Interesting read - Flying Jet Fighters after Vietnam

[ExRAFRadar]

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a476975.pdf

[sandiego89]

Agrees- some good stuff in there about the lessons of Vietnam. Although there is still the debate about the high/low mix, it seems like the F-15 and F-16 got it right in many aspects.

[Thrust Augmentation]

Most interesting indeed :ok:

[Fonsini]

The poor old F-4 never gets much love does it. Poor weapons, poor maneuverability, smoky engines, noisy cockpit, and what was all that stuff about pilots cutting plastic oil sample tubes and jamming them onto
switches.

Can any F-4 pilots weigh in on that, are the Phantom's switches really "fiddly small" - did you accidentally cut off the rear seater's oxygen instead of dropping the wing tanks etc ?

[Rhino power]

The poor old F-4 never gets much love does it...

Really? Maybe you should join one or two of the more popular F-4 groups on facebook, I can assure you it receives massive amounts of love from former crew, maintainers and fans alike! -RP

-RP

[IcePaq]

Everything at dtic.mil is interesting.

Here is the main page where you can search on anything from the mach 10 sprint missile to the hibex upstage missile that maneuvered at 300G lateral acceleration to the entire story on chernobyl............to super old airplane tech.

"chernobyl notebook" will net you the first link which is the entire book written by an insider on the events of the chernobyl excursion/explosion and the days after.

Amazing stuff on airfiol design..........landing gear drag....etc.

[tartare]

What a great read - polished it off in one sitting!
And the Jeremiah Weed story at the end...!

[ORAC]

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[BossEyed]

For a 2001 report, some of the careful wording used in Part III "The Training Revolution" is verging on the artistic, given what we public now know about CONSTANT PEG (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4477th_Test_and_Evaluation_Squadron). :ok:

[Jamieone]

Excellent insight there, thanks for the link. I hadn't realized it was USAF policy in the early days to man both F4 cockpits with pilots.

[Fonsini]

The radar/heat switch had the plastic extender tube routinely attached in the C/D so you could 'slap' it without looking during more attention demanding maneuvering. 'Ergonomic', the C & D cockpits were not. Even the F-100 & F-105 could cycle weapons modes with a button on the stick grip.

The 556 mod in the E put a 3 position pinky switch on the left throttle for radar/heat/gun.

....'fiddly small', however does apply to anything in the F-16A cockpit, including the amount of residual space.

Many thanks - the report made it sound as if the plastic extenders were a feature of many an F-4 cockpit. Probably a good reason for not putting flight critical switches near more mundane selectors.

[OK465]

Unmentioned by the author, one consequence of USAF putting enthusiastic guys in the F-4 backseat just out of pilot training with shiny hard-earned 'pilot' wings was that the ones that didn't opt for a second, 'front seat' tour were very often assigned to then ATC as T-38 instructor pilots as a dubious reward for service....

....with little actual handling experience other than to grab the F-4 backseat stick and fly some formation on the way home.

At the time, T-38 heavyweight closed traffic to a single-engine pattern and eventual touch & go immediately after takeoff was part of the student syllabus....both day & night.

At Del Rio, we lost two ex-F-4 backseater T-38 instructors (plus the studs) in final turn accidents, one day & one night. Same occurred at other bases to the point that heavyweight SEs were eventually only done straight-in. Solution maybe not totally fitting the problem.

Navy didn't put pilots in the backseat simply because there was no stick, however in a way a more realistic philosophy. When we'd fly against the F-14s, the RIOs would love to swap with our WSOs to be able to actually grab a stick on the way home.

Mid 60s, out of my pilot training class of about 60 graduates, almost half ended up pipeline in the back of an F-4. The common graduation joke was "What color F-4 did you get?"

[Fonsini]

Mid 60s, out of my pilot training class of about 60 graduates, almost half ended up pipeline in the back of an F-4. The common graduation joke was "What color F-4 did you get?"

Were you also allowed to nominate which aircraft type you wanted to fly based on your position in the graduating class (i.e. based on your graduating score) back then ?

[Rick777]

The first USAF pilot training class to not pick assignments by class ranking was 74-05. I was in it.