACEVAL tests to explore the effectiveness of various weapons and tactics on the outcome of an air combat engagement. What took them so long? Shouldn't this have happened around 1966?

I much preferred the way OFP/Resistance provided a continous platform with lots of free upgrades until Resistance came out and tied up most of the loose ends. Going from ArmA to separate addon to ArmA2 to another addon in a much shorter time frame has left me behind. But if that's how they have to do business to survive, so be it. There are no other shooters of any interest to me. OFP won me over with its unique and realistic styles of gameplay. Open maps with open ended solutions to mission accomplishment with very challenging AI. I still play OFP/Resistance with friends. I would like to be able to do the same with ArmA2, but I only have 3 PCs that can even run it and I don't think any of my friends' PCs can run it at all.

In my many debates in the F-4 vs F-8 battle, I always encounter assertions about how much better the F-8 was because it had guns and was more maneuverable. The gun argument is easy to refute as aircraft that had both guns and missiles available almost always scored their kills with missiles, especially the F-8 units as they were privileged to be converted to the AIM-9D as soon as it was available. The maneuverability issue is harder to prove since I have never found any charts showing the sustained or instantaneous turn performance of the F-8. The F-4, on the otherhand, has detailed information for almost every version/configuration flown by the US military. Crusader fans always loosely paraphrase pilot anecdotes from Crusader pilots that flew rings around Phantom pilots in mock dogfights. So, let me quote a Crusader pilot anecdote that should spell out just how maneuverable the F-8 was against the MiG-17, its principal foe: "At one point, while I was pursuing the lead section of MiGs in a high-G, left turn, the second section got behind me. Tracers from the leader streaked over my canopy. The knee-jerk reaction to such a dire situation would have been to pull hard, putting more Gs to 'throw the shooter out of the saddle'. However, I remembered an incident a few months before when MiG-17s had surprised two other VF-111 pilots by popping out of the clouds behind the F-8s. The Crusader pilots tried to out-turn the MiGs, which shot down one F-8..." While this pilot lived by pushing his nose down into a negative 'g' roll forcing the MiGs to overshoot, one of the F-8s that showed up to help him out tried to turn with one of the MiGs, which resulted in the MiG getting on his tail. His wingman then scared the MiG off of his tail, but "each time Lt Wyman tried to fire a Sidewinder, the MiG would shake him off in a tight turn." Ultimately, the fight went down to treetop level and the MiG was shot down by Lt Wyman. But it took four F-8s in an extended dogfight to trap this one MiG-17 into AIM-9D firing parameters. This was not a typical MiG-17 pilot. He was aware of all the F-8s around him and as such maneuvered repeatedly to deny shot opportunities. CVW-21 scored 9 of the 18 official kills on one cruise and attributed their success compared to other units to: 1) Being the only air wing exclusively tasked as fighters (no bomb racks, only very rarely carrying Zunis). 2) Using the AIM-9D instead of the AIM-9B. If you review all of the F-8 kills scored in Vietnam (originally scored as 18, now at least 19, but possibly 20 or 21 depending on how you score a probable and one in which the pilot bailed out before the F-8 could kill the MiG), then you will find that in many cases the MiG-17s were either flying straight while disengaging, setting up a shot on another aircraft (typically A-4s), or just popped up in front of an F-8 unaware that the F-8 was there and had a good firing opportunity. Many of the pilots clearly reported that they were pulling little or no G at the time of firing the fatal shots since their targets were pulling little or no G. If the MiG-17s had been aware they were