I seem to recall the early foxbats needed the engines chucking if it was run at full chat for extended periods. So if the measure is airframe loss, a fast run in mikoyans finest might best electrics but it would be in deep maintenance for a few weeks or until the supply of engines ran out.

I was always amazed at the old fashioned electric fit until I was informed by one of the ex bat drivers that it was more resistant to emp than early digital systems, makes me glad I kept my old quad valve amp. At least I can play led zep if the ballon goes up and mrs dagenham can pedal her bicycle fast enough to keep the lights on.

S5

You are thinking of Sputnik

Doubt it, Soviets never made an incursion of the 12 mile limit of UK territoriality airspace with any of their military aircraft. Doubt a Foxbat could make it to the UK from East Germany either as it would have to dog leg around Denmark. Off course civil airliner with a hidden camera on with a filed Flight Plan may have happened though.

SR-71 over the Baltic by any chance PN, Foxbat got within 5 NM of its stern from what I was told by somebody that saw it on a Radar in an unusual location.

http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/wor...anada-29288277

Never mind Lightning, let's see how they got on against F22!

FB - any chance of that URL in full please, or what goes in the gaps

Why Lightning and Foxbat? These are hardly contemporaries.

Surely Lightning and Mig 21 would be more like for like?

Regular occurrence with Aeroflot in Singapore in the late 60's ... the only civil aircraft who never managed to keep on the airway centreline, and thus overflew Tengah 'by accident' ;)

When they did it at night, we used to turn on the undercarriage check lights (large array of upward pointing runway lights at max intensity) in the vague hope it would spoil their photos (or at least let them know we had noticed).

I'm sure we never did anything like that (cough cough)

:cool: ;)

... and 10 characters!

Pembroke;)

HH

The 40 odd NATO / USAF / IIAF aircraft shot down or attacked over Soviet Airspace means we did do it (not counting the 500 odd high altitude balloon recce mission or the successful recce missions that were not intercepted). The problem with western airliners were that they didn't belong to the government (well BOAC and BA were for a while), they were not going to put their passengers at risk or risk the route being shut down by the Soviets after they impounded the aircraft on landing and found a hidden camera on it (or shot it down). Aeroflot airliners on the other hand were state owned and most of the fleet had a military reserve role, so the soviets didn't have that problem. Of course in most NATO countries the KGB only had to go out for a week day drive to get information.

k3k3

Indeed, but not civil and amount of territory outside the Berlin corridor that could be covered was very limited.

MAINJAFAD you might think that but I couldn't possibly comment.

As for doglegging around Denmark, why? If you're going to violate UK airspace why avoid Denmark, Germany, Holland and France? (Belgium is too small :))

BTW, what did Gadaffi need, or use, his Foxbats for; mega phallic symbol?

PN

Dannish, Dutch and West German Nike Hercules batteries may have had some say in the matter of Foxbat overflights of Western Europe.

Stendec,

No way. OVER the UK?


If it hadn't been dealt with by NATO Nikes as MAINJAFAD pointed out, it would have been Bloodhound bait.

Seriously do you think a single intruder, not committing a hostile act, would have been engaged?

I think SACEUR would have been seriously upset. When the Bat ran the Bloodhound, Hawk, Nike gauntlet there was no response by SAM and I am not aware of any Q reaction either. At 30 miles/min not much chance was there?

MPN 11, last week I heard the following story.

At a Russian airfield it was noticed that groups of ground crew were waiting near their jets. It was cold. They had coke braziers burning near the aircraft.

When asked by the western observer why and was it not dangerous, they replied that it was designed to show the aircraft engines had been running. In fact they hadn't run for months.

Most likely not the first time it happened (if it did), The western ROE is a bit more stringent on ID'ing the target before engaging than the Soviets were. Bloodhound 2 in Germany was primarily for low level air defence of the clutch airfields, with a high level role if required. KP on a Foxbat at 70,000ft and Mach 2.5 was 70% at the most favorable intercept geometry with the KP dropping down to zero quite rapidly outside that narrow angle (Foxbat at max chat as a receding target, not a hope in hell) . I doubt HAWK as it was back then was capable. As for the UK, there was no dedicated full time fixed site SAM defence between mid 1968 and late 1975 (and no operational units at all between 1970 and 75 (25 and 41 Sqn missile sections between 68 and 70 were all allocated as a deployable reserve and could only play in UK defence if they were not somewhere else like Malta or Cyprus). Seeing that the majority of the nations that it would have over flown to get to the UK don't have a 30 years rule, I would think that something concrete about a successful Mig 25 overflight would have come out in the public domain by now. Of course the Mig 25 did do known overflights of other places like Iran, Israel and in Africa (and maybe southern Europe)

Wander00,

Canadian fighter jets intercept Russian bombers in Arctic - Canada - CBC News