Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Dogfighting
Message-ID: <7671@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 22 Jun 89 11:51:21 GMT
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)

>> ... allow the MIG to get on his tail, pop the flaps, and fire a
>> sidewinder as the MIG streaked past...
>
>I recall that this technique was used with success by British Harrier
>pilots against Argentine Mirages during the Falklands/Malvinas
>conflict.  The Harrier pilot would rotate his exhaust nozzles from
>their normal rearward-pointing position...
>... The British pilots dubbed the maneuver "vff-ing," though I
>forget exactly what the "VF" stood for ...

"VIFFing" is Vectoring In Forward Flight.  It was invented some years
earlier, by the USMC Harrier pilots I believe.  And it was not used, ever,
in the Falklands -- both official records and the Harrier pilots confirm
this.  There were only a handful of serious air-to-air combats in the
Falklands War, before the Argentine command pulled their air-combat units
back to protect their mainland bases, and none of them ended up involving
a classical dogfight in which VIFFing would have been useful.  Most of
the air combat in the Falklands involved Harriers shooting and Argentine
aircraft trying to dodge.

                                     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                 uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu