It must have been a hell of a learning curve going from a piston fighter to a jet fighter, especially one that was 2 or 3 times as fast as say a Spit.
Wasn't it in '63 that trials were performed - mock dogfights if you will - between a Lightning and a Spitfire (PR19 IIRC) to see how to shoot a piston-engined warbird down, as the Indonesians were using Mustangs against us?
As for the Phantom, I'm going to cop a lot of flak for this.. It was never a dogfighter; it didn't get slats until the F-4E (and never on the RAF Spey-engined F4-K or the J79'd F-4S) and no gun (yes I know the later Lightnings dispensed with them too). It just seemed to do a lot of things moderately well; the F-8 was a better 'pure' fighter, the A-7 a better bomber with CCIP etc.
Now the Lightning F-53 with gun pods...
