Learning from days gone by

This is a fun read on various fighter aircraft and their capabilities.

Note the comments on the F-35.

But there is a lot more.

-The comments about helmet-cued high-off-bore-sight dogfight missiles. Really brings the danger forward.

-Interesting look of the old MiG-29. Much of it I had read about before. I would think German F-4 maintainers would be *the* right people to work on early MiG-29s. They weren't all that fun to work on from the guy that has to do the major work. So, sharing some similar things with the F-4.

-Note the comments about weight and available power. Making the F-15C/D from the F-15A/B was not free. Again if not for Boyd, there probably would not be an F-15.

-Interesting comments about how the later F-16s, especially the GE-powered ones, reduce the need for an F-15C.

Enjoy all of it.

I liked this:

I'll share one since it was one of the dumber things I've ever done with a jet. On January 4, 1989, two US Navy Tomcats shot down two Libyan MiG-23s over the Gulf of Sidra. It was during the time I was an F-5 instructor in Tunisia.

Bizerte, Tunisia is the northern-most town on the African continent. We did 99% of our flying over the Mediterranean. I was leading a BFM sortie one afternoon when my radar warning receiver (RWR) alerted me that an aircraft had locked on to me. The symbology indicated it was a Tomcat and I turned to put the symbol on the RWR's scope at my right 1 o'clock. Off in the distance to our north I saw a single contrail heading south. I knew that a few days before the Navy had shot down two Floggers in international airspace, but I was going to check it out anyway.

My wingman and I turned towards the F-14 and started a cruise climb at about 0.9 Mach up to its altitude of 31,000 feet. At about 2 miles from the Tomcat I expected him to turn into us and take away the lateral turning room, instead he turned away and started to head back north. I cut across his turn and ended up about 200 feet above him a couple hundred feet out at his right 4 o'clock. Both the pilot and RIO were moving their melons right and left, but were looking down as if they thought we were lower than they were. I continued to move closer when the RIO spotted me about 100 feet out. I settled onto the right wing of the Tomcat, went to the emergency frequency of 243.0 and made some disparaging remarks about the Navy (with a noticeably non-Arabic accent), then flipped them off and left.

I heard about it a few days later when some pilots off the boat came to Sidi Ahmed via a C-2 to do some coordination for DACT that was to follow a few days later. Everyone got a chuckle out of it.

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