Vendee
As others have already said on here, the F3 at the end showed that you could 'polish a turd'. The early F2 was very poor and the F3 at introduction to service was also poor (but better than F2).
The F14A and F15A was equally poor. The Tomcat-A RADAR was pretty much a 'blue water' only piece of kit and coupled to its engine issues then it wasn't a good choice. The Eagle-A was equally poor to start with - to quote a mate coming back off exchange on an early Eagle Sqn he said the RADAR wasn't much better than the Lightning!
However, the US had way more money to spend on their underperforming aircraft. The Tomcat-D with "Bombcat" mods was excellent and the F-15C Eagle is undoubtedly the best jet combat aircraft ever produced with the Beagle (that's the bomb carrying Eagle - not everyone's favourite Pruner!) proves that it is easier to make a good bomber from a fighter than the other way around! I understand that BAe sold the ADV to the Govt by picking areas of the performance envelope that the F14 and F15 couldn't match - low level loiter (due to the high-bypass engines), low level acceleration and top speed (due to high wing-loading and variable geometry). Competition was duly won and the rest was history!
No, the F3 never fired a shot in anger. She was at the very front in the early days of GW1 in 1990 - flying CAPs to deter Saddam rolling into Saudi (as we subsequently found out, this was his intended aim). She and her crews aquitted herself well considering she had no self-defence aids and a pretty poor RADAR. Then came Stage 1+ with loads of bells and whistles - a real improvement and were it not for an oversight of the importance of a Mode 4 interrogator then she was more than capable of sitting up front with the rest of the fighters of the day. However, her NVG fit gave her a unique capability for use in GW1 - sadly the Iraqis didn't fly too much at night! So these were the big reasons why Stage 1+ F3 'sucked the hind teat' in GW1 - lack of a Mode 4 interrogator and a great night capability.
The F3 replaced the F4 for QRA in the UK and Falkland Islands and performed intercepts required of it come rain or shine.
Moving onto Bosnia, many of us found Serbian helos flying in the 'No Fly Zone' but there was no appetite for us to engage from the UN or NATO chains of command. The first air engagements by NATO in Feb 1994 were by F16s that were flying the same timings that the F3s of 29(F) Sqn had been flying for the previous 7 days or so - a day later 6 Jastreb and 2 Orao attacked Bosnia and the AWACS vectored the F16s to intercept. Had the F3s been flying that day they would have been more than a match for the Jastreb (which is not much better than a Jet Provost) and the Orao (like a Jaguar aircraft). During Op DENY FLIGHT the F3 flew operationally with the Towed RADAR Decoy (TRD) - the first operational fast jet to do so successfully and the US liked it so much that they brought in their own version a few years later. Yet again, the F3 was supreme at night and also in bad weather (as it was designed to be).
Around the time of Op DESERT FOX the F3 was sent to protect the High Value Air Assets (HVAA) of AWACS, Nimrod and RIVET JOINT from continued attempts by Saddam's air forces to bring one down. It also flew sweep/escort for various bomber/SEAD/Recce packages and flew as far North as the RoE would allow (just South of Baghdad). The TRD gave it greater protection from surface to air threats than any other self defence system employed on any fast jet, the correlation of fighter RADAR primary tracks and JTIDS tracks from other assets was 2nd to none at that time and the on board Radar Warning and Homing Reciever (RHWR) was still the best fitted in any fast jet (better than GR1/GR4). During this time there were several near engagements of Iraqi MiGe (including my own) that were within a couple of miles of launching missiles only for the Iraqi to turn tail and head back over the delineating line of the No Fly Zone - exciting times...but we did our job without having to launch a £500k missile.
Roll on to GW2. Whilst the Iraq No Fly Zone work was ongoing the F3 Op Evaluation Unit (OEU) trialled successfully the use of the TIALD targetting pod on the F3 - it could now do swing role if needed (answering Vendee's criticism of being a 'one trick pony'). However, like others before, it was not taken forward as it might 'endanger' the GR4 modification program. Furthermore, the F3 was modified into the 'EF-3' variant; capable of firing the Air Launched Anti Radiation Missile (ALARM) reactively to pop-up RADAR threats using the RHWR and JTIDS to triangulate in near real-time and it also had a stand-off RADAR jamming capability for self protection or for protecting strike packages - in all a British 'Wild Weasel'. It is rumoured that the British Air Commander, himself a Tornado GR man, did not want the EF3 as it would likely see more GR squadrons be disbanded after the war if the EF3 was a success - he was probably right, it would have and he was an astute man.
As BEagle says, towards the end of its life the F3 was as good as we were going to allow it to get - it couldn't be allowed to be better than Typhoon or the axe might fall in a Defence Review on the new wonder jet. Granted the F3 was a high-wing loaded and high bypass engined bomber aircraft converted into an interceptor, but it was still a good combat aircraft when it left service and I would still happily go to a shooting war today in the old girl. She did have her foibles, but so does every jet!
In short, no combat losses of a F3, no losses of an aircraft whilst F3 was 'on watch' and it met an extraordinary number of its taskings from CAOCs around the globe. That's not to be sneered at and I hope the above shows that it was so much more than a 'Cold War Interceptor'!
Aplogies for the history lesson!
LJ
PS. In a few more years I might be able to tell you about the other things the jet could do, but that would see me going to jail right now if I told you! Doubtless other jets are the same, but I was quite amazed at some of the things our boffins had come up with.