Here I go again with another improbable matchup… Inspired by the MiG-29 fighting either F-4 or F-117 by Delta Dagger…
The YF-12 would win. Faster and more manuvrable and the pilots were better trained. This is no slight to other countries.
Uhm… did they actually arm any of the YF-12s? Otherwise it would be a short fight[xx(]
Well Now,
Kraxner you must not be up on your blackbirds!!!The YF-12A WAS
the Interceptor (Armed Varient) of the Family. It had the fire control system
that was later used in the F-14, And we all know how good that was,RIGHT!
The could carry 4 missels internally <No provision for external armment.
Now answer the ?. The 12 would tromp the 25 as it could sustain M-3 while the
25 can only hit m3 in bursts and usually results in engine meltdown.
There really is no manuverability at M3 as a simple 180 would take around
90 miles! so basically you have 1 shot. The biggest reason the 12 was never
produced.
Good Hunting,
G.W.
Ouch, that hurt! Especially since the SR-71 is one of my all-time favorite planes… But of course you are right, I know very little about the YF-12 or A-12 versions…[:I]. Would the YF-12 also have carried the Phoenix missile then? If so, there would be no contest: at mach 3 you should be able to launch one of those as soon as you get a radar contact a zillion miles out[8D]. Game over.
Hey,
Didn’t mean to hurt your feeloings! As orgininally setup (and I believe, flight
tested) it carried the same(I can’t think of the name!!!) missiles as the F-106,
there was a missile in development that (I think) became the Pheonix. Don’t
hold me to that as I’m at work and don’t have all my reference material here!
But I know I’m right about the fire control!
Good Hunting,
G.W.
I do believe that was the Falcon missile on the F-106 but I can’t remember the designation and don’t hold me to it. As for who would win… I think that it would have to depend on where the meeting took place. I think that the YF-12 just like the other SR-71 varients were real fuel hogs, fueling several times on one flight . If it was caught during one of those fuelings it would be really vulnerable. I may not have all of facts correct though because I’m not really up on the YF-12 version. Cool question though… really makes you think.
The missiles the YF-12 used were not Phoenix missiles, although that technology was later incorporated into the Phoenix, nor were they the outdated Falcon missile of the Delta Dagger family of F-102 and F-106. I wish I could remember the designation of those missiles but if you saw pictures of them, you’d know that they were no Phoenixes as they had conical nose cones and were thinner and longer than the AIM-54s. Furthermore, the fire control system of the YF-12 was the Hughes ASG-18, not the AWG-9 of the F-14. The bottom line is that all the systems used on the YF-12 pre-dated the F-14 by twenty years. The technology was improved and used on later aircraft like the F-14.
Yep. It was an AIM-47 Falcon was the plan.
Faster? You bet. More manuverable? I wouldn’t put any money on that. Both were interceptors, not dogfighters.
My money is on the YF-12 and it’s American trained crew any day.
A sled with attitude
Hey Guy’s;
as for one aspect, the MiG would start to shake about at mach 2.51 and almost uncontrolable at M3, the 25 that was flown to Japan by a defector back in the 70’s was test flown at Dayton and from that info the F-15 came to be the Air Superiority Fighter for it out right out flew the 25 in manuvering, excelleration, speed, and ability to track it at 50+ miles out and the fire control system on the MiG is not as reliable as the Wests systems, so the F-12 would out gun & fly the MiG hands down, the system was to be able to pick up the target at 100+ miles and shoot it down at 50+ miles
I dunno guys, I agree with Bernse… Both the YF-12/A-12 and the MiG-25 were interceptors meant to pounce on unsuspecting bombers etc… i dunno if they would ever meet. if they did, i think it would come down to who saw the other first. i mean, you’ll only get one shot before you loose the other guy. otherwise, you’ll have a turning fight the size of kansas. if you can still aquire each other, that is. [:)]
Good point, two a/c meeting head on at Mach 3 wouldn’t take long to pass each other. Everyone has made really good points though.
You’d get only one shot, but with a missile carrying a several kiloton nuclear weapon type of warhead, you might not need more than one shot!
i’ll go for yf-12 looks fast and fancy.
If I remember correctly, it was set up for the AIM-4B Falcon and the AIR-2 Genie. It had the same load out as the F-101 but minus the guns. Guns were never intended for it because there was a fear that it would fly into its own bullets and shoot itself down. There was a plane that shot itself down but I don’t remember the type, was it the F-8?
Roadkill, yeah, I’ve heard that story too, but can not remember much about it…
It shot itself down?!? If that was WWII, it would’ve been really embarassing to erase one of your kills from the kill board!
Imagine each heading toward each other at Mach 3! That’s a Mach 6 closing speed! That figures out to be 6,160 feet per second.
Don’t blink!
The plane that shot itself down was an F9F Tiger (or F11F Panther… don’t remember which)It was flying at a gunnery range in a dive, accelerated, then slowed down… The plane landed safely, was repaired, and now resides at the Kalamazoo AirZoo. www.airzoo.org