Corvette ZR1 Races an FA-18 [Archive] - The Diamond David Lee Roth Army

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 03:26 AM

hideyoursheep

07-06-2009, 04:09 AM

Should have raced a Viper.

Seshmeister

07-06-2009, 05:36 AM

That was a spectacularly lame American rip off of the original and best...

Here is the proper version with a better car, better plane and much much better filmed.

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Seshmeister

07-06-2009, 05:54 AM

Nice to see you chaps having a go though.

The guy in the clip said that 10% of Blue Angels crash and burn which explains why Van Hagar used them in the video to that crappy pop song.

BTW did you know that the Top Gun was originally set up in response to the poor performance of US Navy pilots in the Vietnam war? The US came to the RAF who provided superior instructors and set out new training procedures bringing them up to speed.

Years later this was never mentioned in the film about homosexual relations in the training school starring Tom Cruise. :D

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 06:52 AM

Jeremy Clarkson or whatever his name is, rags on Americans quite a bit...

He even makes fun of the Ford GT motor being made "with pride" by two guys, but then he buys one...

:elvis:

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 06:57 AM

That was a cool clip...

You gotta admit the Motor Trend guy faired pretty well riding in the Hornet...

Seshmeister

07-06-2009, 07:00 AM

Jeremy Clarkson or whatever his name is, rags on Americans quite a bit...

He even makes fun of the Ford GT motor being made "with pride" by two guys, but then he buys one...

:elvis:

He had to get rid of it though because it kept breaking down.

These kind of things are not practical in real life, too wide and too low.

That's why I never bought one... :)

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 07:03 AM

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 07:06 AM

These kind of things are not practical in real life

:)

The Vette is...

binnie

07-06-2009, 07:58 AM

He had to get rid of it though because it kept breaking down.

These kind of things are not practical in real life, too wide and too low.

That's why I never bought one... :)

Funnily enough, lack of practicality is exactly the reason I don't date Megan Fox - I heard she can't cook :D

letsrock

07-06-2009, 08:58 AM

Any with a tri-cycle?

letsrock

07-06-2009, 08:59 AM

How about a Yugo, then we could see the how Hideyoursheep car would do.

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 01:55 PM

Kristy

07-06-2009, 02:43 PM

Jeremy Clarkson or whatever his name is, rags on Americans quite a bit...

That's because he is English and with most limeys I've ever met they rag on America in order to have something to do and then end up moving here endlessly criticizing anything that crosses their path.

Seshmeister

07-06-2009, 03:02 PM

But the limeys you meet would have to be like that or you wouldn't have met them.

Kristy

07-06-2009, 03:09 PM

I lived with a limey for about 8 months and all he did was criticize everything about America. Hey, great to have an opinion and all but he never gave it a rest. When I asked him why not go back to England where everything seems to all right on the surface he looked at me dumbfounded. So I'll never understand the British and no longer care to.

Nickdfresh

07-06-2009, 04:05 PM

Nice to see you chaps having a go though.

The guy in the clip said that 10% of Blue Angels crash and burn which explains why Van Hagar used them in the video to that crappy pop song.

BTW did you know that the Top Gun was originally set up in response to the poor performance of US Navy pilots in the Vietnam war? The US came to the RAF who provided superior instructors and set out new training procedures bringing them up to speed.

Years later this was never mentioned in the film about homosexual relations in the training school starring Tom Cruise. :D

It wasn't so much the pilots that were poor (they still shot down the North Vietnamese at a kill ratio of 2:1, and some of them were quite good and flew smaller, better dogfighters like the Mig-21), it was the US idiotic planners at the Pentagon that kept believing that dogfighting was obsolete and that jet fighters only:

1.) flew straight forward and dropped nuclear bombs and flew the fuck out of there as quickly as possible

2.) were big, powerful and would only carry missiles and air-to-air maneuverability didn't matter all that much

I'm unaware of the RAF instructors though. The USAF still had a lot of the highest (non-Israeli) jet aces such as Boots Blesse, who was a genius and actually influenced a lot of Euro air forces...

During this tour of duty, General Blesse wrote his fighter tactics book, No Guts, No Glory. This book has been used as a basis of fighter combat operations for the Royal Air Force, the U.S. Marine Corps, Chinese Nationalist, Korean Air Force, and U.S. Air Force since 1955. As recently as 1973, 3,000 copies were reproduced and sent to tactical units in the field.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_%22Boots%22_Blesse

Seshmeister

07-06-2009, 06:11 PM

I only heard about the instructor thing recently.

American Top Gun fighter pilot academy set up by British - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5032158/American-Top-Gun-fighter-pilot-academy-set-up-by-British.html)

American Top Gun fighter pilot academy set up by British

The American Top Gun fighter pilot academy was inspired by the Royal Navy elite flying instructors, a new book has revealed.

