Most successful jet fighter of all time?

[colin]

Looking at the criteria posted by sovietstar in the original post, I would have said the Harrier.

Criteria 2) it wins hands-down (How many attempts did the US make ?? How cr*p was the Soviet attempt ??).

And considering 20 Sea Harriers took out the entire Argentine Air Force 8000 miles from home and in its own back-yard, I would say it wins for criteria 3) as well.

Was helped by the fact they were carrying sidwinders, Argentinian pilots state that this was what gave them a greater advantage in air to air combat.

Still a brilliant plane though

[JohnT]

The F-16 (like the F-15) is also undefeated air to air and was a lot more innovative than both the MiG-21 and F-4.

And arguably neither as innovative as the undefeated Sea Harrier - now there is a thought!

[JohnT]

Was helped by the fact they were carrying sidwinders, Argentinian pilots state that this was what gave them a greater advantage in air to air combat.

Still a brilliant plane though

Not to mention pilot training, morale, the tactical situation, quality and quantity of the opposition and other factors all of which complicate any scientific assessment as well

Spot on about the SHAR being superb though, especially in the last incarnation

[bzn20]

Sea Harrier in the Falklands?

Post #18

[JohnT]

Forgive the off topic observation but arguably the greatest innovation period for fighters pre dates the jet age - the leap from string and canvas biplanes to the "modern" monocoque low wing monoplane multigun retracting undercarriage, radio, enclosed cockpit fighter a la Hurricane, Spitfire, 109 and P40. Apologies and don't want to start a thread hijack

[dfqweofekwpeweiop4]

Not many votes for the F-15 then? I thought the F-15 would be most people's vote for best jet fighter, it always seems to be top of the list for most of the experts. In terms of numbers the MiG-15 and MiG-21 (for supersonic jets) win on numbers as we all know but I believe the F-15 has yet to be beaten in air to air combat and broke many records in the 1970's and more recently has been turned into a multi role fighter, so relatively speaking I would vote for the F-15 because of it's all round abilities and records.

thanks

Mike

[cardiff guy]

ask yourself the question if money was no object and you needed a fleet of fighter which would you buy ??? through the 80,s 90's and noughty's it would have to be the F-15 . And the countries that could afford them did .

regards Glenn.

Edited January 15, 2015 by cardiff guy

[davecov]

If we are talking innovation, then you can't really exclude the Me262.

Dave

[Parabat]

ask yourself the question if money was no object and you needed a fleet of fighter which would you buy ??? through the 80,s 90's and noughty's it would have to be the F-15 .

regards Glenn.

Cheetah C? Su-27B/30/35? F-14?

[bzn20]

A what if survey? Now you're asking for trouble!

[PLC1966]

If we are talking innovation, then you can't really exclude the Me262.

Dave

And there, Ladies and Gentleman, for Innovation, we have the winner, maybe biggest step change in fighters ever.

[bzn20]

Willy Messerschmitt get in here right now and change it into a bomber.

[-Neu-]

Lockheed.... Successful through bribing.Especially the 1960's.

Having said that, if it came out of the Skunk Works it MUST be leading edge technology. Anyone in the industry would give their arms and legs to work there.

Not after 1977. The original bribery scandal helped spawn the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forever changed how U.S. companies operate abroad... and even foreign companies operating in United States are exposed to it. FCPA was a landmark, which makes it prohibitively costly to undertake graft. Its now rare to see such events.... especially in the military sector. Nothing has emerged like the Al-Yamamaha Arms deal with BAE and the Saudi government... then again, they were also cited under there FCPA.

There is a lot of postings like they've been written by designers and experts in opperating jet fighters. You can argue about kill ratios.That isn't the thread starter. You can argue about sales and then look at the bribing that went on. The export versions that are not the same as the Home market version. Aircraft that haven't been in a war that could be as good,we'll never know what Viggen,Grippen or even a Draken could do in a dog fight. 2 kills by a Tomcat not good enough because nobody will take them on from 28 miles out. This is one of those going nowhere threads. Innovation? How many actually know?

