Tomcat Baby!
 

the last of the Grumman navy cats, 5 or 6-0 kill rate(in US hands), badass looks that could kill, Aim54 Phoenix missile...a flight envelope that isn't affected by it's payload ,supersonic at any altitude, only fighter to score an air to air kill....with a bomb...

unfortunately retired before it became obsolete..damned bugs..

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I guess the answer lies in the title....the greatest fighter..

Right there we could remove certain great 'fighters' because they were designed to do other things as well.. so there goes the F4 (interceptor), the F14 (Fleet Defence Missile Carrier primarily concerned with bombers) and the F18 (just a dog)...

(This is just a for instance mind....we can argue the toss on that definition)...

Gets rid of the Harrier as well....mind you it was never a fighter..the Sea Harrier was..

Leaves us with the planes designed solely to fight other fighters...

In the piston arena its a very close run thing... the Hurricane, Spit, P-51 and Bearcat.. along with the Bf (and Me)109.... the Fw190, and the Yak 9 are all major candidates... the Hurri and 109 because they were the first of the many... the others because they could argueably be the 'best ever'....

In early jets the Sabre and ****** (MiG 15) are up there...as well as the Hunter....after that the MiG 21 and the 'Sader are candidates and then the F-15 and F-16....with the MiG 29 and Su 27..

The F-22 rounds up the list...

The F-22 is probably the most able, but is it the best? Both the 29 and 27 are very impressive.. but are they quantifiably better than the 15 and 16? Of those I'd say the 16 was a 'better fighter'.....but not necessarily a better war fighting machine...single engine, single seat.. small and light...agile and inexpensive..

If we include all the F tagged aircraft then the F4 and F14 are really right up there...the F4 because it was good at so many things... the F14 because it had the longest 'reach' ever... and still managed to haul bombs when required and mix it with dedicated ACM machines...

(As a side note the potential of the 262 is highly debated. Certainly more in the dedicated fighter role would have been interesting.. but certain Luftwaffe sources argue that because of their inherent weaknesses, engines and front landing gear, training and pilot quality would have prevented the full advantages of the a/c to be exploited.. meaning that even with more a/c, the overall effectiveness would not necessarily have increased proportionally).

F-4?
did someone actually say F-4?
Now that's interesting. Everything I've heard or read blasted the F-4 as a being a huge mistake. No gun, no cannon, missles only. Dogfighting was supposedly a thing of the past afterall.
Before the F-4 our w/l record was about 10 to 1, after the F-4 came out it was down to 4 to 1. Then they came up with top gun school, got it back to where it should have been.
What that just because of policy, or did it actually have something to do with the F-4 being a bad plane as the pilots said on the history channel?

How many fighter jocks had 38 or 40 kills?
A couple I know of, in a P-38. Darn fast for a piston plane, plus it wass turbocharged. gotta love that.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1163359602.jpg

F-86 and mig 15 were from the same captured plans,

they're both from WW2 Germany.


I love the look of the '86

the f14 rocks!

Anyone hear of the fighter that never was? The Avro Arrow. Four prototypes were built then the project was killed by the Canadian Prime Minister at the time (Diefenbaker). All prototypes cut up,all plans destroyed,andthe company went under.

well hitler was a fool BUT
the jet engines in 1944 only lasted 5 to 20 hours
and they could not build enuff fast enuff to supply the airframes they had
then there are the fuel supply problems they just didnot have fuel to fly what few jets they had
and the other big problem was trained pilots
nazi's ended the war with more aircraft then they had engines for but without fuel or guys to fly them
and aircraft no matter how good do not fly without engines, pilots, or fuel
thats why at wars end they had 1000 or more 262's built
but never had a 100 combat ready

263 was a streached 163 and just blew up with a bigger bang
163/263 killed more germans then allied aircrew

Yes, have heard of the A.V. Roe Arrow - magnificent piece of engineering killed by backstabbing and politics. For the interested: http://www.avroarrow.org/

As for the "best", well, form follows function so I'm in the "it depends" category and I like them ALL. Looking at it from the standpoint of what would I want to fly if I could only fly one -- it would be the FW-190.

