mkellytx

Yes, the Dash One does describe the basics of the ground map and TA modes, but isn't much help for radar weapons releases. Not that it really matters since that was mostly used for the, "Alone and unafraid," SIOP role, Ryan's Raiders aside. Dive toss didn't become a thing for conventional weapons till the F-4, even then many Phantoms went old school up North and depressed the gunsight. There's tons of pull for a real Weasel, but way to much focus on the more finished products, namely the -105G & F-4G. Granted, a Viper with HTS does SEAD, but I think Budman, my old Vice Wing Commander, would beat me up if I called that a Weasel . He was a Bear in one of the first flights south of Bagdad in '91. Before the G's the first real Weasel should be a Wild Weasel I, F-100F with the -25/26, no Shrikes, trying to stay ahead of the Thuds, with a Bear talking the pilot's eyes onto the target to deliver Zuni's marking the target for the Thud killers. Next should be Wild Weasel III, the F-105F with the -25/26, -142 and the other nice toys in back, followed by the AGM-78's. One advantage of the stepped development is that it would give time to build the logic for an AI Bear, at least on the -105 Weasels. The F-4G with its Cheerios display maybe much easier logic, but much harder to get a hold of. At least a lot of the workings of the -100/105 systems are described in great detail in First In, Last Out: Stories by the Wild Weasels. It's a must read for anyone interested in Weaseling.

The Hun should be within the realm of the possible, regardless of what the museum has.. The fire control system is basically the same as the late model Sabers. Additionally, there are civilian operated F-100F's still out there. Might require some money, not to mention NAA was assimilated by the Boeing... Understandably most of the pull is for the D model Thud, as it carried the bulk of the load for Rolling Thunder, but since you mentioned the Hung what kind of interest would there be for a B model Thud? The functionality of the fire control system would be essentially the same as the Hun or Saber, the engine and aero would be high performance Thud but without the additional 1,500-2,000 extra pounds of the D model. It would be a real hotrod with pretty straight forward systems and most of the documents needed is out there open source.

The -105G and EF-4C had completely different systems. By most accounts the EF-4C was not very effective, had lots of teething problems and was Shrike only. They did see service in Linebacker. Once the F-4G came along they went to the Terra Haute guard unit and lost the SEAD mission. FWIW the -105G's stuck around longer in the SEAD role finally retiring in '83 with the Robbin's guard unit. Edit: The fit, AL/ANR-25/26 + ER-142 was the sit kit as the -105F, but there wasn't enough room in the Phantom for the black boxes and those went into a pod in the forward Sparrow well, which caused all kinds of problems for vibe and acoustics. By the time they got it working the -105G's had much better kit and the F-4G was on the horizon even better kit.

Keep in mind the office within USAF, the history guys probably won't know how to get to the technical data, which isn't to say there aren't places to research. Air Force Material Command has a technical document library, so does Edwards AFB, Maxwell AFB & Tinker AFB deal with Technical Orders, so they may have archives. There's also Defense Technical Information Center which has a decent online search function. There are also some organizations/societies that could be helpful, namely the Red River Rats and the Society of Wild Weasels. The data needed probably still exists, it's just a matter of resources and time to find and collect them. Museums and CAF are another resource that might exist as well. I know for a fact that the CAF has a F-105D in Midland, I saw it every week when I traveled. The radar was built by North American, so technical data may be much easier to come by. Not to mention it was similar to many other radars also built for other aircraft in the 50's and 60's. The basic modes like ground mapping, terrain avoidance, beacon, etc. should be doable. As for the FCS, ISTR seeing some basics for the lead computing functionality in one of the documents. Bomb modes, mostly Dive Toss and LABS were SIOP. so not really that applicable to conventional which was mostly manually depressed recital, the drop tables from the dash 34-1 would do a lot... The question that bears asking is if there is someone/an organization that has the time a resources with the expectation of a reasonable return on investment?

FWIW one of my old colleagues was the F-15 CTF commander back in the 70's. The nickname for the airframe used for high speed tests was "Patches", because there were so many patched cracks in the the inlets... Apparently, sustained high Mach flight wasn't very kind to the airframe.