I can sympathize with some of your views and the difficulty about making comparisons. Its difficult. I think it is possible to make some smart generalizations though, which may give a sense of what might have been more influential than others. I actually think Innovation is somewhat of the easier trends to subjectively assess. Looking at combat ratios and kills is much more difficult to assess, given vastly dissimilar operational settings, doctrine and technology. For example the impressive kill ratios of the F-15 don't impress me as much as others because they went up against mostly soviet client aircraft that were being flown by poorly trained pilots, at inferior numbers and without any support capabilities like awacs. It would be surprising if the number was any different. I think a useful analogy is with battleships. If you were to ask, what was the "best" battleship class you could have a lot of different answers: QE, Yamato, Iowa, ect. However if you asked, which is the most influential, there would be little question: it would probably be the HMS dreadnought or South Carolina Class... with little question otherwise.

If I was looking at Innovation, i would probably go with the F-4. The Phantom II basically incorporated a number of capabilities and roles that we see as standard on today's aircraft. This included true all weather capabilities, radar guided weapons, effective precision guided munitions, good maneuverability, Lots of thrust and reliability. Before the F-4 you had a mess of aircraft that did the same role. Its a pattern that would be emulated in every major fighter after that. I would describe this as being innovative because it didn't really have a peer. For example the Mig-15's was directly challenged by its near equal the F-86. I do have difficulty with placing the Me-262's innovation: it was barely the "first" jet fighter... the meteor entered into service a few weeks later. So I don't think it being the first really means much in actually determining its innovation. I think some of its attention was garnered because it was the most widely employed jet fighter in WWII... which is more a product of germany's war situation where they were throwing anything into the war to stem the tide of their desperate position. I will say that it did have one massive piece of innovation: swept wings were a major step forward for jets, which allowed them to realize the full potential of their engines. Its something we still live with today. But beyond that, it was not a huge advance over contemporary designs.

Anyways... much food for thought.

Edited January 16, 2015 by -Neu-

[Giorgio N]

A few thoughts resulting from some of the posts read here...

Innovation: totally agree with Neu ! It's not hard to understand the innovative content in an aircraft. It's simply a matter of looking at how many features introduced by this aircraft have been included in following designs. While I may personally have the advantage of an aerospace engineering background, I'm sure that any enthusiast is able to pick these.

Speaking of innovation, innovation is not just about making something new, it's about making something new that makes a difference and has an influence. There's useful innovation and then there's innovation for the sake of it. The Phantom, for all the reasons already mentioned by Neu, is an example where the innovations introduced had an effect on every succesful design that followed. Every fighter in service today includes something introduced with the Phantom, something that can be said of a very few types. I like to say that there's useful innovation and then there's useless innovation. If I invent something that has no effect, I still have something new, but what's the point ?

An example of almost useless innovation: the Harrier! Yes, it was something totally new as it made VTOL possible with a clever and simple design. Great, so what ? How much has VTOL influenced the development of combat aircrafts ? Simple answer, in no way ! The Harrier ended up filling a niche, and every future VTOL aircraft will only fill this niche. There's a reason if, apart from the USMC, all export customers of the Harrier have been navies: they were all navies that could not afford a proper carrier with proper fighters. The RN itself bought the Sea Harrier because it could not have proper carriers anymore. Yes, the Falklands and all of that... The Sea Harrier did an amazing job, but had the RN had proper carriers with Phantoms, Buccaneers and most importantly proper AEW aircrafts, a number of British ships would have returned home instead of lying at the bottom of the ocean. And maybe, had the RN had these proper carriers, Argentina would have not even invaded the Falklands....

Truth is that VTOL has been proved to be an evolutionary dead end, it will be around as long as there are some who need this feature. In the meantime 99% of the users will be happy with conventional aircrafts.

Capability of a project to evolve: every succesful design in aviation History has had the capability of being improved, updated, made more powerful and effective. The growth potential of a project is a key aspect for many designers, so it's not surprising that the aircrafts we have mentioned as succesful may have started as something and have evolved into something else. The F-16 is a particularly good example but if we look farther back we have a great example in the Spitfire

Reliability: it's impossible to compare types of different eras because reliability has been constantly improving. For this reason, today's types will always win against past types. At best it's possible to compare aircrafts from the same generation.

