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AGM-12 Bullpup


upyr1

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+1 As its a stepping stone to later and more advance AGMs like the 65. Also as stated by Kirk in the Mavericks thread, the pilot controlled the Mav slew with the old Bullpup Control stick, so it shouldn't be a far fetched proposal for it . my only question, what Bullpup did the F-4E operate

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14 minutes ago, Fangs Out said:

+1 As its a stepping stone to later and more advance AGMs like the 65. Also as stated by Kirk in the Mavericks thread, the pilot controlled the Mav slew with the old Bullpup Control stick, so it shouldn't be a far fetched proposal for it . my only question, what Bullpup did the F-4E operate

As far as I know - AGM-12B, C & E.

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Would be about as useful or easy to use as the Rb-05. That said, I'd love it anyway, if only for the satisfaction it brings to finally put it somewhere near the target. 🙂 Although, with the Phantom's WSO guiding it, it could be significantly easier to use (it really does help if you're not trying to essentially fly two aircraft at the same time).

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On 3/14/2022 at 2:28 AM, Dragon1-1 said:

Would be about as useful or easy to use as the Rb-05. That said, I'd love it anyway, if only for the satisfaction it brings to finally put it somewhere near the target. 🙂 Although, with the Phantom's WSO guiding it, it could be significantly easier to use (it really does help if you're not trying to essentially fly two aircraft at the same time).

Are you sure the WSO flew the Bullpup ? I'm not sure you could see that well from the back

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Was the Phantom the first plane to "regularly" deploy precision guided AG munitions? 

I mean, I know there were a handful of planes before it that used guided ordnance... but those seemed to be still partly in the experimental / evaluation / special purpose missions phase. Like B-17's with radio controlled glidebombs, or F4U's with the Batbomb anti-ship weapon.

Not sure if the F-111 carried Paveways before the Phantom or after it, but although most early Phantoms just carried dumb munitions, it did seem to me that for the dawn of modern guided AG, a few Phantoms carried and designated regularly. Is this opinion correct, or am I missing something?

 

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9 hours ago, Rick50 said:

Was the Phantom the first plane to "regularly" deploy precision guided AG munitions? 

I mean, I know there were a handful of planes before it that used guided ordnance... but those seemed to be still partly in the experimental / evaluation / special purpose missions phase. Like B-17's with radio controlled glidebombs, or F4U's with the Batbomb anti-ship weapon.

Not sure if the F-111 carried Paveways before the Phantom or after it, but although most early Phantoms just carried dumb munitions, it did seem to me that for the dawn of modern guided AG, a few Phantoms carried and designated regularly. Is this opinion correct, or am I missing something?

 

The Thud could carry Bullpups but 

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The first aircraft to regularly deploy a precision-guided weapon in combat was the Do-217, with its Hs 239 and Fritz-X bombs. They weren't very common nor easy to use, but they worked well enough. 

In Vietnam, PGMs were old news. Effective PGMs, OTOH, were quite new, which was why they were far more widely used in Vietnam than previously. Invention of guidance systems more straightforward to use than MCLOS probably contributed a lot. MCLOS missiles take a ridiculous amount of time to learn how to shoot with any sort of reliability, and then if you're being shot at accuracy goes to crapper anyway.

On 3/16/2022 at 4:39 AM, upyr1 said:

Are you sure the WSO flew the Bullpup ? I'm not sure you could see that well from the back

I'm not, but it makes sense. You could see to the sides, which was a plus, since the pilot would have to turn away anyway, to avoid the guns on the ground following the missile's smoke trail right back to the launcher (which they'd gladly do to any A-4 jock who couldn't fly both the ship and the missile at the same time).

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21 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

The first aircraft to regularly deploy a precision-guided weapon in combat was the Do-217, with its Hs 239 and Fritz-X bombs. They weren't very common nor easy to use, but they worked well enough. 

In Vietnam, PGMs were old news. Effective PGMs, OTOH, were quite new, which was why they were far more widely used in Vietnam than previously. Invention of guidance systems more straightforward to use than MCLOS probably contributed a lot. MCLOS missiles take a ridiculous amount of time to learn how to shoot with any sort of reliability, and then if you're being shot at accuracy goes to crapper anyway.

I'm not, but it makes sense. You could see to the sides, which was a plus, since the pilot would have to turn away anyway, to avoid the guns on the ground following the missile's smoke trail right back to the launcher (which they'd gladly do to any A-4 jock who couldn't fly both the ship and the missile at the same time).

I'M asking in Phantom groups on facebook an the pilot controlled it

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 3/18/2022 at 6:20 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

Are you sure the WSO flew the Bullpup ? I'm not sure you could see that well from the back

I'm not, but it makes sense. You could see to the sides, which was a plus, since the pilot would have to turn away anyway, to avoid the guns on the ground following the missile's smoke trail right back to the launcher (which they'd gladly do to any A-4 jock who couldn't fly both the ship and the missile at the same time).

