Most successful jet fighter of all time?

[Panoz]

Four pages on a topic similar to "Which is the better supercar: Ferrari F12 or. Lamborghini Aventador" and yet only three people have voted.

(Don't look at me, I voted for F-4 Phantom... )

[JohnT]

Four pages on a topic similar to "Which is the better supercar: Ferrari F12 or. Lamborghini Aventador" and yet only three people have voted.

(Don't look at me, I voted for F-4 Phantom... )

Is the problem that we are looking at incremental progress rather than an aircraft that's a complete game changer in the same way as say the ship's I mentioned above

[bzn20]

Probably. Too many variables. Most sales,highest kill ratio,innovation,serviceabillity and the biggest thing is peoples preferences.

We need Winkle Brown. He's the only one that could come up with anything like the answer,regardless of if he's flown it or not

[wellsprop]

I struggle to see why so many people have voted for the F-4. There were a few more produced than the F-16, but the F-16 is operated by more air forces. The F-4 cost over 2m USD in '65 which is over 15m USD now, compared with the F-16 costing under 20m.

In my mind, the design of the F-4 is truly awful. All the cranks and funny angles in the airframe are tell-tale signs that the aircraft simply isn't particularly aerodynamic. The F-4 really is the epitome of overcoming a dreadfully un-aerodynamic design with copious amounts of thrust. In terms of handling, there's not a lot that can be said of the F-4's, though pilots said it was easy to fly. It wasn't particularly manoeuvrable at any speed, as demonstrated by the need for slats to improve performance. It suffered from adverse yaw as well as an in-ability to recover from spins. Not only that but it was built without a cannon - big mistake.

In it's defence it was the first to use BVR and only let down by the failing of the fledgling missile technology. It was fast REALLY fast. Furthermore it was operated by the USMC, USN and RN as long as the land based versions, so it could do a fair few things.

Don't get me wrong, I love the F-4 massive engines, lots of noise and huge plumes of black smoke, pretty awesome!

Ben

[JohnT]

I think that if I had to choose one on the criteria simply of "most successful" then on balance the F4 gets it.

It did a lot of things very well bettering or equalling all of its contemporaries big time

Mig 21, Lightning, Mirage - better endurance, combat persistence, multi role and pretty much same performance. It ticks all the boxes while other earlier or contemporaneous designs did not. Not even close. To emphasise the point the F4 was a navy machine and before the F4 the USAF and RAF would not have touched a naval design with a barge pole. The accepted wisdom was that carrier aircraft by definition were inferior to land based designs - no question. The Phantom burst that prejudice wide open (except the RAF were still slow at catching on and were sniffy at first about the mighty Bucc too when the time came)

[bzn20]

The F-4E had an M61 Vulcan cannon.... Power weight ratio,Brute force and ignorance. Just over 5,100 built.

The Phantom is a 50's design and the materials and design reflect that.Its where they were in the 50's. The F-16 is a generation newer so should be a better in terms of materials,avionics and aerodynamics. Its like comparing the Gloster Gladiator to the Spitfire.

Thats why this survey doesn't work. Apart from innovation,the biggest leap forward (and thats hard to quantify) comparisons have to be between contempories (like kill ratios) and not the generations. The best of these two F1 cars, a 1967 Lotus 49 or last season's Mercedes F1 WO5?

[old thumper]

I was going to say the Phantom, but reading some peoples comments regarding the Sea Harrier I am now torn between the two. I wonder what would of happened if the Royal Navy Sea Harrier had been pitted against Argentine Phantoms and Buccaneers (if they had had them)?

[Dave Wilson]

Turkish F-16 was shot down by a Greek Mirage 2000

Good to see NATO members getting along...

[thomastmcc]

got to say the phantom ..

[upnorth]

Is the problem that we are looking at incremental progress rather than an aircraft that's a complete game changer in the same way as say the ship's I mentioned above

The only fast jet aircraft I can think of that could be considered a "Game changer" was the F-111. Tactical strike was completely changed by that machine.

It introduced innovations such as terrain following radar, afterburning turbofans and variable geometry wings to serial produced aircraft. The F-111D version featured one of the earliest examples of a glass cockpit with multi function displays.

The TFR allowed it to fly lower than the F-4 and the F-105, the standard USAF tactical bomb haulers in Vietnam, as well as at night and in any weather.

The TFR and variable geometry wings also gave the F-111 a speed advantage down low that could be used to it's defensive benefit. The F-105 needed fighter escort, the Phantom needed a fair amount of its under wing space given to AAMs for self defence in case it needed to fight its way out. The F-111 was simply untouchable by other fighters down low, it could leave them in the dust easily.