Reliability also depends on many aspects, for example the kind of support available. An non-aviation related example: the US Abrams tank has never been the most reliable piece of equipment, yet in Desert Storm all Abrams equipped units had great availability rates. Why was that ? Simply because a huge number of spares had been amassed, a large preventive maintenance program had been launched and parts known to be troublesome were replaced much more often than normally done. This allowed the tanks involved in battle to be always in perfect shape but also meant that the units based elsewhere were left practically with no spare and could not operate normally... So which rate should we consider ?

Bribes: I mean, I'm sure we're all grown up people here and we've seen enough of the world... arms deals have always involved a degree of bribery, particularly in some countries. In the US this is made more difficult but in other countries this is common practice. And not only in arms, try to sell something into some African or Asian countries.... in any case, I find funny the comments against Lockheed when many conveniently forget the Al Yamamaha affair. Not that this was the first such affair... look for some info on the BAC Lightning sale to Saudi Arabia in '70s....

Politics: every arms deal involves political support.. or opposition ! It's clear that if a country is closer to a superpower then the aircrafts selected are more likely to come from this superpower and not the other. And we all know that. What we may not know is that sales of aircrafts are subject to restrictions, and in this the US has been one of the most restrictive suppliers ! Every arms deal from a US company has to pass through the DoD for approval and the DoD don't like sales of certain equipment to certain countries, for a number of different reasons. Had the DoD been more permissive in the '60s and '70s, both the F-104 and the Phantom would have sold abroad more than they did ! However the DoD made clear that certain aircrafts would have only been sold to certain allies, all other countries had to accept the F-5 or the A-37 or nothing. The Soviet Union and France clearly exploited this situation. Things changed with the F-16, but still the US would only sell the F-15 to a limited number of countries.

Victories and losses: it's extremely difficult to compare these because every war is a different story. Who was the enemy ? What was the support available ? What were the numbers involved ? Were the aircrafts shot down operating as fighters of bombers ? What were the rules of engagement ? Without taking all these aspects into consideration it's easy to draw wrong conclusions.

The F-104: the Starfighter was highly innovative in many aspects. Not only it was the first aircraft to reach Mach 2, but this requirement involved the introduction of a large number of features that became common on many types. Variable geometry inlets, supersonic wing profiles, BLC (although this is not in fashion anymore), new high pressure hydraulic systems that allowed much smaller actuators...

The Tomcat: the big Grumman cat is my favourite fighter ever ! However I would hardly call this innovative. It introduced a number of new features for sure, but all were in the end the evolution of what the Navy had already introduced with the Phantom and the abortive F-111B. At the same time it would be unfair to say it was not a flexible design. The Tomcat was supposed to have A/G capabilities from the beginning, it was a USN decision to use their F-14s for A/A duties only. At the end of its career, the Tomcat had become a very effective bomber and many considered it superior to the Hornet for a number of reasons also in this mission. I find Ironic the fact that in a number of missions over Afghanistan and Iraq the Tomcat acted as bomber while the brand new Super Hornets were used as tankers...

Technology and training: I've seen a comment about training being more important than technology... it may be, but have you noticed that the countries that more invest in realistic training are also the ones that more heavily invest in advanced technology ? None of the two is more important than the other, they both have to be there together.

[dfqweofekwpeweiop4]

There is a lot of postings like they've been written by designers and experts in opperating jet fighters. You can argue about kill ratios.That isn't the thread starter. You can argue about sales and then look at the bribing that went on. The export versions that are not the same as the Home market version. Aircraft that haven't been in a war that could be as good,we'll never know what Viggen,Grippen or even a Draken could do in a dog fight. 2 kills by a Tomcat not good enough because nobody will take them on from 28 miles out. This is one of those going nowhere threads. Innovation? How many actually know?

Well the original poster did ask for people's opinions..........