Uhhh - no. Bullpup controller was only in the front cockpit, not even sure if the WSO hand controller could control a Bullpup, since as far as I know they were never used operationally by the F-4. They (AGM-12?) were definitely not in any F-4C or E -34 that I have, and were absolutely not in service by 1977 when I first started flying the beast.  And even if they were available, no way the pitter could see enough to control the missile while flying the jet (WSO hand controller on right side, so would have to fly left handed), since your field of view was really limited forward and you pretty much would have to be flying the jet to maintain line of sight and alignment of the missile at the same time. Pilot could just set the throttle and guide the missile (line up the Bullpup's flare with the target) with the left hand while flying with the right hand.

With a command missile like the Bullpup, you have to fly your plane at the target while steering the missile until impact, otherwise you can't tell where you are guiding the missile - think of shooting a rifle while holding it off to the side instead of using the sights. Not a good plan in a high threat environment!

Maverick was a different thing altogether, probably about as easy from either cockpit, but tactically we trained for the pilot to find and point at the target, the WSO to lock and fire, and the pilot to watch for threats and maneuver as necessary. The Maverick is the reason the Bullpup handle was retained after the Bullpup was removed from use.

Vulture

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6 hours ago, Kirk66 said:

With a command missile like the Bullpup, you have to fly your plane at the target while steering the missile until impact, otherwise you can't tell where you are guiding the missile - think of shooting a rifle while holding it off to the side instead of using the sights. Not a good plan in a high threat environment!

If you just kept flying straight, the guns on the ground would follow the missile's smoke trail and walk their shots straight onto the launcher, or at least so I read in Vietnam stories involving the Bullpup. I suppose it was pick your poison, either turn and make guidance harder, or keep flying straight and get shot up by flak.

Unfortunately, my local aviation museum doesn't have an F-4, so I don't actually know how's the view from the backseat. It sounds like it's worse than I assumed.

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13 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

If you just kept flying straight, the guns on the ground would follow the missile's smoke trail and walk their shots straight onto the launcher, or at least so I read in Vietnam stories involving the Bullpup. I suppose it was pick your poison, either turn and make guidance harder, or keep flying straight and get shot up by flak.

Unfortunately, my local aviation museum doesn't have an F-4, so I don't actually know how's the view from the backseat. It sounds like it's worse than I assumed.

And there you have the fundamental problem with the Bullpup guidance system, and why it didn't really work well against a target that was shooting back. Unless you stayed lined up with the missile and target, you couldn't accurately guide the weapon, so at best you could jink a bit (accepting a bit of loss of accuracy) but you were still forced to a really predictable flight path. From wikipedia (yeah, I know):

"Bullpups were widely used by both the Navy and Air Force during the Vietnam War, with mixed results. In its most famous early use, sixteen Air Force F-105's carrying two AGM-12Bs were part of the group of aircraft that attacked the Thanh Hóa Bridge on 3 April 1965. Because the weapon was manually guided, each aircraft had to line up for attack twice in separate passes. After the attack was completed the bridge was essentially undamaged, and the Bullpups were described as simply "bouncing off" the bridge.

 

The missile was constructed in two separate portions for the nose and tail. The nose contained the guidance receivers which translated instructions into commands for the electro-pnuematic actuators for the four small delta wing control fins arranged around the nose. The tail section held the two tracking flares and larger wings to maintain flight and help prevent the airframe from rolling in flight. The main roll prevention was provided by a gyroscope controlling the front control fins.

The Bullpup used a Manual Command Line Of Sight guidance system with roll-stabilization. In flight, the pilot or weapons operator tracked the Bullpup by watching the flares and used a control joystick to steer it toward the target using radio signals. The goal was to direct the missile so that it remained on the line between the pilot and the target.

After launching the Bullpup, best accuracy was maintained by continuing to fly the same track, so that the pilot could sight down the smoke trail and steer the missile from directly behind as much as possible. Unfortunately, one problem quickly discovered by pilots in Vietnam was that gunners on the ground could simply fire at the smoke trail of the missile's flare and have a fairly good chance of hitting the aircraft that had launched—and was still guiding—the missile. Thus, to try to protect their own aircraft, the pilot would "jig" slightly off of the missile's path and hopefully avoid the anti-aircraft fire."

No way you could do that from the pit of an F-4.

Sidenote: There is a commonly used bit of video used on many films about the Vietnam War that purports to be a NV SAM launch against an F-105; it's actually a Bullpup launch against a ground target (probably from an F-105) but run in reverse! It does show how straight the flight path of the guiding aircraft is during the missile TOF.

Vulture

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