under attack and utilized their turn capability, Even the AIM-9D would have been much less effective. Guns were used effectively only 2 or 3 times of the 18 or 20 kills scored. The peformance capabilities the F-8 used against the MiG-17 were: acceleration, climb, and speed, NEVER turning. Separation and mutual support were almost always used to allow turns/reversals with the general exception being quick breaks used to cause overshoots by rapidly appraoching attackers. The only way an F-8 could convert onto a MiG-17s tail is if the MiG-17 wasn't using its full turn performance. Suggested reading: USAF Red Baron reports (covering every air-to-air engagement between US and enemy forces during Vietnam in detail). MiG Killers A Chronology of U.S. Air Victories in Vietnam 1965-1973 (solid data on who, when, where, aircraft type destroyed and what weapon was used) Clashes Air Combat over North Vietnam 1965-1972 (seriously bashes USAF leadership for ignoring the results of its own studies) F-8 Crusader Units of the Vietnam War (recounts the MiG kills fairly well including quoted anecdotes) List of known kills (including some not officially recognized) 01. 660612 MiG-17 AIM-9D Disengaging Cdr Harold L. Marr "he rolls and heads straight for his base... At a half-mile, I fire my last winder, and it chops off his tail and starboard wing." 02. 660612 MiG-17 Cannon Bounced Cdr Harold L. Marr "climbed to 6,000 feet and engaged the second pair of MiGs, firing 25-30 cannon rounds. He saw fragments coming off the right wing of one of the MiGs, but he quickly ran out of ammunition and had to break off." 03. 660621 MiG-17 Cannon Headon pass Lt Eugene J. Chancy "Lt Chancy's desparate fire hit the MiG wingman as the section slashed through the Crusaders, blowing a wing off the MiG." 04. 660621 MiG-17 AIM-9D Disengaging Lt jg Phillip V. Vampatella "the North Vietnamese pilot seemed to have turned back toward home, probably low on fuel himself. Seizing the opportunity, Vampatella reduced his speed and turned back toward the departing MiG. At approximately three-quarters of a mile, he tried on Sidewinder, then the second. The second finally came off the rail and guided straight toward the MiG, detonating immediately behind the fighter, which crashed." 05. 661009 MiG-21 AIM-9D Undetected? Cdr Richard M. Bellinger "One of the delta-winged MiGs split-essed toward the ground, and Bellinger followed, firing two Sidewinders...one of the Sidewinders found its mark, and the MiG-21 crashed into the rice paddies below." 06. 670501 MiG-17 AIM-9D Target fixated Lt Cdr Marshall O. Wright "He got on the MiG's tail as it attacked an A-4 and fired a Sidewinder, which sent the jet tumbling into the ground." 07. 670519 MiG-17 AIM-9D Unexpected Lt Cdr Bobby C. Lee "a MiG-17 crossed their noses. Lee fired a Sidewinder, shich cut the MiG in half." 08. 670519 MiG-17 AIM-9D ACM? Lt Phillip R. Wood "hauled his F-8 around and fired another AIM-9D. The missile hit the MiG, sending it diving toward the ground." 09. 670519 MiG-17 AIM-9D ACM Cdr Paul H. Speer "engaged the North Vietnamese fighter in a series of maneuvers until the MiG pilot finally offered the Crusader pilot a shot. Speer's first Sidewinder fell away, but his second missile hit the MiG in the tail." 10. 670520 MiG-17 AIM-9D Undetected? Lt jg Joseph M. Shea "fired two Sidewinders, both of which hit the MiG, sending it also into the Hanoi suburbs." 11. 670721 MiG-17 AIM-9D ? Lt jg Philip Dempewolf details not clear, "probable" possibly confirmed after the war? 12. 670721 MiG-17 AIM-9D Target fixated Lt Cdr Marion H. Isaacks "A-4s were attacked by an estimated force of ten MiG-17s...got above and behind one MiG...The third missile came off the rail and tracked perfectly, right up the MiG's tailpipe." 13. 670721 MiG-17 Cannon Bounced Lt Cdr Robert L. Kirkwood "I was in good position at his 6 o'clock and not pulling much G...I squeezed the trigger and closed to 300 ft. I could see my shells hitting theMiG's fuselage" 14. 