The F-111 could also carry a significantly larger bomb load than either the F-105 or F-4, thus fewer of them were needed to do a similar amount of damage.

In around 4,000 missions in Vietnam, less than 10 F-111s were lost; compare than to how many Phantoms and Thuds were lost and the game changing nature of the F-111 becomes apparent.

Toss in the fuel efficiency advantages of afterburning turbofans and it all just becomes more pronounced how the aircraft changed things.

Hauling more bombs to the target using fewer planes, needing less in the way of defenses by being elusive and fast all while needing less tanker support in the process.

While it had a troubled and drawn out development period and was not exported widely; it's influence on strike tactics on both sides of the old Iron Curtain was undeniable. TFR became standard as did using speed and the cover of night for self defense. Though variable geometry technology has fallen out of vogue, a whole generation of VG strike aircraft was inspired by the F-111.

The F-111 also helped pioneer and perfect the delivery of "smart" weapons.

Beyond strike, the F-111 adapted well to reconnaissance, electronic warfare and strategic bombing.

Edited January 17, 2015 by upnorth

[sovietstar]

The F-4E had an M61 Vulcan cannon.... Power weight ratio,Brute force and ignorance. Just over 5,100 built.

The Phantom is a 50's design and the materials and design reflect that.Its where they were in the 50's. The F-16 is a generation newer so should be a better in terms of materials,avionics and aerodynamics. Its like comparing the Gloster Gladiator to the Spitfire.

Thats why this survey doesn't work. Apart from innovation,the biggest leap forward (and thats hard to quantify) comparisons have to be between contempories (like kill ratios) and not the generations. The best of these two F1 cars, a 1967 Lotus 49 or last season's Mercedes F1 WO5?

What I said in the criteria was that ''was it innovative for its time'' the same way the f-35 is a massive leap forward in technology was it such a big leap as the spitfire to the meteor?

[Giorgio N]

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.

I agree that the influence of innovation can only be seen after some time. Most new features are introduced to respond to a requirement and often these requirements are proven to be wrongly formulated. VTOL for example was believed by some strategists in the '60s to be a necessity for the future but history proved otherwise. The same could be said of hyper-manouverability or Mach 3 speeds, all features that at some point in time were deemed necessary and today are much less so.

Here we have the advantage of hindsight as we're looking at fighters from the past. Should we look at present developments, things may require a bit more knowledge. Should I throw a bet, I'd say for example that in the F-35 the stealthiness may be important but it could well be that in 15 years time the development of other sensors may make stealthiness impossible. At the same time I believe that the integration of sensors and information on this machine is what is going to be the most important innovation. The F-35 pilot will be capable of knowing what's happening around him/her in a way no other pilot has ever before. This will give this pilot a huge edge over its adversaries, IMHO even more than the stealthiness of the aircraft. Only time will tell if I'm right or not

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

While it may not have been as clear edged as in the case of the Dreadnought, I still consider the Phantom as the aircraft that has changed air warfare. Or better, the aircraft that for the first time had embodied a number of previous innovations in a complete package capable of changing air warfare.

The jet engine was a great revolution, but in Korea the Sabres and the MiG-15s fought pretty much in the same way Spitfires and 109s did over Britain 10 years before, only at higher speeds. Even the original F-104 was expected to be a day fighter that acquired its targets visually and engaged them with short range weapons.

At the same time there had been a lot of work done on interceptors capable of destroying nuclear armed bombers. These types were more advanced in terms of avionics, had powerful radars and could be integrated within a ground radar network (F-102/106, Su-9, Lightning). They were a huge step ahead but were specialised aircrafts not really useful in any other situation, as shown by the very little interest these types raised on the export market.

The Phantom did not come out of the blue, its concept drew from a number of contemporary designs, however here was an aircraft that included in a single package the long range acquisition capablity of some interceptors and the long range missiles to engage BVR targets, the short range dogfighting capability of the day fighter (ok, within limits, but the Phantom was not a bad dogfighter for its size and weight), the capability of operating individually without ground control thanks to a good radar and the use of a 2-man crew and even the capability of carrying a good load for attack missions.

The way a Phantom crew operated in the early '60s was totally different from how a Sabre pilot would have fought 10 years before. For these reasons I consider the Phantom a milestone in air warfare. More modern aircrafts have added capabilities, thanks in particular to the advancement in electronics. They have also corrected some of the defects of the Phantom, are more manouverable, more reliable, cheaper to operate and so on. Still, in a way or the other, they all descend from that concept

[bzn20]

What I said in the criteria was that ''was it innovative for its time'' the same way the f-35 is a massive leap forward in technology was it such a big leap as the spitfire to the meteor?

