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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: F111
Message-ID: <1990Aug23.014428.1323@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 23 Aug 90 01:44:28 GMT
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: terryr@ogicse.ogi.edu (Terry Rooker)
>Comparing the performance of the F-111 to almost any aircraft of the
>same generation would indicate it is not a fighter...

Neither was the Missileer, the Navy aircraft that the F-111B superseded.
They were *interceptors*, explicitly relying on high-performance missiles
in lieu of aircraft dogfighting.  The notion that the F-111B had to be
a "fighter" for some reason was part of the Navy's anti-F-111B campaign,
and ended up being carried over into the F-14 specs.  Incidentally, the
F-14 with the original engines is not *much* of a fighter; this was
supposed to be corrected by improved engines, which quietly got shelved
and forgotten once the F-111B was safely dead and buried.  (Re-engining
the F-14 is only now being revived, after a decade and a half of complaints
about its lousy dogfighting performance...)

>... As you point out in a later post
>the Air Force tried to avoid the F-4 but couldn't find a good reason.
>Although in that case there was not even any realistic alternatives on
>the drawing board at the time...

Actually, the USAF wanted more F-105s instead.  They didn't get their
way because the F-105 was basically a nuclear bomber, and McNamara
insisted that they do more for their conventional capabilities.  (In
the Cuba missile crisis, the USAF was so ill-prepared for non-nuclear
war that they had to borrow conventional bombs from the Navy.)

In any event, the USAF being unable to pull a not-invented-here scam
doesn't excuse the Navy's success at it.

>With hindsight, looking at the record of the F-14, and the relative
>performance of the two airplanes, I think the Navy made a wise choice.

For the abruptly-revised mission, now once again including maneuvering
combat, you are probably right.  For the original interceptor mission,
no way:  the F-111B's range, payload, and loiter time were much greater.
(It failed to meet its specs, but the F-14 failed to meet *its* specs
by a larger margin, despite less-demanding specs.)

Of course the Navy made a wise choice, since it defines what is "wise".

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