By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Published: 10:00PM GMT 22 Mar 2009

The British contribution of a dozen instructors was a substantial help to the Americans struggling for aerial success over Vietnam

Despite the all-American hero imagery of the film starring Tom Cruise, the US Navy's expertise was in large part due to their instruction by aviators from the Fleet Air Arm.

When British pilots arrived at Miramar airbase in California in the early 1960s the Americans were losing a large number of dogfights in their multi-million Phantom fighters to the enemy's relatively "cheap" MiG 21s.

The tuition from the British pilots, all graduates of the intense Air Warfare Instructors school in Lossiemouth, Scotland, led to the Americans dominating the skies, the military historian Rowland White has revealed in Phoenix Squadron.

It was then that the their Naval Warfare Academy became known as Top Gun.

"Through the instructors on exchange at Miramar the AWIs methods made their way into perhaps the most well-known programme in the history of naval aviation: Topgun," he said.

Foremost among the Royal Navy pilots was Lt Commander Dick Lord's whose work on the tactics group was the founding on which the "original eight Topgun instructors built their course".

The British pilot, originally from South Africa, introduced simple things such as writing notes on the knee pad of his flying suit during air combat exercises

The Americans trusted Lord enough to give him access to a secret document that played a key part in his writing the Air Combat Manoeuvring manual for the US pilots.

As shown in the film Top Gun the pilots at Miramar were given a structure on air-to-air combat that finished with a final sortie of two pilot instructors against two students. In the film this was when Tom Cruise lost his observer following a difficult manoeuvre which occasionally happened as pilots flew their aircraft to the limit.

Lord's expertise was so well regarded that he was asked to give lectures to US fighter pilots all along the West Coast.

While the former Royal Navy officer, who married his British wife at Miramar, said he enjoyed the film he did not recognise the characters until his wife told him that the big-talking naval fighter pilots were most accurately depicted.

Although the British did their best to fit in their humour prevailed. Rather than call signs of Viper and Maverick they came up with Dogbreath, Alien and Cholmondley

White's book is the first to reveal the British role in Top Gun.

"It is remarkable that any history book on Top Gun studiously avoids any British involvement," Lord, 72, told The Daily Telegraph. "One finds this quite a bit on American history and certainly here they have not given us due justice."

Lt Cdr Paul Waterhouse, 72, another Fleet Air Arm officer at Miramar with Lord, said the British contribution of a dozen instructors was a substantial help to the Americans struggling for aerial success over Vietnam although it went unnoticed by Downing Street.

"We were helping these guys in the Vietnam war because they were going straight from Miramar to fight the enemy who were flying pretty useful Mig 21s.

"If Harold Wilson knew he would not have been happy."

He added: "The Americans did not have the experience to use the Phantom properly and you cannot train experience

"I felt a swell of pride when I first saw the Top Gun film because I knew that we were behind it."

Another British instructor, Cdr Doug Macdonald , 67, said the Americans "were delighted to have experienced people teach them".

He added: "I think the movie Top Gun is great but it's thanks to us Brits that they could make the film."

Soon after the Top Gun course began a Phantom flown by one of the first students shot down a MiG-21, the first time a US Navy had succeeded in aerial combat in two years.

Seshmeister

07-06-2009, 06:11 PM

Dick Lord! :D

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 06:24 PM

Lord Dick...

But the article never really says the program was set up by British, as the title suggests...

More like a pilot exchange program...

:elvis:

Seshmeister

07-06-2009, 06:58 PM

Meet the hero Scots pilot who is the real-life Top Gun - The Sunday Mail (http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/editors-choice/2009/03/29/meet-the-hero-scots-pilot-who-is-the-real-life-top-gun-78057-21237240/)

Meet the hero Scots pilot who is the real-life Top Gun

Mar 29 2009 By Raymond Hainey

THE pilots' call signs became the stuff of movie legend... Maverick, Jester Iceman and Goose.

But the real-life inspiration for the blockbuster Top Gun can today be revealed as fearless Scot Doug Macdonald...code-named Haggis.

A book has revealed how commander Doug and his Royal Navy squadron colleagues were behind the pilot training programme depicted in the classic film starring Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer.

Lieutenant Commander Dick Lord, Doug's colleague at the Lossiemouth base in Moray, created the gruelling programme designed to hone the deadly skills of fighter pilots.

It involved realistic dogfights between instructors and pupils - a major part of the Top Gun movie-and in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the pilots afterwards.

Doug, 67, said: "You could say the Royal Navy launched the career of Tom Cruise. I certainly recognised aspects of myself in the Tom Cruise role and in the other pilots in the movie.

"The film-makers had really done their homework. I noticed a lot of the characteristics of our guys in all the roles.

"The flying scenes in Top Gun were very well done and I recognised a lot of it as our work.

"The Americans really did have call signs like Tom Cruise's Maverick and Val Kilmer's Iceman.

"But the British lads had more of a sense of humour - my call sign was Haggis.

