Originally Posted by
BVRAAM
Could you have written a more poorly balanced post?
When you say, "as was the Lightning," I presume you refer to the English Electric Lightning.
At the risk of every WIWOL on the forum hating me forever, no, it really wasn't 'ok' when put into historical context. It was neglected by the political class, and as a consequence it was out-classed by fighters capable of delivering RH weapons.
It had the potential, it just didn't have the investment and its IR weapons were old and dated - the later models of the AIM-9 in those days were a quantum leap in technology.
Maybe in the 60's, the Lightning really was top dog. When RH technology really started to pick up, anything that wasn't providing a similar capability was left behind.
Oh, and let's not even go there with regards to fuel...
just because you don’t like what he said, doesn’t make it “unbalanced”. There’s a reason that no one bought the Lightning. There was an F-104 and the dispatch reliability of the Lightning was less than 70% at any given time.