Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: military@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Fighters without guns
Message-ID: <13036@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 11 Jan 90 04:59:41 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 31
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: att!utzoo!henry
>From: dlj@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (david.l.jacobowitz)
>...I'm trying to think of the fighters that were actually deployed
>without an internal gun, and I can only name one: the F-4 Phantom II.
>I do know that most of the F-4's contemporaries did in fact have
>internal guns, for example the USAF's F-105 Thunderchief
>and the USN's F-8 Crusader.

The F-8 substantially pre-dated the F-4.  It was just early enough to have
guns.  The F-105 was roughly an F-4 contemporary, but its primary mission
was nuclear strike rather than air combat.  (The tell-tale sign of this
is the *small* internal weapons bay.)  I don't know why there was a gun
on the F-105; perhaps for self-defence?

Part of the problem, I think, was a fixation on the interceptor role, as
opposed to air superiority.  The F-4 was definitely meant as an interceptor.
The F-102 and F-106 likewise had no gun armament.  Nor did the even sexier,
but cancelled, F-103 and F-108 interceptors.  For that matter, I don't think
the F-101 had guns, and still earlier interceptors -- specific variants of
the F-86 and F-89 -- didn't either.  The F-86D fired salvos of unguided
rockets, as did the F-89D.  Later F-89s switched to carrying Falcon AAMs.
The F-102 had provisions for rockets but main armament was Falcons.  The
F-106 used Falcon and Genie, although some were later retrofitted with guns.
F-103 armament was going to be, I think, the Eagle AAM, also meant to arm
the Missileer that the Navy started as a Phantom replacement.  (Phoenix is
Eagle's distant descendant via several other abortive projects.)

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