Last of the Tomcats ...

Why won't you join me in my pessimistic "dance of death?" All that I'm doing is looking at the numerical figures, and they speak loudly. "People like us" are history.

 

Sorry, I cannot disagree more. F14 was an overpriced, over-rated, flying pig compared to F-4 phantom even though it could out-turn the F4.

These were nothing more than a very expensive flying missle platform.

Far more sexy was/are the Su27 and the Mig29, the F16, the orignal F18... as far as "modern" jet fighters....

 

F5-A was just about the prettiest jet U.S.A ever made. It was gorgeous.

 

Next time I will add enough smilies - so you can understand the "iranian aircraft carrier project" better. The only one dreaming of iranian aircraftcarriers, battleships and so on was the last Shah of Iran who was kicked out of Iran, before he could order such nonsense.

Now without smilies (= I mean the follwing part serious)
Iran is still flying these old US-made planes like F-14A, F-4E or even F-5E. These planes did a very good job during Iran-Iraq-War in the 80ties, shooting down much more iraqi planes than iraq managed to destroy on iranian side. And its no wonder that by flying 8 long years many iranian pilots got the kill numbers with the result that Major Zandi is the F-14 pilot with the most air-to-air-kills.

Today these planes are old and obsolete.

But: All three designs look cool and I like to see them flying in formations in the military parades in Iran or in the propaganda videos of maneuvers.

There are even iranian films where these planes were used - like the classic TopGun (the iranian film producers had also the advantage that they got real russian- and US-made planes like MiG21, Su-20, F-14, F-4, F-5 to show air to air combats between Iraq and Iran - so they had not to use black F-5 als MiGs like in TopGun. So their films look more realistic.).

How some now bring Ahmadinedjad and so on in the discussion is something I dont understand. But to be honest: Thats not my problem and I dont care about it.

I continue to enjoy the films and pictures of the cool old US-made planes in iranian colors. Or watching them, when I am in Teheran and there is a military parade.

 

Each to thier own i suppose mate

But bare in mind though, when i say "sexy", it has nothing to do with price, manuverability, or how much ordinance it carries. Im talking about pure looks. F14's lines are just beautifull, the way it sits on the ground/deck it looks like a fukin tough aircraft, especially when looking from directly in front. Thats whats sexy about it to me.... all else, is just trivial shit to me

 

yeah F-14 is the Miss Universe, even if all the other worlds were invited

 

I think the YF-23 was much prettier. Shame it lost to the F-22.
Anyway ... personally, I much prefer the Su-27 over the Tomcat lookswise.

 

Stealth Technology.
All those airplanes with 60 degree and 30 degree angles everywhere, they look, to me, like paper airplanes [some people call em 'darts'].
The last stealth aircraft I thought was pretty [and it had a 'sort-of' supercruise was:

 

u like yf-23?

has bulges on fusalage like engines were addition at last moment:



so if u like bulges lets talk in terms of women

who is more attractiv:


miss f-23

or


miss f-22

 

That last one looks like a Russian woman.

 

Ooh, I like your miss F22! But here, have another look at the F-23.

 

Last woman pciture has assymetrical sheep collogen injections.

 

F-14 with the most "air to air" kills... now how many of those air to air kills were when the enemy plane was is sight of the F14 pilot?
I'll bet you that most of those air to air kills were NOT dog fighting but air to air missle launches and mostly "out of sight" ranges; 10 to 25 miles distance.

 

I know what you're getting at, but I think your argument is working against you. Personally I think a fighter that can clobber the opposition at beyond-visual-range is preferrable over one that has to get into a dogfight to do it.

OTOH, I'm not sure if Iranian F-14s actually had the means to kill targets at such long ranges? Did the Iranians have AIM-54s for their Tomcats? Because if not the only BVR weapon available to them would have been the AIM-7 Sparrow, and 20 miles is about on the outer edge of the Sparrow's weapon envelope.

P.S. Sorry never mind, I just noticed that you said 10 to 25 miles.

 

Man, oh man.
I had something great all written here as a response.
A collection of words ending in the phrase

Sand niggers

But I couldn't post it.

 

OK - maybe I am wrong. But for me an air to air kill is, when the enemy plane is flying (the iraqi in my example) and a friendly plane is also flying (the iranian) and then the friendly plane shoots with something and then the enemy plane is destroyed.
I dont make the difference if the friendly plane used gunfire, missiles or StarTrek-like-laser beams. As long as both were flying before the meeting and one was destroyed during the meeting - I call this an air-to-air victory.

In 1980 an iranian F-14 shot down an iraqi helicopter by using 20mm gunfire,
in most of the other kills AIM-54A, AIM-7E-4, AIM-9P were used.

And on December 1980 an iranian pilot with the name Raad met with his F-5E two iraqi MiG-21, shooting one down with his 20mm guns and the other MiG21 crashed while trying an evasing maneuver. I would also call this second kill an air-to-air victory for the iranian pilot although he has not hit the second MiG with his weapons.

But maybe we have different point of views how to define air-to-air-victories.

 

But... F-18 reminds F5-A very much, excluding double vertical stabilizers Nearly identical aerodynamic scheme.

 

Assymetrical what? This is spheric lens distortion

 

Just info: you can down a foe out of your missile range in the meeting engagement -- launch when out of range, but the poor guy flies in your direction and enters the hit range later to "catch" a delivery.