The F-4, the coolest jet fighter ever made.
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Monday, September 3, 2012
5 comments:
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I miss seeing them. But the A-10 has more than made up for it in awesomeness, especially to this old infantryman.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I am in the minority, I think it is also one of the best looking aircraft of all time. It's the long, sloping vertical stab, the anhedral of the horizontal stab, and the cranked wing. I dare call it sexy!
ReplyDeleteThe F-4 flew like a rock, was as good a dogfighter as a B-52 (and not a helluva lot smaller), and its engines made more smoke than power. And until the last marks added a gun, it had about the same anti-aircraft firepower as a B-52 too. About the only thing the F-4 was good at was hauling bomb loads and serving as target practice for NVA SAM's to keep them from targeting the B-52's above them during the "Linebacker II" strikes, and even on that latter it didn't do that good a job considering that 15 of the B-52's got shot down. The MiG-21, while being a ridiculously simple and crude jet fighter, was more than an even match against the F-4 in a dogfight with pilots of equal skill, while being much simpler, cheaper, and easier to maintain. The only reason the MiG-21 didn't have a better kill ratio than it did against the F-4 (but it sill had a decent one all things considering) was the poor quality of the Soviet-trained pilots that flew the thing.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, the F-16 is twice the fighter the F-4 ever was, while costing half as much both to buy and maintain. Ironic, considering that the F-16 was originally considered to be basically lame by the fighter bloc in the Air Force, which wanted lots of F-15's, not that stupid little dogfighter that, like, only had one engine. But in my opinion the F-16 has proven to be the most successful jet fighter design on the planet -- simple, robust, yet performs well as both an air superiority fighter and, surprisingly, as a tactical bomber. It's obsolete against the latest stealth fighters, of course. But since the number of nations with stealth fighters can be counted on one finger, and the number of said stealth fighters not falling out of the air due to suffocating their pilots or just plain design flaws is way too high, it may be that the F-16 stays on for decades more although relegated more to the tactical bombing and specialty roles...
Yeah, well, the Air Force has been busy loading up the F-16s airframe with this and that, so now they are reportedly handling like trucks compared to the `80s models.
DeleteBut you're right, they'll be flying them well after all but two of the F-22s have been scrapped (one for the Smithsonian, one for Wright-Patt).
Dear Miss Fit:
ReplyDeleteOf course, de gustibus non disputandum est, but I believe there are a number of jet powered fighter-type aircraft that exceed the F-4 with respect to "coolness" quotient. I would offer the superb F-86 Sabre, Sir Sydney Camm's estimable Hawker Hunter, the lovely Grumman F-11F Tiger, and Capt. Heisner's beloved F-8U Crusader as candidates. One might even make a case on behalf of the Me-262 Schwalbe; that airplane looks mean just sittin' there!
Best wishes,
Frank