As great as the Me262 looked, it wasn't exactly a 'great'. In terms of a useable aircraft I would have thought the Gloucester Meteor would be a better jet fighter, although it wasn't as fast and didn't look as futuristic.

I have always been fascinated by the German fighting machines from WWII. From a technological aspect they seemend to be quite a way ahead of anyone else - I guess that's what desperation does for innovation. Wasn't it shortage of decent materials that was the problem with a lot of these advaced designs? Mix that with a rush to get them operational and a lack of experienced pilots and they were never going to have a major impact. Probably pretty lucky from the allied's point of view.

P38 was the original widow maker I believe. Me262 was a breakthrough jet with quite nice lines (the Komet was fugly).

I'm with the "depends" camp. F4 was hard to beat as an all around flying tank. I loved the lines of the F104, and also had a soft spot for the F102/106 series. And even the A6. I think the 60's era jets were special...they each had a sense of style. Once the F14 came along, seemed like everything cued off of that.

Except for the *352* :eek: aircraft that had the misfortune of running into this guy:

http://www.acepilots.com/misc_hartmann.html

No, the P-38 was the Cadillac, or Rolls Royce, of fighter aircraft. Easy to fly, trike gear, boosted controls, roll up windows, and very beefy.

My father flew 65 combat missions in the F5 (photo recon) version.

But this was about jets.

My vote goes to the F-16. It has to be the highest development of the pure single seat fighter ever.

My favorite jet fighter - F-86 Sabre Jet:

http://www.warbirdalley.com/images/F86-1.jpg

My favorite modern fighter - F-15 Eagle:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...5c-990429a.jpg

A few quotes from fas.org

No USAF aircraft design solely conceived as an air superiority fighter had become reality since the F-86 Sabre.

The F-15 Eagle is an all-weather, extremely maneuverable, tactical fighter designed to gain and maintain air superiority in aerial combat. The Eagle's air superiority is achieved through a mixture of maneuverability and acceleration, range, weapons and avionics. The F-15 has electronic systems and weaponry to detect, acquire, track and attack enemy aircraft while operating in friendly or enemy-controlled airspace. Its weapons and flight control systems are designed so one person can safely and effectively perform air-to-air combat. It can penetrate enemy defense and outperform and outfight current or projected enemy aircraft.

The F-15's superior maneuverability and acceleration are achieved through high engine thrust-to-weight ratio and low wing loading. Low wing-loading (the ratio of aircraft weight to its wing area) is a vital factor in maneuverability and, combined with the high thrust-to-weight ratio, enables the aircraft to turn tightly without losing airspeed.

And my favorite fact:
Fifty-thousand pounds of thrust in a 48,000-pound fighter meant that, for the first time in aviation history, a thrust-to-weight ratio exceeding 1:1 had been achieved. Many airplanes could travel straight up, but the F-15 was the first to be able to accelerate while doing so.

But reality intrudes:
The F-15C has an air combat victory ratio of 95-0 making it one of the most effective air superiority aircraft ever developed. The US Air Force claims the F-15C is in several respects inferior to, or at best equal to, the MiG-29, Su-27, Su-35/37, Rafale, and EF-2000, which are variously superior in acceleration, maneuverability, engine thrust, rate of climb, avionics, firepower, radar signature, or range. Although the F-15C and Su-27P series are similar in many categories, the Su-27 can outperform the F-15C at both long and short ranges. In long-range encounters, with its superiorr radar the Su-27 can launch a missile before the F-15C does, so from a purely kinematic standpoint, the Russian fighters outperform the F-15C in the beyond-visual-range fight. The Su-35 phased array radar is superior to the APG-63 Doppler radar in both detection range and tracking capabilities. Additionally, the Su-35 propulsion system increases the aircraft’s maneuverability with thrust vectoring nozzles. Simulations conducted by British Aerospace and the British Defense Research Agency compared the effectiveness of the F-15C, Rafale, EF-2000, and F-22 against the Russian Su-35 armed with active radar missiles similar to the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). The Rafale achieved a 1:1 kill ratio (1 Su-35 destroyed for each Rafale lost). The EF-2000 kill ratio was 4.5:1 while the F-22 achieved a ratio of 10:1. In stark contrast was the F-15C, losing 1.3 Eagles for each Su-35 destroyed.

