jtrain609
Antisocial Monster
The Iran Iraq war.
Iran AF F-4/F-5/F-14
- Thread starter MikeD
- Start date
The Iran Iraq war.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Doesn't really work that way...but I suppose you know that.
USMCmech
Well-Known Member
You can hang just about any ordinance on just about any airplane. The Argentinians used C-130s as bombers during the Falklands War. The USMC is using Mavericks off of C-130s today. The Germans used the F-104 as a bomber for several years.
The F-4 was designed for the Navy as an interceptor, but it was also used as a passable bomber by both USN and USAF. That doesn't mean it really excelled at the air to ground mission.
Springer
Well-Known Member
Hassan Bakhtiari was my roommate in UPT.....for about two days. I arrived on base and assigned a two bedroom WWII BOQ unit. As I walked in there was Hassan on the floor in the living room cooking a hamburger in an electric skillet full of Crisco. I told the powers that be, no way and rented an apartment in downtown Tempe for the next year.
I don't think he ever graduated. I know he washed back several classes.
Post UPT, the guys going to F-4s, did they go to the RTU at George/MacDill/Luke (whichever one was operating then), or did they only do UPT here and RTU back in Iran? How about the F-14 guys?
Similarly, did the F-5 guys stay at Willie with the 425th there for transition?
Springer
Well-Known Member
Not sure as he was the only Irainian I knew and I don't think he made it through UPT. Many of the foreign students washed out. The Vietnamese stayed at Willie to do F-5 transition. The rumor was the cat population decreased when they were on base.
Off topic: We had two Danes that made it through but one washed out of F-35 Draken school when he went back to Denmark. The other was suppose to fly F-104's but I think flew a C-47. He ended up flying for SAS and dead stuck a MD-80 gear up into a snow covered field after injesting ice from the wings on takeoff. He is now a member of their Parliament
The Saudi we had washed out and they had to forcefully throw him out of the US.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Gotcha, just thought you were trolling up an intra-service schlong-measuring contest.
The reality is that there just is no difference between services when it comes to that sort of thing. Obviously there are differences in specific aircraft capabilities, but because pilot skill and opportunity plays such a large role in 1 v 1 aerial combat, those differences in capabilities can often be negated or offset. It is similar to predicting the winner of a football game based just on historical stats.
In addition, there just aren't much in the way of opportunities to have a "bar brawl" where blue service and white service pilots can just bash it out to see who is best. Training time, gas, and money is so limited that opportunities to fight dissimilar aircraft have to be used to support very specific training objectives and scenarios...and those scenarios are rarely unrestricted 1 v 1 fights to see who wins, unfortunately.
Most of the time, these aerial engagements are set up with specific formations, specific tactics, specific weapons and specific scenarios for both the "good guys" and the "bad guys", and are designed to test or practice those specific items. Many times those scenarios include artificial restrictions on the capabilities of the adversaries to mimic the specific capabilities of real-world adversary aircraft or require specific tactics to be flown that mimic real world adversary tactics. Those scenarios are also often training grounds for pilots upgrading to higher responsibilities (like becoming a multi-ship flight lead, or qualifying as a new wingman, or upgrading to instructor), and as such the "good guys" might not even execute their own tactics at a proficiency level that a front-line, experienced pilot would do in real life. Thus, the "winners" and "losers" of these engagements can't just be taken in a vacuum as a referendum on who is best or which aircraft is best (which often happens, especially with the press looking at fighters of different countries going through large force exercises).
I have had only two opportunities in my entire career to have an opportunity to fight 1 v 1, "full up vs full up", against a USN aircraft. Both times it was against F-14s out of NAS Oceana, in an event called the "East Coast Strike Fighter Shootout" back in the early 00s. I've written about that experience before here on JC; I won one fight and lost the other.
So, despite all of the intra-service chest thumping about who is best that often takes place, when you strip away the bravado and just look at the capabilities of the pilots in the real world, they're all really pretty much just as equal as comparing the average capabilities of fighter pilots of the same service. No difference.
Jimflyfast
lurker first class
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
It is pretty much understood that if everything else is equal, winning a dog fight is about not doing anything stupid and recognizing when your adversary has done something stupid. Given common training among the services and no obvious asymmetries in ability, such demonstrations would probably be of little utility. Even if there were measureable differences, you'd have to put together a pretty large study to prove it and those differences might be acceptable and reasonable given operational priorities. I'll defer to the experiences of those in fighter communities, but you probably learn more from a situational exercise than a head-to-head dogfight that often leads to lots of big circles in the sky before everybody runs low on fuel.
In the 60's and 70's, many claimed that the best AF pilots matched up well with the best Navy/Marine pilots while the average Navy/Marine pilot probably had an edge on the average AF pilot. By the time the 80's roles around, everybody was pretty much on the same page.
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
...P-3's can and have carried Sidewinders.
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USMCmech
Well-Known Member
This is a joke right?
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
No joke.
A
Adler
Guest
Boris Badenov
Fortis Leader
Except the Chair Force plane was still on the ground because either the pilot wasn't happy with his haircut or fashion-scarf or someone had forgotten to do the FOD walk on the 15,000ft runway he needed for takeoff.
Come on, did you really think we were going to let you guys off without a little pursefight?
*push* *push*.
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
With limited Tricare benefits for counseling, I don't want to push too hard.Except the Chair Force plane was still on the ground because either the pilot wasn't happy with his haircut or fashion-scarf or someone had forgotten to do the FOD walk on the 15,000ft runway he needed for takeoff.
Come on, did you really think we were going to let you guys off without a little pursefight?
*push* *push*.
Itchy
Well-Known Member
That prop looks feathered there...?but I mean...Caravans also carry Hellfires
Pilot Fighter
Well-Known Member
You missed my obscure 70's reference. I didn't think it would get past @Boris Badenov.
Boris Badenov
Fortis Leader
I'm too wedded to the circle of fifths to even acknowledge that sort of blasphemy. Well, that and I couldn't come up with a similarly clever rejoinder, oh the pity and shame.