Toryu

Beauty!

I actually think, that the Tu-4 is too tiny, rather than the other way round

Wow, Typhoid and Crazyhorse agreeing on something. Gotta mark this day in red I've always wondered why people spend so much time, pulling BS out of their ass, when all they need is just a proper education. This is 8th grade chemistry. Yeah, I said "chem" *wink,wink*

Watch this - very interesting! Very cool channel for lots of other videos on either engineering or flying!

The engine came from Bristol IIRC - they apparently had a thing with greek mythology-stuff. Like Concorde's "Olympus".

Certainly!

BTW: You just made me buy a sh1tload of F-15 books. Thanks for that!

Kind of reminds me of JG1's Bf 109G-6AS and G-14AS, which were all RLM76 (thus looking pretty similar to those early Luke F-15s) - seems to have been just as effective (they had red Reichsverteidigung-Markings, though, thus spoiling the effect): http://theprofilepaintshop.blogspot.de/2013/12/jg-1-bf109g-6as.html Funny how ideas that once have been, keep on coming back up.

I think the stock F-15 has a better representation in the roll-axis (not as twitchy in roll-rate but crisper roll-acceleration), while the superpack is better in pitch. The take-off is a bit arkward: The elevators become effective too late, but tend to overcontrol. The Stock-F-15 just rotates on it's own, though. The landing-gear acuation in the F-15 is pretty quick IRL (about 2-3s) - with the superpack it's hard to have the gear tucked away below 280KIAS. Just a couple of things I recognized. Getting the roll-behaviour right is a PITA - have tried that on different airplanes a million times myself and have never quite been satisfied....

Why not all of them? Rivet Haste was a "crash" programme, so they might as well have played with different camo-schemes. I actually like the mixed schemes. Definately something different! IIRC the light blue scheme was only applied to LUKE AFB F-15As ('LA' Tail) and didn't last too long?

Pilots were particularyly unimpressed with the slats coming out at 11.5 units no matter what and creating good over-g possibility at high speed. Seems like the slats took some time to get used to. Unlike aerodynamically actuated slats (F-100, A-4, etc.), the slats in the F-4 came out kind of digitally (no incremental setting, so only "0" or "1"), which is bound to suck when not anticipated.

It had a cargo-fire issue that in itself was solvable, yet "superior soviet design" couldn't be held accountable, despite the little brother's hint at the design-defect. The other problem (engine-bearings) was actually engine-related, so not the aircraft's fault. Other than that, it was a reliable aircraft. The IL-62 was kind of the soviet DC-10 in this regard. It's not really an autopilot, but a stability-augmentation system. The difference is rather vague, but stability-augmentation is kind of like an ESP for your aircraft and it's crucial for a jet with a very large operational speed-envelope. It wasn't just the flight-controls that american pilots criticised. The largest problem was the single pilot, operating a very complicated (and later on, pretty capable) radar. Not much an issue in the Flogger's design-mission, but from a western air-power projection standpoint, it was unacceptable.

Nothing special there, toilets break-down and get INOP'ed all the time.

The F-104G should give you a sustained turn-capability similar to a hard-wing F-4, which means about 6-7g sustained at 450KIAS, 50% internal fuel, below 10000ft. The trick up the 104G's sleeve was maneuvering-flaps. The limits of the takeoff-position were: - 450KIAS for extension - 540KIAS extended/ retraction The Mach-limit was 0.8 or 0.85 (depends on the source). At least one F-104 (actually a CF) went supersonic with maneuver-flaps out - it was a supersonic test-profile and the pilot wondered at about M 1.3, why acceleration didn't go as planned. He retracted the flaps and proceeded on to M2. A long time ago, I had a flight-model that was ok-ish and close enough for me (I even stole the pitch-up behaviour from the F-101 and added a little post-stall gyration-fun), but the countless ini-writeovers after patches stole the fun and I stopped optimizing the FM.

He has written a couple of very interesting books - one about the Phantom, one about the Tornado F3, one about his time on the Falklands and some fictional novels. There's more stuff by him coming up...

Reminds me of that one:

The nice thing about being a dictatorship is that there's no press to dig up and wonder about scary crash-rates in your air force.

I hear there are some greek A-7s, looking for a new home.