The F-15 is a fantastic machine. Never lost an engagement, but it's really important because it is the first (iirc) fighter to be designed in accordance with the methodology established by John Boyd. He knew - and proved - that we could not only establish essential parameters for air combat, but design the fighter to meet them. Revolutionized acm, and his air combat principles (like working inside your opponent's decision making cycle) are being studied in business schools.

http://www.aviation-history.com/airmen/boyd.htm

It's also the only fighter that I know of that managed the feat of flying with one wing missing. At least twice.

http://www.uss-bennington.org/phz-nowing-f15.html

Fabulous bird!

The Martin B-26 Marauder was the original widow maker, many of the pilots trying to master the Marauder had no previous twin-engined experience. In 1942, a series of training accidents took place stateside which placed the future of the entire Marauder program in doubt. Most of these accidents took place during takeoff or landing. The increases in weight that had been gradually introduced on the production line had made the wing loading of the Marauder progressively higher and higher, resulting in higher stalling and landing speeds. Veteran pilots in combat overseas had enough experience that they could handle these higher speeds, but new trainees at home had serious problems and there were numerous accidents, causing the Marauder to earn such epithets as "The Flying Prostitute", "The Baltimore Whore", "The Flying Vagrant", or "The Wingless Wonder", these names being given because the B-26's small wing area appeared to give it no visible means of support. Other derisive names being given to the B-26 were "The Widow Maker", "One-Way Ticket", "Martin Murderer", "The Flying Coffin", "The Coffin Without Handles", and the "B-Dash Crash". In particular, there were so many takeoff accidents at MacDill Field at Tampa, FL during early 1942 that the phrase "One a Day Into Tampa Bay" came to be a commonplace lament.

The greatest fighter ever was the P51 Mustang - almost 16,000 produced. 4900+ enemy air to air kills!!! 4100+ enemy air to ground kills! 11:1 kill ratio nothing else can compare!

Tomcat did it as well

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and landed safely too , just like the F15

as far as acm abilities, they say the Tomcat in a close knife fight has plenty of tricks up it's sleeve,the engines are wide apart ,and the Cat just throttle steers in a turn... outside engine max,inside engine idling... spoken to pilots who flew em, they say the Cat outturns most fighters that way, and the cat never has to dump it's external stores or fuel tanks for a fight... unlike an F16 who can't do squat , can't go max speed, looses it's agility , etc, with them fat fuel tanks, or even an F15 with mucho stores...it's something to do with the airframe with the 2 engines apart, that let's it take off with all it's gear, and fight with all it's gear...

Interesting man, this Col. Boyd. The modern text book is Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering by Robert L. Shaw which everyone interested in this subject ought to add to their library.

In the mid-1990's a bunch of Macintosh owners met at a hotel suite during Mac Expo, provided by Graphic Simulations authors and purveyors of the then state of the art F-18 Hornet simulator. We wired up four PowerMac's to work together which enable formation flying with another player against two others in formation, or four flying completely on their own. We had sticks, separate HOTAS (throttles), and rudder pedals. For the day, when fast internet connections were just getting the nod, it's was pretty interesting. One of the enthusiasts was a former USAF F-16 pilot and no matter what I did, he could wax my arse every time. I'd say he learned what Boyd and Shaw had to teach very well.

My father transitioned to the F-86 while in the North Carolina Air National Guard, sometime in the early 1950's, his previous aircraft being the F-51 (formerly P-51). While he never cared for the P-51, he wasn't much enthused about the F-86 either, except for it's speed.

I guess it's experience based, once you've logged hundreds (maybe thousands) of hours in a P-38; a P-51 and F-86 are positively boring in comparison.:D

F4 Phantom II
Tough lookin airplane, one of the most lethal looking war machines of all times. Incredibly fast, powerful, tuff, with unrivaled BVR capabilities. Not a good stall fighter, but no fighter is both. Fought well in Vietnam, a war it was not designed for. Like any US weapons system folks love to talk smack about them. Definitive point, designed in the 50's and still in service today.