Northrop F-5 pilots - help request

[tomdocherty72]

To all F-5 pilots. I am researching an article about the Northrop F-5 and I hope, as a pilot on the type, you will be able to help me. It is 55 years since the F-5’s first flight next year, makes you feel old when you read that last bit doesn't it? I would like to know:

The flying characteristics of the F-5.
Was it an easy aircraft to fly?
Was it a good gun platform and was it an effective fighter-bomber?
What were the dangers of flying the type - could you get into trouble easily on the edge of its flight envelope?
Was the cockpit ergonomically easy to work in or was it a bit like being a one-armed paper hanger?
What was its strongest virtue?
What was its greatest vice?
Was it a good training aircraft and aggressor type?

I would also appreciate stories of combat operations, close calls in training and/or poor weather. Also any photos, particularly air-to-air shots you may have. In fact, anything you remember, liked or disliked about the F-5.

Any non-pilot types out there who can help with contacts would also be most helpful. Please send me a private message, to stop the page becoming cluttered with our conversations, if you fit the descriptions above and have information for me.

I look forward to hearing from you if you can help in any way.

[Aire de Drome]

Hello Tom. Just a thought, you could approach the Swiss Luftwaffe, I think the F5s are at Payerne or Sion. Having lived in Switzerland - very close to Dubendorf
in fact - for 22 years I've always found the Swiss people to be very approachable. You'll certainly learn about the flying in bad weather! As an aside, have you seen any of Lionel Charlet's films? Incredible photography and has F5s flying in the Alps plus, of course, the Patrouille Suisse. Great stuff.
Good Luck. AdD

[GreenKnight121]

Also, there is this I posted a few years back: http://www.pprune.org/3153376-post6.html

Reminds me of the F/A-18D - F-5E "near miss" reported in the article by G. L. Koelzer in the February/March 2006 Air & Space.

ACM in 2002 at MCAS Yuma, Arizona. The F-5E crossed the flight path of the Hornet belly-on, from right-to-left at exactly the same flight level. The Hornet pilot reporting both hearing and feeling the J85s of the F-5E.

The instrumentation aboard both aircraft (used for post-flight reconstruction & evaluation of the action) showed the "miss distance" as "1 foot, plus or minus 3 feet"!



I have scanned the article into a WORD ducument, and also the computer-generated "closest-approach" image (which shows the aircraft interpenetrated), but as it is a copywrited article, I don't know if it would be allowable to post it here (I know others do, but I want to know for sure).

If you can't find the article I can e-mail it to you... although it only gives the Hornet driver's comments, not those of the Tiger driver.

[tomdocherty72]

Thanks AdD, I will follow that lead up.

Tom

[tomdocherty72]

Thanks GreenKnight121,

I will not use items that have already been published in the public domain so I doubt this would be of use. Thanks anyway, it makes interesting, and scary, reading.

Tom