Originally Posted by
SCAFITE
top of the pops being F4's with just short of 800 followed by the F105.
The early F4 had a fatal combat design weakness. The PFCs were controlled by single jacks fed by two separate hydraulic systems. Given the failure on one system then all controls remained operable - at least that was the theory.
In practice a hit on a jack meant loss of all flying control hydraulics and the aircraft developing the characteristics of a powered brick. The hydraulics were then reconfigured to feed utilities to the jacks and split the flying control hydraulics. This are a great improvement and it became possible to fly the beast but it still was more like a brick.