I'm presenting facts - that's not just my personal opinion, but what the USAF and USN thought at the time and what got Top Gun kicking. Mixed with a little plain physics. If you can't be bothered reading an official tactical evaluation document, then that's your omission. First off, there was not plane optimized for dogfighting before the F-16. What is a "dogfighter" anyway? Maneuverability is the ability to change your speed-vector quickly in a short time. That includes the length of your speed vector (= speed/ kinetic energy), not just it's direction. The F-8 was designed to achieve a maximum Mach number at the given thrust available. An actual "dogfighter" would trade-off Mach performance for increased capability in the natural dogfighting arena, which is around Mach 0.7-0.8 and below 20000ft. What *made* it a dogfighter was the attitude of it's pilots and a general lack of performance in the opposing team. That changed with the MiG-21. The F-8 was designed as an interceptor, based on the experience in Korea, which put emphasis on good vertical performance. That's the same reason why the F-104 virtually didn't have any wings: They wanted to maximize vertical and Mach performance. The F-8 carried four guns, fair enough. It's main armament (before the Sidewinder would go operational on a large scale) was thought to be the 32 Mighty Mouse rockets, though. Interceptor genes right here. The overall performance of the F-8 isn't that good anymore in the mid-60s: It can't reliably get above Mach 1 below 10000ft (that's right in the NATOPS) and it's vertical performance isn't all that great anymore, too. It's zoom is comparable to the MiG, but not on par with the F-4. That indicates either a general thrust-limitation, or a drag problem in the transonic region. The latter is the case as the airplane was designed before Whitcomb's Area Rule could be applied. They tried, but the prototype was already lying and costs were prohibitive. MRT excess-power is way below the F-4's, hence the much worse acceleration when compared to the F-4 and the MiG. CRT excess-power is a little better but still not anywhere near the F-4 and about equal to the MiG when subsonic. The F-8 has a turn-advantage between 300-400KIAS over the F-4, but that advantage can be countered by the F-4 by extending (or going vertical) and pitching back into the fight. The F-8 just doesn't have the power to counter that move. There seem to have been an awful lot of people that think different than your pilot-friends. Including those that have scored MiG-kills after transitioning to the F-4. The F-8 was a great airplane, but there's no reason for sugarcoating it.

Got any sources to back that claim up?

That's not, what the numbers say. Read the document I linked above. What made the Crusaders win in most training-fights was superior pilots.

People are so sensitive these times. That's what an F-8 on Alert Five did, when a russian trawler maneuvered to interfere with the carier's flight ops (taken from http://users.cloudnet.com/djohnson/records.htm ):

I think most was down to tactics and attitude. Once they got some Crusader-guys in an F-4, everything changed - for the better. There are numerous anecdotes on that in "Grey Ghosts" by Peter Davies (certainly my favourite book on the F-4). WRT to induced drag, while the the F-8 had an L/D_max of 12.8, the F-4 had an L/D_max of 8.6 - fun fact: The F-8's "engine-out/ RAT deployed/ cruise-droops" L/D_max is pretty much dead-on 9.0. So the F-8 has a better L/D with a windmilling engine than the F-4 when alive and kicking. That is one key to why the F-4 was such a gas-hog (fun-fact 2: the F-104 has a better L/D_max - about 9.2) compared to the F-8. That and the J-57 engine. And the F-8's fuel fraction. If you look at the Vn-diagrams in the Have Doughnut pdf-file (they're both for 30000ft, so not exactly where the F-4 is shining*), one can see the F-8's instantaneous turn-advantage. At the conditions depicted, the F-8 has a 2g instantaneous turn-advantage over the F-4 at 400KCAS at 30000ft. At 300KCAS, it's about 1g advantage in favour of the F-8. So the F-8 does have an instantaneous turn advantage over the F-4, yet the F-4 has a lot of power to play with and can not only sustain the Gs above 400KIAS; it can also go supersonic at low altitude, which isn't exactly the F-8's strong point. ____ * Then again, the figures are KCAS, so except for Mach effects on the lift-coefficient over AoA, they represent the picture across the altitude-band.

I'll gladly resurrect this thread as opposed to opening a new one. Streak, have you looked at the Have Doughnut documents? It doesn't really help, as it also doesn't feature E-M diagrams, but it has a V-n diagram for the Crusader (F-8J, no mention of the engine-type (P-20 or P-420)). It also gives a ballpark-figure for relative performance of the F-8 (and F-4) vs. the MiG-21F. The F-4 comes out on top, with the F-8 and MiG-21 pretty evenly matched, all things considered. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB443/docs/area51_50.PDF Keep in mind, the MiG is flown clean in all engagements, the F-8 is always flown in combat configuration an F-4s are flying clean roughly 50% of the engagements. On FB, I have asked a former F-8 pilot if there ever were E-M diagramms for the F-8 - he said he can't remember there ever were any. Keep in mid that when E-M theory kikeck in, F-8s were going OUT. Many people forget the most important advantage of the F-8: It had gas. Lots of gas! More than 9000lbs on the F-8D (and later models). Paired with a relatively fuel-economical J-57, the airplane could loiter for very long times and also could ettectively beat F-4 intercept-times, as the F-4s were constrained by having to take external fuel (thus being Mach-limited). The F-8s could haul a$$, and "saunter" back at low speed (and power setting), while the F-4s were busy, looking for a tanker. Some F-8 drivers say, that only few F-4 pilots could fly their F-4 well enough to beat an old Gator-driver in an F-8. When Top Gun started, many F-8 drivers either converted to F-4s (like Tooter Teague and Devil Houston, to name two later F-4 MiG-killers) or joined the reserves, keeping the expertise and walking all over people that didn't know how to fly their plane. It wasn't just a "person vs person"-thing, but also "communty vs community". The MUTHA-trophy for 'Fighter Spirit' didn't go from F-8s to the F-14 squadrons right away for no reason

Because Pew-Pew-Putin has run out of bears to ride on and pose semi-nude. It's all games - majorly to determine whose private parts are the longest. Unsafe? Maybe - but given the latest series of Russia's air force's hot-recycling of airframes (they've got a pretty decent attrition-rate lately!), that might have been one of the safer missions for those Su-24 crews