670721 MiG-17 Rocket Overshoot Lt Cdr Ray G. Hubbard Jr. "forcing the second MiG to overshoot...fired his remaining two Zunis, which blew up close enough to the MiG to cause major damage." 15. 671214 MiG-17 AIM-9D ACM Lt Richard E. Wyman "got behind the MiG and fired another Sidewinder. This time the AIM-9 guided perfectly and took off the MiG's left wing, the enemy fighter diving into the ground only 50 ft below." (4 F-8s to 1 MiG-17 from 16,000 ft down to treetop level). 16. 680626 MiG-21 AIM-9D ACM Cdr Lowell R. Landers "The MiG made a head-on pass against the three VF-51 fighters, and Myers wrapped his Crusader into a turn, which put him at the MiG's six o'clock, and he fired his Sidewinder." (appears to be no dogfight, MiG-21 continued straight?) 17. 680709 MiG-17 Cannon Novice Lt Cdr John B. Nichols III "The MiG pilot suddenly stopped his turn, rolled to wings level and lit his afterburner. Nichols saddled in and fired a second Sidewinder. This time the missile hit the MiG, causing major damage. The fighter remained in the air, however, much to Nichol's amazement, and he began firing his cannon, obtaining a few hits." (Intel provided briefing on pilot shot down: newly converted MiG-17 pilot with relatively low hours) 18. 680729 MiG-17 AIM-9D ACM Cdr Guy Cane "ended up turning with the enemy fighters until Cane got off a missile, which detonated just behind the MiG's tailpipe." 19. 680801 MiG-21 AIM-9D Damaged Lt Norman K. McCoy "When they reacquired him, McCoy was in the driver's seat, close to a minute after Hise's call. He pickled off a 'winder and nailed him." (Damaged by Hise's AIM-9D one minute earlier, lost in clouds, re-aquired flying straight?) 20. 680919 MiG-21 AIM-9D ACM Lt Anthony J. Nargi "He climbed and went into a loop, and I was able to get into position behind him." 21. 720523 MiG-17 Fear? Lt. Jerry Tucker "Suddenly the MiG's canopy flew off, followed by the pilot." (MiG-17 pilot bailed out for no apparent reason.) While only 3 or 4 F-8s were lost to MiGs, this was less related to the performance of the aircraft and more related to how it was operated and where it was operated. F-8s were seldom bounced since they almost always practiced fluid two mutual support and usually had Red Crown vectoring them to MiGs being tracked on radar or spotted MiGs engaging other aircraft such as A-4s.

OK, I have reached the fun limit of FC2 for me playing 1 vs. 2 heater only missions. The MiG-23s were nearly impossible to beat. You cannot stay out of firing parameters for both and can't make a mistake in terms of throttle, flares, altitude or you get popped by an R-60M. I did beat them, but it took quite a few tries to get to the point where I could kill one without the other killing me immediately afterwards. The 2nd MiG-23 was always right on my butt while I was shooting the first, so I learned to go to idle and pull g to bleed speed. Forced the overshoot, killed him with my choice of guns or heater. I could get the AI to go for this every time, but I still had a high probability of getting popped by an R-60M. The MiG-29s were even more difficult: add helmet mounted sights with off-boresight capability and much greater maneuverability. The whole time you are tracking/killing one, you need to be popping flares and even then you will get killed by the one of the two before even killing one of them quite a bit of the time. I can dodge about 3 out of 4 R-60Ms, but they each carry four, so typically they have fired 1 to 5 R-60Ms by the time I am dead. I did "win" one time by hosing the first one quickly with a solid gun burst then snapping up the other one with a heater. But, after quitting, I discovered the guns kill wasn't a kill yet. I didn't see him flying around anywhere, but he had not hit the ground yet. The AI did not impress me that much with 1 vs 2 gunfights, but with R-60Ms, they are pretty damn mean. The only problem is, realistic or not, it is no fun to get popped almost every fight. I want to dogfight, not fly around near the ground at idle popping flares steadily until I get blindsided by an R-60M.