Not after 1977. The original bribery scandal helped spawn the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forever changed how U.S. companies operate abroad... and even foreign companies operating in United States are exposed to it. FCPA was a landmark, which makes it prohibitively costly to undertake graft. Its now rare to see such events.... especially in the military sector. Nothing has emerged like the Al-Yamamaha Arms deal with BAE and the Saudi government... then again, they were also cited under there FCPA.

I can sympathize with some of your views and the difficulty about making comparisons. Its difficult. I think it is possible to make some smart generalizations though, which may give a sense of what might have been more influential than others. I actually think Innovation is somewhat of the easier trends to subjectively assess. Looking at combat ratios and kills is much more difficult to assess, given vastly dissimilar operational settings, doctrine and technology. For example the impressive kill ratios of the F-15 don't impress me as much as others because they went up against mostly soviet client aircraft that were being flown by poorly trained pilots, at inferior numbers and without any support capabilities like awacs. It would be surprising if the number was any different. I think a useful analogy is with battleships. If you were to ask, what was the "best" battleship class you could have a lot of different answers: QE, Yamato, Iowa, ect. However if you asked, which is the most influential, there would be little question: it would probably be the HMS dreadnought or South Carolina Class... with little question otherwise.

If I was looking at Innovation, i would probably go with the F-4. The Phantom II basically incorporated a number of capabilities and roles that we see as standard on today's aircraft. This included true all weather capabilities, radar guided weapons, effective precision guided munitions, good maneuverability, Lots of thrust and reliability. Before the F-4 you had a mess of aircraft that did the same role. Its a pattern that would be emulated in every major fighter after that. I would describe this as being innovative because it didn't really have a peer. For example the Mig-15's was directly challenged by its near equal the F-86. I do have difficulty with placing the Me-262's innovation: it was barely the "first" jet fighter... the meteor entered into service a few weeks later. So I don't think it being the first really means much in actually determining its innovation. I think some of its attention was garnered because it was the most widely employed jet fighter in WWII... which is more a product of germany's war situation where they were throwing anything into the war to stem the tide of their desperate position. I will say that it did have one massive piece of innovation: swept wings were a major step forward for jets, which allowed them to realize the full potential of their engines. Its something we still live with today. But beyond that, it was not a huge advance over contemporary designs.

Anyways... much food for thought.

Actually the best of the so called 'treaty' battleships was the South Dakota, it was better armoured and faster than North Carolina, although a bit more cramped but that's a debate for another thread in the appropriate place.....

A few thoughts resulting from some of the posts read here...

Innovation: totally agree with Neu ! It's not hard to understand the innovative content in an aircraft. It's simply a matter of looking at how many features introduced by this aircraft have been included in following designs. While I may personally have the advantage of an aerospace engineering background, I'm sure that any enthusiast is able to pick these.

Speaking of innovation, innovation is not just about making something new, it's about making something new that makes a difference and has an influence. There's useful innovation and then there's innovation for the sake of it. The Phantom, for all the reasons already mentioned by Neu, is an example where the innovations introduced had an effect on every succesful design that followed. Every fighter in service today includes something introduced with the Phantom, something that can be said of a very few types. I like to say that there's useful innovation and then there's useless innovation. If I invent something that has no effect, I still have something new, but what's the point ?

An example of almost useless innovation: the Harrier! Yes, it was something totally new as it made VTOL possible with a clever and simple design. Great, so what ? How much has VTOL influenced the development of combat aircrafts ? Simple answer, in no way ! The Harrier ended up filling a niche, and every future VTOL aircraft will only fill this niche. There's a reason if, apart from the USMC, all export customers of the Harrier have been navies: they were all navies that could not afford a proper carrier with proper fighters. The RN itself bought the Sea Harrier because it could not have proper carriers anymore. Yes, the Falklands and all of that... The Sea Harrier did an amazing job, but had the RN had proper carriers with Phantoms, Buccaneers and most importantly proper AEW aircrafts, a number of British ships would have returned home instead of lying at the bottom of the ocean. And maybe, had the RN had these proper carriers, Argentina would have not even invaded the Falklands....

