Air-to-Air dogfighter champ?
 

Question to all of the F-15, F-16, and F-18 fighter pilots out there...which jet holds the advantage in dogfighting (assuming the pilots are relatively equal in experience)? Does one do better in a slower knife fight and the other in a higher speed fight? My theory is the Viper has the advantage in medium to high speeds and the Hornet has the advantage in slow speed because of its good high-alpha capabilities. I am thinking the Eagle does best at high altitudes, since it cannot compete in turning performance with the other two jets. Although the F-15 has a great thrust-to-weight ratio, which I am assuming pilots will use to their advantage. I left the F-22 out of this question since it probably has all three of the other jets clearly beat.

But why not the Harrier?



Running, err walking swiftly for me coat and hat

You do mean the Sea Harrier, surely?

Well, forget the rest, the Eagle has over a hundred aerial victories with precisely ZERO losses. No other plane can beat that!

GF

But in practice it has lost!

Practice makes perfect and its record is perfect.

GF

If that was the case, you'd think the oxygen system would work.

And that there'd be more than a few of them.

It's all fun and games having the shiny Cadillac until the Wild Bunch rides in on their grubby but numerous Harleys and is drinking in your O'Club

(ok, All Ranks Club now. What could possibly go wrong there...)

I would like to state categorically that I have lost to just about everyone in Sea Harrier, Harrier and F-18.

Hope that helps.;)

The F-15 has most real kills. End of story...

The rest is B/S

In that case the Sopwith Camel trumps it easily.
Credited with an unprecedented 1,300 to 3,000 aircraft kills (sources vary) during The Great War (1914-1918).

the others are all B/S:)

Does that include other fighters and air forces such as the IAF or the IDF?

The F15 has been hit on at least 2 occasions by a sidewinder, one causing the loss of the aircraft. Admittedly these were both blue on blue incidents!

Not sure the question makes sense as asked.

All 3 have difference performance envelopes with areas where they are better or worse than the other. The aim in combat being to drag your opponent into fighting in a corner of the envelope where you have advantage.

Assuming equal pilots with a limited time window the result should be a draw.

Most times it's a stand-off; the pilot with best low level performance trying to persuade the higher to come down; those with better sustained turn rate trying to get into a turning fight, the other playing the vertical.

The other factors in the real world are the number of weapons you have and fuel state/distance from base. Get fired out before the other guy and you're on a hiding from nothing and egressing from a fight on a low fuel state without getting shot is one of the hardest things to do.

Bye and bye, I highly recommend " " by Robert Shaw

Combat
 

Keeping it simple, and I mean dogfighting equals visual combat. Having flown against all 3 types in an F-14B I would say The F-18. My tactics against the F-15 was to drag him low, I had better turn performance with the wings forward and the more powerful engines helped keep the energy up. F-16, drag him slow and get him to hit his alpha limiter - the F-14 had not such thing. The F-18 however always seemed to have the edge no matter where you fought and it tended to be who made the first mistake lost. It was however great fun.:)

Really?
 

How about any German fighter pilot who survived WW2 without being killed or captured with more than fifty kills?

Galland a good place to start.

The TWU at Brawdy used to have a quote from him on the front of their student handbook...

Your discussion above reminds me of Red Flag 94 where various fighter pilot types would let the package get whacked rather than risk getting shot down themselves...

Combat v Red Flag
 

Bigpants, was that aimed at my post. I was just talking about 1v1. The tactics for Red Flag etc is totally different and not normally visual combat.

This channel had the Mustang at number one slot albeit 'of all time'.

Military Channel: Wars, Weapons, Games, Top Ten Lists

In a 1v1 visual fight, the 16 and 15 should out-turn the 18. The 16 is pretty much half an F-15 and they are very closely matched. One area where the f-15 wins is in the slow fight where the F-16 flight control system starts to back off pitch input whereas the F-15 system gives you full stabilator authority.

At the back end of the F-15 RTU course our students used to go up against the F-16 Guard units and would generally either win or escape.

F16
 

Courtney, the problem was seeing the little b@st@rds:sad: Size does matter!