There's quite a bit of open source data out there for the Thud, beyond just the -1's and performance annexes. NASA has a lot of technical reports and did a lot of studies for Republic when it was still NACA, those are all still on the NASA technical servers for download. Both P&FQ (Performance & Flying Qualities), as we called that part of a flight test program, are needed to build a flight model. The "P" part a reasonably competent aero E could back out with the performance annex and the TPS textbook to get your aero coefficients and Equations of Motion (EOM's). The tough part is the "FQ", how the control movements translate into the EOM's. At least one of the NASA reports had the block diagrams of the Stab Aug/control system, with EOM's and with most of the gains for the system. It's not everything, but it's a start... While most of the Republic archives were destroyed years ago, I wonder if some of the old flight test material is still on the selves in the Edward's Technical Library. Might be worth a FOIA request for anyone serious about the Thud...

The definitive Weasel book is First In, Last Out: Stories by the Wild Weasels. First Person Stories By Wild Weasel Pilots, EWO's and Their Associates, The Society Of Wild Weasels. ISBN 1-4208-1620-9. About five years ago on a IAH to ORD flight I sat next to one of the authors, it was almost as good as the good old days when I flew bombers...

Heck, peacetime as well...as a young Lt at Base X civil had less than an hour to fix the runway because the morning goes were airborne. SoF found something on the runway that could FOD a motor, so Civil quick-creted it and the morning goes landed on time.

It's difficult to be doctrinaire about those, but suffices to say both can do both. Here's a bit of a better way to think of q (dynamic pressure) and Mach limits. Q limits down low in the thick atmosphere, while Mach limit up high in the thin atmosphere. Max q and Vmo meet between 19,000 and 21,000 feet, I've flown flight tests where we've established Vmo above 21 kft and lower the altitude till the KIAS reach max q. Airframe heating and flutter can get you with either Mach or q since with shockwaves you get temperature rises on the backside of the shock and shocks do all kinds of fun stuff to the loads and moments.

One of the big problems with exceedance of Vne is that not all aircraft fail the same, or for that matter have Vne, Vmo, etc.. set the same. Sometimes the value is set by airframe heating of a particular part (F-111, Concorde, F-15, F-16 come to mind nose or canopy). Other cases the value is set as a % of the velocity that will induce flutter, to muddy the waters further it's entirely possible to have one Vne set by dynamic pressure/airframe heating and have another lower value set by flutter for a particular external load configuration. It would be difficult to model unless you know which is which...

Great idea, red ball maintenance! Every aircraft is different, and the time from step, to crank, to wheels up is different for every type of aircraft. Usually there's a standard timeline for each type of aircraft. I spent time as a bomber maintenance officer before becoming aircrew on bombers. Typically you would step to the aircraft an hour before take-off, review the forms, do a walk around before manning the jet. If everything was good, 40-45 min before take-off you would put power on and start to bring up the systems, engine start depended on the aircraft. The BUFF had no APU, so you'd start engines earlier than say a Bone that had an APU. Typically at the 20-40 min mark is when you're going to find something broken and have to make the decision to fix or step to the spare (note when I was aircrew there was no spare so it was fix before losing the range time). Fighter times are typically half that of the bombers, but their back systems are more along the lines of ACES II, lol. Other than that all ED needs to do is make the 3D models for bread trucks and add the radio calls of the pissed off pro supers...

There's a bit comparing apples to oranges to bananas since the Air Force and Navy used their Phantoms differently, which makes for a wonderfully continuous issue. The Navy used their VF squadrons primarily for air to air, while the Air Force did not. Also it's a mistake to say they added a gun and kept right on with the Rolling Thunder mindset. One of the most effective things they did was to make each of the five Phantom wings that fought in 1972-3 specialize. The 8th, 49th, and 366th focused on air to ground and laying chaff corridors. The 432th at Udorn focused on air to air (sweep and BARCAP) and the 388th at Korat focused on escort and the Kill part of Hunter Killer with the Weasels. 44 of the Air Force's 50 kills came from those two wings, 36 were from 4 squadrons, the 34th, 35th, 13th and 555th. The Triple Nickel led the pack with 20, the 13th followed with 8, but that really shouldn't be much of a surprise since those squadrons were stacked with FWS grads and Combat Tree. The ratios at the wing level would be 34-10 (3.4-1) for the 432th and 10-3 (3.3-1) for the 388th, which combines to 44-13 (3.4-1), not great. But each of those had a bunch of deployed squadrons that weren't as specialized as the four squadrons, so how did they do? The 34th had 4.5 kills and 2 losses, the 35th had 3.5 kills and no losses, the 13th had 8 kills to 1 loss and the Triple Nickel had 20 kills to 3 losses. All together the specialists were 36 to 6, 6-1, which is Crusader territory. Not shabby, maybe not post Top Gun numbers, but better than Rolling Thunder. It also bears mentioning all 1972-3 Air Force kills were Mig-21 (41) and Mig-19 (9) compared to the Navy's 26 which were mostly Mig-17's (16), Mig-19 (2) and Mig-21 (8). Final thing to consider, the Air Force operated over a much wider swath of the North than did the Navy. The Navy Route packs were closer to the shore, flatter and lent themselves to better radar coverage. So generally their fighters had better SA than the Air Force who had to contend with the mountains in the west. Which isn't to make an excuse, because when NVAF figured out Combat Tree told the Phantoms where they were and when Red Crown and Disco couldn't see through the terrain, the Air Force adapted and deployed Tea Ball. A lot of this history is laid out in Marshall Michel's book Clashes, I would very highly recommend it.