Truth is that VTOL has been proved to be an evolutionary dead end, it will be around as long as there are some who need this feature. In the meantime 99% of the users will be happy with conventional aircrafts.

Capability of a project to evolve: every succesful design in aviation History has had the capability of being improved, updated, made more powerful and effective. The growth potential of a project is a key aspect for many designers, so it's not surprising that the aircrafts we have mentioned as succesful may have started as something and have evolved into something else. The F-16 is a particularly good example but if we look farther back we have a great example in the Spitfire

Reliability: it's impossible to compare types of different eras because reliability has been constantly improving. For this reason, today's types will always win against past types. At best it's possible to compare aircrafts from the same generation.

Reliability also depends on many aspects, for example the kind of support available. An non-aviation related example: the US Abrams tank has never been the most reliable piece of equipment, yet in Desert Storm all Abrams equipped units had great availability rates. Why was that ? Simply because a huge number of spares had been amassed, a large preventive maintenance program had been launched and parts known to be troublesome were replaced much more often than normally done. This allowed the tanks involved in battle to be always in perfect shape but also meant that the units based elsewhere were left practically with no spare and could not operate normally... So which rate should we consider ?

Bribes: I mean, I'm sure we're all grown up people here and we've seen enough of the world... arms deals have always involved a degree of bribery, particularly in some countries. In the US this is made more difficult but in other countries this is common practice. And not only in arms, try to sell something into some African or Asian countries.... in any case, I find funny the comments against Lockheed when many conveniently forget the Al Yamamaha affair. Not that this was the first such affair... look for some info on the BAC Lightning sale to Saudi Arabia in '70s....

Politics: every arms deal involves political support.. or opposition ! It's clear that if a country is closer to a superpower then the aircrafts selected are more likely to come from this superpower and not the other. And we all know that. What we may not know is that sales of aircrafts are subject to restrictions, and in this the US has been one of the most restrictive suppliers ! Every arms deal from a US company has to pass through the DoD for approval and the DoD don't like sales of certain equipment to certain countries, for a number of different reasons. Had the DoD been more permissive in the '60s and '70s, both the F-104 and the Phantom would have sold abroad more than they did ! However the DoD made clear that certain aircrafts would have only been sold to certain allies, all other countries had to accept the F-5 or the A-37 or nothing. The Soviet Union and France clearly exploited this situation. Things changed with the F-16, but still the US would only sell the F-15 to a limited number of countries.

Victories and losses: it's extremely difficult to compare these because every war is a different story. Who was the enemy ? What was the support available ? What were the numbers involved ? Were the aircrafts shot down operating as fighters of bombers ? What were the rules of engagement ? Without taking all these aspects into consideration it's easy to draw wrong conclusions.

The F-104: the Starfighter was highly innovative in many aspects. Not only it was the first aircraft to reach Mach 2, but this requirement involved the introduction of a large number of features that became common on many types. Variable geometry inlets, supersonic wing profiles, BLC (although this is not in fashion anymore), new high pressure hydraulic systems that allowed much smaller actuators...

The Tomcat: the big Grumman cat is my favourite fighter ever ! However I would hardly call this innovative. It introduced a number of new features for sure, but all were in the end the evolution of what the Navy had already introduced with the Phantom and the abortive F-111B. At the same time it would be unfair to say it was not a flexible design. The Tomcat was supposed to have A/G capabilities from the beginning, it was a USN decision to use their F-14s for A/A duties only. At the end of its career, the Tomcat had become a very effective bomber and many considered it superior to the Hornet for a number of reasons also in this mission. I find Ironic the fact that in a number of missions over Afghanistan and Iraq the Tomcat acted as bomber while the brand new Super Hornets were used as tankers...

Technology and training: I've seen a comment about training being more important than technology... it may be, but have you noticed that the countries that more invest in realistic training are also the ones that more heavily invest in advanced technology ? None of the two is more important than the other, they both have to be there together.

Some good points although I'd still go for the F-15. No one can argue it is one of the best fighters ever made and still very capable nearly 40 years after coming into service.

