Quote:
Originally Posted by wabpilot
The F-4 was excellent at ACM, in the hands of a skilled pilot and NFO. The F-4 had superior vertical penetration when compared with all contemporary adversaries. In any fight, we always moved to the vertical. That left Mr. MiG with two options, die or turn and run. Even the MiG-21 could not climb with the F-4. For that matter, it wasn't until the F-15 that anything could really climb with us. The key then in any engagement was to get a look early at the enemy and get some altitude. With our AWG-10, getting an early look was usually a given. The Sovs just did not have the radar back then.
In the navy we had two A2A weapons on our F-4s. The AIM-7 and AIM-9. They required very different approaches. With the AIM-7, you had to maintain radar lock to get a kill. So, the drill was to pick a target, shoot, and then keep your nose on him until he either died or ran away. The AIM-7 was, if everything worked right, almost impossible to evade. The problem was keeping radar lock and getting the 95 different interactions needed to launch the thing to work. If all 95 worked in sequence you pretty much had a collection of MiG parts that were in not so close formation.
The AIM-9 was a very different weapon. A heat seeker, early versions were rear aspect only. This was not a weapon that was optimized for the F-4's strengths. It was, early on, a last resort weapon. We would use it only if the AIM-7 did not get a kill, or if there was a leaker. To use the AIM-9 it required a hard turn into the enemy's rear quadrant. The best way to do this was by utilizing the vertical rolling scisors maneuver. When successfully executed, it would put a MiG-21 or 23 in front of us in about two turns. This consumed a fearsome amount of fuel, so it was usually a last ditch maneuver, or reserved for times when we were defending close to the boat. Because a tanking had to happen very soon after killing the MiG. Later versions of the AIM-9 were all aspect. But the all aspect AIM-9s entered service long after I had moved on to the F-14. I am sure the F-4S and F-4N guys loved them though.
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I've seen both the Rolling Scissors maneuvers and Phantom barrel roll on TV. In the horizontal Scissors, both planes cross each other and keep turning into each other until the tighter turner gets an attacking position. This wouldn't be good for a Phantom. The verticle version has both planes turning into each other at the top and bottom of an afterburner-powered climb/dive sequence. Eventually the less powerful plane drops away or stalls, and the more powerful plane comes over and is above and behind it going into a dive. The Phantom barrel roll involves the Phantom popping up above the turning target it's pursuing, then rolling to the outside of the turn and coming down behind the target without losing much speed.
I've heard that sometimes, AIM-7 missiles never came off the plane, and sometimes, they just fell away without firing. Other times they fired but just flew straight without guiding, and if closing speeds were too high, it would pass by the target harmlessly. It obviously must have been quite a handful to get 95 factors to work!
How was the F-4 compared to the second-gen F-106 Delta Dart, the USAF's second most powerful fighter? It obviously out-turned it, but how was the verticle performance? Also, how did it compare with the MiG-23?
I don't think that the F-4 was the best climber until the F-15, that probably goes to the MiG-25 Foxbat missile-truck.