Originally Posted by
Pontius Navigator
MPN, AFAICR, the Hawk remained in vogue until the need to defend against mass raids was over.
The last time I tried it in a Hawk was in the early '90s supporting Leuchars and Leeming TacEval with predictable results. Flying in cooperation with an F3 was a non-starter really as just keeping-up was a challenge. So most of the time we operated independently as a GCI visual fighter.
It is quite a sobering exercise flying an aircraft with no radar, no RWR or self-protection miles out over the North Sea. Other than for soaking-up shots it was not easy to see what effect we could provide. At medium level a clean Hawk is reasonably quick and agile, but with 2 draggy missiles and a gun it's not that great at all.
If tasked against something as quick as a Bear it is difficult exercise to get an armed Hawk into the right bit of sky, let alone into missile parameters. Tasked against a simulated inbound Su-27 threat we didn't stand a chance. GCI update rate was just about good enough to defeat the first shots some of the time but beyond that we were toast, usually without ever seeing our adversary.