Someone said something about kill ratios - I posted a question on a US dominated forum asking people's thought's on the best carrier fighter used in WW2 and most Americans said the Hellcat, mainly because of it's kill ratio. I said the Corsair, as it was the only naval fighter that could live with the best of the high performance land based fighters but the yanks battered it with the Hellcat's kill ratio. I'm saying this to illustrate Giorgio's point about kill ratios. The Corsair had an impressive kill ratio but the Hellcat's was awesome, however it can be explained.

We all know the Corsair was at first rejected by the USN as too dangerous to be used on carriers so handed it to the Marines. The Corsair's were deployed in the Guadalcanal campaign, partly as fighters and partly as fighter bombers support the marines. The Corsair was also in the front line a good while before the Hellcat, so faced more of Japan's better pilots as well. If memory serves, when the Hellcat arrived in the front line aboard the carriers, it was used as a fighter until local air superiority was obtained and this would have been the case throughout the rest of 1943/44, by which time almost all of Japan's best pilots were dead and the replacement pilots weren't properly trained.

Hope that makes some sense!

thanks

Mike

[Martian]

Sea Harrier in the Falklands?

I was thinking this if you take actual results such as kill ratios into account.

Martin

[Roland Pulfrew]

It's mentioned in the article I've shared above. Iranian Tomcats scored over 100 kills during the war with Iraq while Iraqi pilots didn't even know what blew them out of the sky.

Does that really make a fighter the best, this was really down to having the best missile and radar combo. Does that really make for the best fighter?

[ChrisL]

It's not hard to understand the innovative content in an aircraft. It's simply a matter of looking at how many features introduced by this aircraft have been included in following designs. While I may personally have the advantage of an aerospace engineering background, I'm sure that any enthusiast is able to pick these.

I'm not sure it's quite as easy to assess innovation as you suggest. Some innovations are far more obvious and attention grabbing by others but that does not necessarily mean that they stand the test of time. An example of this is one you highlighted yourself - people point to the Harrier as innovative, but VSTOL is not an innovation that has proved particularly influential. On the other hand the innovations of something like the Phantom are much less obvious, after all it wasn't the first Mach 2+ fighter, or the first fighter bomber, or the first all weather fighter. In addition, innovations in reliability or internal engineering are almost invisible to people with an outsider's perspective. Aircraft like the F-15 and the F-16 apparently made great strides in maintainability simply through providing better access to internal systems and packaging systems as LRUs but nobody's mentioned much of that sort of thing when making the cases for those jets here.

The influence of a fighter requires a good deal of hindsight to assess, I think. It's not until the following generation of jets arrive that you can really see what innovations proved to be successful and worth carrying over. The Phantom and then the F-15 were/are fast, but what seems to have been carried on from the Eagle is its manoeuvrability, not its speed. The Tomcat's radar and missile capability was impressive, but wasn't considered vital enough to be necessary to the same extent in the Super Hornet.

I wonder what will be considered in the long run to be the most important innovations included in 5th generation fighters? Obviously stealth is the headline-grabbing innovation, but I've read some things which suggest that the battlespace awareness produced by networking aircraft and other sensor sources together, along with the software which reduces the effort required to fly a plane, giving pilots more time to understand that battlespace is also a major step change from 4th generation's technologies. On the other hand, the thrust vectoring that went into the Raptor is barely mentioned nowadays, despite manoeuvrability being one of the big targets for fighters for the past 40 years or so.

[tomprobert]

Does that really make a fighter the best, this was really down to having the best missile and radar combo. Does that really make for the best fighter?

Surely if it means you win every air-to-air battle then... yes

The fact the aircraft has these systems that makes it such a potent machine must surely be included for consideration of 'the overall package'.

[bzn20]

Surely if it means you win every air-to-air battle then... yes

The fact the aircraft has these systems that makes it such a potent machine must surely be included for consideration of 'the overall package'.

Or the competence of the Aircrew. That plays a big part surely.

[wellsprop]

I was thinking about this the other day. I'd have to say the F-16, reliable, extremely capable, cheap and advanced. Operated by all these countries - (Japan uses the Mitsubishi F-2 which is more or less an F-16).

