Apologies. I was wrong. From the horses mouth (one of the spooks who flew it):
If you planned to turn the plane at all, the wings were probably at 45. 72 degrees was the "go fast" position. It's top speed in knots was not all that high (730 in training, 780 in combat if needed -- again as I recall) but it could get from 500 kts to that 730 kts very quickly. (The mach limit at 72 degrees was 2.35.) With the wings at 72 degrees, the plane had very little drag. 16 degree was not very stable and we did not maneuver near the AOA limit at all. 45 degrees was better but it would depart controlled flight on you (and spin) if you exceeded the AOA limit (as I unfortunately apparently did twice on one mission). 72 degrees was pretty stable and it was almost impossible to depart in that configuration. You could bring the stick back to right around 32 units (or a little beyond) and it would just sit there and wing rock up to 20-30 degrees bank and slow down moderately quickly. I think we had about a 400 kts and 3 G limit at 16 degrees , and around 6.5 G (maybe 7 G if it was light) at 45 and 72.
Pertaining to a "what if":
It was obvious to us that the MiG-23BN was not designed with turning in mind. Most (but not all) of our OOC (Out of Control) events were in the "BN".
MiG-23 MS and Hard-wing versions of the AF F-4 (F-4C, F-4D, and F-4E) had about the same turn performance as I recall. The F-4E LES (Leading Edge Slats) had better turn performance but bled airspeed at a higher rate. All models of the F-4 gave more warning of impending loss of control (more buffet and wing rock) and the F-4 OOC usually did NOT result in spin whereas almost all MiG-23 OOC resulted in spin.
We knew that the MiG-23 MS and especially the BN were not great "dogfighters" but they were all we had. Our job was to expose the Tactical Air Forces of our Armed Services to the "then current" threat as best we could represent it in a worst case scenario. We did not try to emulate Soviet tactics but rather to show our pilots what the planes we had could do in the hands of a well trained, aggressive pilot who was very familiar with both their tactics and their planes capabilities. (We could sometimes hold our own against an F-4, but we routinely got out butts kicked by almost everything else.) We would have loved to have had the ML to fly but we didn't (we would have especially have liked to have had the High Lark radar). We would have loved to be able to fly only the MS in the air-to-air role but we didn't have enough of them to do that and generate the number of sorties we wanted to fly. So we flew both the MS and the BN air-to air
over from Steve Davies' site