Over-G'ing is something a lot of young stick actuators do, usually so long as it doesn't result in the loss of an airframe, the violator gets to de-panel and inspect the airframe with the crew chief. If the pilot has any sense, a case or bottle of the chief's preferred adult beverage should be offered to as penance. Not every loss of airframe is career ending. There was the F-22 that went through a wake and bent the plane beyond repair, sometimes bad $h_t happens. Then there was the time my squadron commander over-g'ed an airframe. We were integrating the Sniper pod onto the Bone and the test point called for a 3 g wind up turn at a specified Mach number and indicated airspeed. Trasher pulled 3.1 or 3.2 and we gave him a hard time, made him do a shot of Weed at role call. To be completely honest hitting exactly 3.0 at Mach .xx and KIAS yyy is very difficult, so a small overshoot is the stuff of a bit of professional "jibing", since every other patch wearing golden hand believed they could nail the test point exactly right the first try.

Not every FBW works the same as a Viper or Bug, different companies have different ideas. The FBW in the Bone takes out the "bad" handling characteristics, according to the Bone pilots I used to work with the Bone on the manual reversions and no SIS/SEF is a bit of a handful to fly.

Who said "traditional" bombers fly straight and level? Sounds like by traditional you mean WWII. Since the 1950's traditional bombers like the B-47 flew low level complete with a toss bomb delivery profile that amounted to an Immelmann. BUFF did low level way before metal was ever bent on a Bone. Personally, I've flown low levels on a BUFF and flown missions to the E range in the UTTR where we definitely weren't flying straight and level. FWIW I worked on both the BUFF and Bone.

Not really, and whatever FBW there is (2 channel IIRC) does not limit things like a flying video game, say a Viper or Bug... Yes, I've seen both golden hands and regular line dogs over gee the airframe. At least the line SQ/CC handed the line dog a speed wrench and made him pull panels...

Not quite, wing sweep less than 65 degrees it's a 1.5-2 g airframe, greater than 65 degrees it can pull 3 g when light, heavy it's still 2 g. Source Fig 5-8, page 5-20 of TO 1B-1B-1. The BUFF BTW is 2 g.

Consider, the angled Essex's, Midways, Forrestal and Saratoga all used the same C-11 catapult; 225 ft. long, 221 ft. stoke, 39,000 lb. to 136 kt. or 70,000 lb. to 108 kt. All of the others on the list operated Phantoms and Intruders, so the catapult isn't the reason. The wooden deck, uncooled JBD's and shorter distance from the 4 wire to end of the angled deck are the big contributors to no F-4 or A-6. The Phantom had to use burner for launch, so wood and uncooled was kind of a problem. Looking at the Intruder NATOPS, normal approaches don't look like a big deal ranging from 120-126 kt. at 36,000 lb. The no flaps, no slats is 152 kt. at that weight, speculating here, but that might be a bit too much for the Essex 4 wire or barrier.

