You stated it perfectly, upnorth.
This isn’t like arguing Hellcats and Corsairs or Crusaders and Phantoms(which would be good arguments by the way)
Hornets are to Tomcats what apples are to oranges and that’s that…
Good point but we like to argue.[:D][:D][:D]
If we could not argue, I dont think that we would be happy[:p][:p][:)].
Flaps up, Mike
::cues the music:: “why can’t we be friends, why can’t we be friends, why can’t we be friends…”
“can’t we all get along?”
For the record, I have gone on record as a DIEHARD Tomcat fan.
I’ve said it b4 and I’ll say it again, the Hornet is a compromise plane. Ok at 2 jobs not great at any one. I was in the navy when they tried to convince us how “great the F-18” was (this was in the early '80’s) when everybody knew the Tomcat was the better plane.
I don’t remember the name of the exercise, but I was there. Two months in Greece. The brand new fresh Eagles from Bitburg against the Hellinic AFand JFK. The only 15 we lost was when a “gold wings” popped him on a tanker. The tally got so bad that in the second week the Greeks wanted to quit.This was fall 78 and Eagles have never looked back!!!
It all depends on who is setting in the seat. When I was at George AFB, CA., our unit went TDY to Yuma MCAS. We were the bad guys going against the Navy and Marine units flying almost everything. We had tired old F-4E’s. Eight F-14A’s from Miramar came in for a one day flyoff. Each of us flew four in the morning and four in the afternoon. The days tally was 7 to 1 in our favor.
The reason was our pilots and WSO’s had 3,000 hours minimum in the F-4. They were all instructor pilots and WSO’s. They could go to the edge of the envelope and at times beyond. Experience counted in that “war”. They were flying against crews that were not that experienced with their aircraft. So, it doesn’t matter what aircraft you fly in, if someone with more training and more experience, takes you on, who will come out on top? It doesn’t matter what type of aircraft you are in.
Berny,
You got that right ! The best times in a Huey
were with Vietnam era pilots. They knew thier capabilities
and the aircrafts.Look what happened to the inexpereinced
axis pilots at the end of WW2.
When were you at George AFB ? I passed
through in '85. Man,what a busy place , F-4’s everywhere.
fuzzy
fuzzy, I was at George AFB from 85-88. I was with the 20 th TFTS, 35 th TFTW, training German air crews. I retired in 88 and moved to Florida.
never heard of the raf or royal navy?
in the falklands we didnt lose a single harrier in combat despite being in range of the argantine air force and a hell of a long way from home
f-14 tomcat NUFF SAID [:D]
there’s a lot more to it than that! In the flyoffs between the F16 and the F17; the F17 pretty much out flew the F16 in everyway but a climb. The Airforce wouldn’t touch it because a pin headed general didn’t like the way the pilot sat in the cockpit as well as the layout of the controls. The one place that the F17 beat all four of the aircraft at the time was in avonics. Some felt that it may have been the most accurate bomber on the planet. The Navy and the airforce later took a long look at it, and the Navy told Northrup that they’d buy them if it had two engines and a beefed up landing gear for carrier operations. Northrup said “no”, that that would defeat the whole concept of the design. And the design was not U.S. property as it was totally financed with Northrup’s money. So the Navy awards the contract to McDonald Douglas the contract to built this twin engined version of the F17. Northrup said “no not happening on our watch!” So an agreement was reached where Douglas did the basic fuselage, and Northrup did all the wings and control surfaces and all parts cockpit forward. Douglas got caught a couple years later cheating on the agreement and had to pay Northrup the sum of $43,000,000. The F17 never had a nickle of tax payer’s money involved in it, and was virtually doomed from the start with General Dynamics heavy lobbying group in Washington. But Northrup was smart in copyrighting each and every piece it designed, and they are still being paid money on those copyrights even to this day.
I might add that most of pay taxes, and you may find this part interesting. There are a lot of European Countries using the F16, but if you really check back almost everyone of them signed contracts to buy the F17 first. Jimmy Carter would not allow Northrup to sell the F17 abroad. Thus seal the fate of the F17. If he had of allowed the sale of the F17, and the Airforce had bought the F17 themselves; all the tooling would have been paid for with dollars out of Europe not U.S. Taxpayers. Instead most of the countries in Europe just sat back and waited till we tooled up the F16 at the U.S. Taxpers cost.
gary
Gary, the YF-17 Cobra was a twin engine airplane. Where did you get your story?
Gary, you may have mixed the F-20 Tigershark story into your tale. Both the YF-16 and YF-17 development were paid for by US taxpayers under AF contracts.
We are talking about 3 airplanes here and the title is misleading.
F-14 and F/A-18a/b/c/d are 4th generation fighters designed in the 1970’s. They are selected based on the high-low mix concept of that era. They have different roles as have mentioned by other posts.
The F/A-18E/F/G are 4.5 generation fighters designed in the late 90’s. The E/F were developed specifically to replace the F-14. It is the most capable Navy fighter until the F-35 is deployed. F/A-18E/F can “see” the F-14 long before the F-14 detects it.
The U.S. Navy currently flies both the F/A-18E single-seater and F/A-18F two-seater in combat roles, taking the place of the retired F-14, A-6 Intruder, S-3 Viking, and KA-6D. An electronic warfare variant, the EA-18G Growler, will replace the aging EA-6B Prowler. The Navy calls this reduction in aircraft types a “neck-down”. In the Vietnam War era, the Super Hornet’s capabilities were covered by no less than the A-1/A-4/A-7 (light attack), A-6 (medium attack), F-8/F-4 (fighter), RA-5C (recon), KA-3/KA-6 (tanker) and EA-6 (electronic warfare). It is anticipated that $1 billion in fleet wide annual savings will result from replacing other types with the Super Hornet. (quote from Wiki)
Did we really just restart a 5 year old thread just to begin this argument again? Sheesh.
No, we should not have. I am guilty by not looking and paying attention before I replied to to-day’s posts.
I am going to put my [2c]in. The only reason that the F-14 wa retired was because it was taking 40 hours of maintenance for every one hour of flight time. The wiring inside the birds was actually disintegrating from age. If the budget had allowed for regular upgrades to the Tomcat like the F-15 had for the USAF the Tomcat would still be flying.
The big problem with the Tomcat was that when tested in combat, the AWG-9/ AIM-54 combination didn’t actually do it’s job of hitting and destroying the other guy very well. Might have hit a Bear or Badger flying straight and level at high altitude with its ECM/ ESM systems switched off. On a good day. If you don’t actually hit your target, very long range and a multi-target-cabable radar don’t matter very much, do they? Probably just as well it was never seriously tested in combat.
Cheers,
Chris.
I was active duty at the time of the fly off. I also had an insight on classfied information on a lot of data. The YF-17 failed in most areas when compared to the YF-16. I don’t know where you got your information, but someone gave you wrong data. The YF-16 excelled in 23 of the 25 main requirements set up by the flyoff commission. Politics played no part at all in the selection. European nations waited until the USAF selected the F-16 and joined in on the manufacture and procurement of the F-16. The same offer was on the table if the F-17 had been selected. The US goverment paid for two YF-16’s and two YF-17’s. The manufactures did not loose any money in the development or building of the aircraft. The YF-17 even went over budget which was paid by the US goverment. European countries did not furnish a dime toward any of the aircraft. There was no deal to buy the F-17 by any country. It was only after the selection was made that agreements to build or purchase the F-16 by the European countries was agreed on.