Thats a given,I'm talking about the most successful Fighter of all time in general,esp the best at its job part. Innovation for its time is hard to work out as each era has its own "ground breaker" Which is the best of these? The only one you can be certain of is the very first one about 100 years ago.

[wellsprop]

The F-4E had an M61 Vulcan cannon.... Power weight ratio,Brute force and ignorance. Just over 5,100 built.

The Phantom is a 50's design and the materials and design reflect that.Its where they were in the 50's. The F-16 is a generation newer so should be a better in terms of materials,avionics and aerodynamics. Its like comparing the Gloster Gladiator to the Spitfire.

Thats why this survey doesn't work. Apart from innovation,the biggest leap forward (and thats hard to quantify) comparisons have to be between contempories (like kill ratios) and not the generations. The best of these two F1 cars, a 1967 Lotus 49 or last season's Mercedes F1 WO5?

The F-4 definitely was a greater leap than the F-16, but that's down to their different project specifications. The F-4 really did revolutionise the battlefield and, in my mind was the first "modern" fighter with BVR and missiles. The F-16 used proven, existing technology and put it into a fantastic little package.

Most successful? It depends what you define a success. Success, doesn't have to mean best kill/death ratio or extensive use in combat as combat use is dependant on there being conflict. The reason I would say the F-16 is more successful is due to it's use by so many air forces in several conflicts.

Ben

[Head in the clouds.]

Just to add flame to the fire, surely an airframe that needed the least modification through its service life and yet remain combat effective for it's designed role( not top of it's class either) should count for something as this proves the soundness of the initial design, although even this simple inclusion is open to debate, how big were the mod's and how often and at what cost? The EE Lightning had little modifaction during it's inception in the late fifties yet could hold it's own in a dogfight against probably 70% of potential opponents ranged against it at the time of it's withdrawl in 1988. The same could be said for the F15A/C.

That to me is a succesful design and numbers sold count for nothing, that is as much about business accuman/polotics/business deals/regime, etc, as anything to do with capability.

At the end of the day it is a no win poll, we are all emotive about differing aircraft and their capabilities/role/comlexity/inovation/cost all overlap to make this a no win.

I surrender

[Ptmvarsityfan]

Voted for the Phantom as when it was introduced in the late 50s its capabilities were unique and its still in front line service after more than 55 years. The F16 is a great aircraft but not hugely better than the competing YF17 if at all. Tempted to vote for the F15 though! Apart from the Harrier which although a great plane is as has been mentioned very much a niche aircraft all the others have been matched by rivals of similar performance. The F111 is a great aircraft but not a fighter and at least matched by the TSR2. Best kill ratio ever: Finnish air force Brewster Buffalos at 33 to one. Not the best fighter ever was it?!

Cheers, enjoying this debate

Paul

[sovietstar]

Thats a given,I'm talking about the most successful Fighter of all time in general,esp the best at its job part. Innovation for its time is hard to work out as each era has its own "ground breaker" Which is the best of these? The only one you can be certain of is the very first one about 100 years ago.

well if you were to look at it in that way wouldn't it have to be a fighter currently in service or being developed/ brought into service like the t-50 or the f-35 (god forbid)

[bzn20]

In theory the best "fighter" has either just entered service or about to or so you'd hope. If it isn't why build it? The F-35's problems will get sorted. Every aircraft has developement problems. for instance a few of them.....The Vulcan's and the DH110 had leading edge design faults,The 747 started off with the "bending" JT9's. EH101's had cracks all over the place,Dreamliner?. prototypes and developement aircraft are for that reason. Get faults and find fixes,its what aircraft engineering is all about. MOD programmes are a constant too as faults or possibillity of faults are dealt with. How they let aircraft into service with some of these are beyond me.

So as far as the best goes......It hasn't flown yet?

Edited January 18, 2015 by bzn20

[sovietstar]

In theory the best "fighter" has either just entered service or about to or so you'd hope. If it isn't why build it? The F-35's problems will get sorted. Every aircraft has developement problems. for instance a few of them.....The Vulcan's and the DH110 had leading edge design faults,The 747 started off with the "bending" JT9's. EH101's had cracks all over the place,Dreamliner?. prototypes and developement aircraft are for that reason. Get faults and find fixes,its what aircraft enginering is all about. MOD programmes are a constant too as faults or possibillity of faults are dealt with. How they let aircraft into service with some of these are beyond me.

