Cor wot a good thread
I have nothing of significance to add to what has been said by my betters here but for those who are not sure about the desirability of very good manoeuvrability imagine how you would feel going out to do your duty in say an F3 when you knew they had MiG-29s.
This situation applied for real at the start of the Gulf War and there were some very unhappy chaps looking to speak to anybody who had flown a MiG-29.
L&S
Re the point that sustained turn rate rather than instantaneous is important I agree it can make a very great difference in a simple 1 v 1 situation when all else is similar. On a light note, when we started to deliver the Hawk to the RAF weapons trainers, we found their car parks full of bumper stickers saying Keep Hunter stamp out Hawk. Then a few weeks later (when they had started to collect new aircraft themselves) one of their arch Hunter fans (and a v. good operator indeed) took me aside in the Dunsfold coffee bar and remarked that all fights Hawk v Hawk finished up higher than where they started, unlike the Hunter ones that always ended up on the deck. He was clearly embarrassed in asking why this should be. P****, I said “What do you do when you can’t handle the G available any more?” “Climb” he said. “Think about it” I said.
In the 70’s to sit in a Hawk and realise it could be flown at low level on its G limit until it ran out of fuel was a novel experience. The RAF had not previously experienced the advantages of a low induced drag wing. And neither I suspect had the USAF. One day a USAF General got up my nose by declaring you could not fight a war unless the aerodrome was big enough to land a C5 to keep things going. As this was just before I was going to take him for a ride in G-VTOL, I excused myself, told the hangar to put the jump-jet back in the shed and wheel out G-HAWK instead. I asked Andy Jones to fly him at 6G until he requested him to stop and awaited events. At lunch the General turned on me and demanded to know why the Hawk had no induced drag “It was our first fixed price contract Sir, and we ran out of money” I replied. Our General Manager immediately coughed up a prawn but Mr USAF was too busy transmitting his next Logistics point to consider what I had said.