Commander John B. Nichols, 9 Jul 1968 finished off a Mig-17 with guns after the Aim-9 hit it. Read his book On Yankee Station as a kid. Here's the complete list from http://f8crusader.org/migmstrs.html Cdr. HAL MARR, VF-211. 12 June 1966. MiG-17; Sidewinder/gun attack. Damage to second MiG-17; gun attack. Lt. GENE CHANCY, VF-211. 21 June 1966. MiG-17; gun attack. Ltjg. PHIL VAMPATELLA, VF-211. 21 June 1966. MiG-17; Sidewinder. Cdr. DICK BELLINGER, VF-162. 9 October 1966. MiG-21; Sidewinder. Cdr. MO WRIGHT, VF-211. 1 May 1967. MiG-17; Sidewinder. Cdr. PAUL SPEER, VF-211. 19 May 1967. MiG-17; Sidewinder. Ltjg. JOE SHEA, VF-211. 19 May 1967. MiG-17; Sidewinder kill, guns used also. LCdr. Kay Russell was hit by a SAM on this mission, ejected, became a POW. Cdr. BOBBY LEE, VF-24. 19 May 1967. MiG-17; Sidewinder. Lt. PHIL WOOD, VF-24. 19 May 1967. MiG-17; Sidewinder. Wood's wingman, Ltjg. Bill Metzger, was hit by AAA during this engagement; Metzger ejected, spent 5 1/2 years as a POW. LCdr. RED ISAACKS, VF-24. 21 July 1967. MiG-17; Sidewinder. LCdr BOB KIRKWOOD, VF-24. 21 July 1967. MiG-17; Guns. LCdr. TIM HUBBARD, VF-211. 21 July 1967. MiG-17; Guns; Zuni (!) assist. MiG-17 probable, guns (same date), MiG-17 probable, guns, ? date. Ltjg. PHIL DEMPEWOLF, VF-24. 21 June 1966. Probable MiG-17; Sidewinder. LCdr. DICK WYMAN, VF-162. 14 December 1967. MiG-17; Sidewinder. Cdr. MOOSE MYERS, VF-51. 26 June 1968. MiG-21; Gun attack, Sidewinder kill. LCdr. JOHN NICHOLS, VF-191. 9 July 1968. MiG-17; Sidewinder disable, gun kill. Cdr. GUY CANE, VF-53. 29 July 1968. MiG-17; Sidewinder. Lt. NORM MCCOY, VF-51. 1 August 1968. MiG-21; Sidewinder. Lt. TONY NARGI, VF-111. 19 September 1968. MiG-21; Sidewinder.

ISTR it had to do in part the lack of adequate cooling for the JBD's (Phantoms). Also, IIRC Oriskany was the only one of the Essex's that didn't have a wooden deck. FWIW the British operated their F-4's off a smaller carrier, but had longer cat runs, ~280 ft. (waist cat on Ark Royal) vs ~250 ft. and more distance from the 4 wire to the end of the angled deck, 380 ft. (Ark) vs 305 ft. John Lehman considered a Midway like refit for Oriskany that may have fixed some of this, but it was considered cost prohibitive for something with so little service life left.

First thought here, "Dear God why isn't this in an FAQ pinned to the forum, why must we continue to suffer more Super Bug Threads..." Second thought, "Super Bug sucks, why didn't big bad Haliburton guy, who shot his friend in the face make the right decision and not kill the best naval fighter ever considered..." Third thought, the last 30 years gives us an good case study of the dangers of the pursuit of best/better versus good enough. Really, what's the average fleet age in USAF and USN today? Of course the verdict is still out, who knows what the right answer is with 6 G and peer competition... Hindsight is of course 20/20. All I know is that I was on the team that shot for best/better while watching the other service retire its tired iron..

Indeed, it is fascinating bits of history. Highly recommend reading Sierra Hotel, it's a n Air University book about the F-4 weapons school right after Vietnam. One of the chapters delves into dive toss and use of Pave Spike, pretty good stuff. LANTRIN was before my time, but I did get to flight test Sniper and Litening on the Bone and BUFF. The comparison between EVS and Litening was really stark.

Pick your year and system... Of course, Pre-1970 ALD was a science lab experiment, no self laze, easy for the dropper, WSO in the back with funky kit, hard for the designator. Next round, Pave Knife, works through the weapons system, somewhat stabilized, completely daylight cameras, something like only 6 kits available for Linebacker I/II with only 4-5 working at any time. Could self laze, didn't though to allow multiple strike packages to lob lot of bombs into a funnel to be designated by the very few functional systems. Fast forward to just after Vietnam 73-76, Pave Spike, pretty well stabilized, daylight only, self designate yes, pop up dive toss yes , totally on the capabilities of your WSO. Pave Tack, now we're talking some different stuff...

Prior to the end of the Cold War the D's, E's, F's and the FB-111A's were all supposed to get the Pacer Strike upgrade which installed/upgraded digital mission avionics, TFR and attack radars. The G's got the mission computer in the conversion, some of the E's and F's got Pacer Strike but not all. At one point the D was considered to get LANTRIN, but once the wall fell they were the first to go.

YGBSM