So as far as the best goes......It hasn't flown yet?

duhn duhn duuuuuuuuuhn!

[alpine_modeller]

I was going to say the Phantom, but reading some peoples comments regarding the Sea Harrier I am now torn between the two. I wonder what would of happened if the Royal Navy Sea Harrier had been pitted against Argentine Phantoms and Buccaneers (if they had had them)?

Reckon the Phantom would lose against 9L-equipped SHARs by virtue of the stonking great heat signature it would leave. The Bucc is a more tricky story, the SHARs wouldnt be able to keep up long enough to get a lock at low-level.

[Giorgio N]

Reckon the Phantom would lose against 9L-equipped SHARs by virtue of the stonking great heat signature it would leave. The Bucc is a more tricky story, the SHARs wouldnt be able to keep up long enough to get a lock at low-level.

So you think that pilots use their aircrafts in the way that their enemy want them to ? Do you think a Phantom pilot would forgo his speed and weapon system advantage to try and mix it with a more manouverable opponent ?

[old thumper]

So you think that pilots use their aircrafts in the way that their enemy want them to ? Do you think a Phantom pilot would forgo his speed and weapon system advantage to try and mix it with a more manouverable opponent ?

How much slower than the Phantom was the Argentine Mirage III and Nesher?

I remember reading about combat trials in the USA against F5s and F15s where the Sea Harrier was massively victorious.

If my memory serves me well these trials were conducted at a test centre and were conducted scientifically.

[Giorgio N]

How much slower than the Phantom was the Argentine Mirage III and Nesher?

I remember reading about combat trials in the USA against F5s and F15s where the Sea Harrier was massively victorious.

If my memory serves me well these trials were conducted at a test centre and were conducted scientifically.

Not a matter of speed alone, but also matter of range, how much the speed can be used, and then the weapon system on board of the aircraft !

Let's start from the Nesher: this was a simplified variant of the Mirage III and didn't even have a proper radar ! Yes, a fighter aircraft operating without GCI and with no radar... really the best situation for a pilot. Of course, no radar also means no BVR capability.

The Mirage III-EA had a radar, not impressive but nonetheless decent for its day (1960's). The aircrafts operated anyway at the limit of the range and this meant no chance of imposing the faster aircraft way of fighting, something that a pilot always does if possible. And anyway, how many Mirage III-EA operated over the Falklands ? Very few as most "mirages" met were actually Neshers/Daggers.

The Phantom FG.1 had a radar with BVR capability and decent look down capability. Had more range than the Mirage and would have been capable to impose its way of fighting. The availability of BVR missiles alone changes everything, as every pilot that realizes he's been locked by a radar has to do something. Do you think that a Phantom pilot would have not exploited these if allowed by the ROE ?

Trials and exercises only makes sense when the scope of the exercise is considered. Those who conduct them learn massively from them, not knowing what was meant to be achieved will only lead to wrong conclusions.

Speaking of trials, shortly after the Falklands a mock combat was arranged in Italy between a couple of visiting Sea Harriers and the local F-104S... at the end the kill ratio was 1-1 ! Does it mean that the F-104 is as good a dogfighter as the harrier ? Or maybe just that within the limitations of that exercise all pilots managed to get certain results from their aircrafts ?

Really, sometime I think that some see the Falklands as if it was the end-all lesson of air war in History. As if those 20something victories from the Sea Harriers are more meaningful than the hundreds of combat missions performed by other aircrafts over the years, often against opponents much better equipped and trained than the Argentina Air Forces and almost always over enemy soil...

Then of course anyone can believe what they want, you can believe that the Sea Harrier was a better fighter than the F-15, not a problem. Interestingly however the air forces and navies all around the world did think very different....

[alpine_modeller]

Seems like we've struck a raw nerve.....

I am entitled to my opinions and perceptions; as a 13 year old kit watching Brian Hanrahan report from afar on TV against a clamour of Argentine propoganda that had their air force shooting down more SHARs than we posessed in the entire nation, I felt the SHAR perfomed a minor miracle in true Battle-of-Britain / Zulu style and the feeling lasts to this day

Edited January 19, 2015 by alpine_modeller

[bzn20]

Try Opperating an F-15 Squadron in the middle of a German forest or farmer's field, factory yards in the middle of town. Housed in factory units,multistorey car parks. Or the kite in front just stopped and you over shot the Harrier and got hit. Or it was in front one second and just went vertical and I got hit.

Horses for courses.