The F-16 is to modern air combat what the P-51 was to WWII air combat, it does everything very well and it's cheap.

An F-16D costs 20 million-ish dollars, whilst a Typhoon costs 100-ish million. Obviously the F-16 isn't as advanced, but it' probably one of the best aircraft ever produced. It is still a world class fighter despite being 40 years old!

Ben

[sovietstar]

Thank you everyone for this discussion. I feel very privileged that so many people have decided to join this discussion and I think this is the warmest welcome anybody could have to a forum!

Let the games go on!

[-Neu-]

Actually the best of the so called 'treaty' battleships was the South Dakota, it was better armoured and faster than North Carolina, although a bit more cramped but that's a debate for another thread in the appropriate place.....

You're thinking of a generation ahead! Actually I was referring to the 1907 South Carolina class... Then again there was also the Satsuma too

Some good points although I'd still go for the F-15. No one can argue it is one of the best fighters ever made and still very capable nearly 40 years after coming into service.

I'd say the F-15 was a good example of innovation because it was one of the first true aircraft of the supersonic agile era. By 1970, scientific knowledge of aerodynamics really started to plateau: today we claw for 1 or 2% improvements in performance when 5% were the normal per year.

However so much of its thinking and design was influenced by the F-4. It too was a large, comparatively heavy fighter that carried a large radar and missiles for its primary armament. The F-15 benefited from new aerodynamic discoveries, and some new materials research. Its current capability is really due to constant investment afterwards.

Along this vein, I would actually argue that the F-17/F/A-18A was a more innovative aircraft F-15. It incorporated Northrop's design elements from the F-5, such as the LERX, with new technologies like composites and fly by wire systems. Out of the box it was a much more effective multirole aircraft than the F-16... and its performance model (fast instantaneous turn and high acceleration) is seen as more valuable today.

Someone said something about kill ratios - I posted a question on a US dominated forum asking people's thought's on the best carrier fighter used in WW2 and most Americans said the Hellcat, mainly because of it's kill ratio. I said the Corsair, as it was the only naval fighter that could live with the best of the high performance land based fighters but the yanks battered it with the Hellcat's kill ratio. I'm saying this to illustrate Giorgio's point about kill ratios. The Corsair had an impressive kill ratio but the Hellcat's was awesome, however it can be explained.

We all know the Corsair was at first rejected by the USN as too dangerous to be used on carriers so handed it to the Marines. The Corsair's were deployed in the Guadalcanal campaign, partly as fighters and partly as fighter bombers support the marines. The Corsair was also in the front line a good while before the Hellcat, so faced more of Japan's better pilots as well. If memory serves, when the Hellcat arrived in the front line aboard the carriers, it was used as a fighter until local air superiority was obtained and this would have been the case throughout the rest of 1943/44, by which time almost all of Japan's best pilots were dead and the replacement pilots weren't properly trained.

Hope that makes some sense!

thanks

Mike

Absolutely... I agree 100% with this. Add to the fact that Japanese fighter design and manufacturing just didn't keep up with western advances.

When people ask "what was the most important fighter of WWII" I often say something like the A6M2.. or P-40, Wildcat, or Spitfire I/II. They carried the brunt of the conflict in the early years when it actually mattered. By the time more iconic designs like the P-51 or P-47 appeared for the allies, they were facing a much reduced Luftwaffe/Japanese forces. The A6M2 was a revelation... extremely long range and extremely deadly in the right hands, it was one of the key capabilities that enabled Japan's early conquest of the Pacific.

[JohnT]

The mention of HMS Dreadnought made me think a bit more. While there has been innovative aircraft I doubt any single design changed air warfare quite the way the Dreadnought, the U-boat or the aircraft carrier have changed sea warfare, has there?

Effective radar and missiles have changed things more than aircraft design

[bzn20]

Flyby wire. Inherently unstable aircraft by design so computers can fly them. Look at the way they can manoeuver.Adding Variable jet exhausts and fore planes for extra performance.

These 'planes shouldn't be able to fly,like the F-117. It isn't aerodynamic in any way.

Edited January 16, 2015 by bzn20