"The names in the film were typical of the sort of names the Americans used.

"But we were all pilots and spoke the same language. We integrated into their squadron very well.

"The Royal Navy has always been the Silent Service and the Fleet Air Arm in particular isn't all that well-known. It's nice that our work has been recognised after all these years."

The role of Lossiemouth's finest in establishing the Top Gun legacy was revealed by writer Roland White in new book Phoenix Squadron.

It centres on Navy pilots from HMS Ark Royal who stopped a Guatemalan invasion of Belize in the 1960s. White said: "I was amazed when I first saw the Top Gun film. There was a sizeable contingent from Lossiemouth at Miramar, the US Navy Fighter Weapons School in California.

"Everything people see about flying in Top Gun was being done in Lossiemouth years before.

"The Americans drew very heavily on the expertise of the British pilots and the air-to-air fighter training programme they use today is the one drawn up by Dick Lord.

"The British had a huge influence on the way the Top Gun programme developed.

"The British idea was to train up pilots and send them back to the front line where they could pass on what they had learned to others.

"If that hadn't been so successful, they would never have made the movie and Tom Cruise probably wouldn't be the superstar he is today."

Doug, originally from Banchory, Aberdeenshire, says nothing beats the adrenaline rush of flying Top Gunstyle.

He said: "You get into the cockpit of a fighter plane and you get a huge rush. We couldn't wait to get into the air.

"Tom Cruise's quote, 'I feel the need - the need for speed' just encapsulated the whole thing. That's just what we were like. It was a fantastic phrase and really summed up what we were all about.

"There is no feeling in the world like flying a plane at 1200mph.

"I was so lucky to be able to do something I loved every second - not many people can say that.

"Tom Cruise and the other stars of the film really hit the nail on the head.

This is what we were all about.

"We really thought we were the best - real-life Top Guns, although we Brits weren't quite as flashy as the Americans."

But Doug admits his social life bore little relation to those of the fighter pilots in the film.

He said: "I don't remember playing beach volleyball but there were stunning beaches and some of the younger guys certainly hung around there on their time off.

"I had a young family with me - my children were three and six at the time - so my relaxation was entertaining them."

Doug signed up as a Navy flier in 1960 and got through the tough Air Warfare Instructors course at Lossiemouth before being sent to America to train on Phantoms.

He and other pilots from the Navy's Fleet Air Arm were drafted in by the US Navy after it suffered massive losses in dogfights during the Vietnam war. The British pilots - all from 764 Naval Air Squadron based at Lossiemouth - drew up a training programme based on their own gruelling course in Scotland.

The course became known as the Top Gun school and is still training US Navy pilots today.

Doug, who now lives in Bath, worked at Miramar between 1972 and 1975.

He said: "The Americans were delighted to have experienced people to teach them. Despite a technology advantage, they were losing a lot of crews in Vietnam.

"They weren't using the aircraft to its best advantage and we were able to help them with that.

"I trained a lot of them myself and it was a huge task.

There were 120 students at any one time and British instructors were always involved."

"The Phantom was a huge, powerful, fast beast and it was like no feeling on earth throwing that around the sky.

"I flew the finest fighter plane in the world in its day and the Top Gun actors really portrayed how we felt."

CLEAN-CUT TOM'S SHADY DEAL

LEGEND has it that director Tony Scott just showed a picture of Tom Cruise in mirrored shades in front of a fighter plane to pitch Top Gun to Hollywood studio bosses.

Scott wrote a £25,000 personal cheque to the captain of US Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise tomove the giant ship into the exact position he wanted for the shot.

And after the movie came out worldwide sales of Rayban's Aviator gold-rimmed shades rocketed by 40 per cent. Top Gun took more than £250million at the box office in 1986 and the film's soundtrack, which features Berlin's No.1 song Take My Breath Away, sold seven million copies.

The US Navy were so pleased with the film, they arranged for recruiting officers to be based at cinemas showing the film, boosting enlistment.

SUNDAY EMAIL

Seshmeister

07-06-2009, 06:58 PM

It's hard to know just how much influence they had but it seems to have been significant.

Apparently back in the day there was a lot of 'politics' going on between the US air force and navy which led to navy pilots getting left behind.

Since then obviously the US Navy pilots have gone on to be some of the best trained in the world.

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 08:58 PM

That was the obvious goal, wasn't it ??

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 08:59 PM

I'll answer for you, mate...

Obviously

Cheers!

:elvis:

Nickdfresh

07-06-2009, 09:36 PM

I only heard about the instructor thing recently.

American Top Gun fighter pilot academy set up by British - Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5032158/American-Top-Gun-fighter-pilot-academy-set-up-by-British.html)

Dramatically overstated. The US never suffered "massive losses in dogfights during the Vietnam War." This is all relative. A more truthful, accurate statement would be that the US pilots were not dominating the North Vietnamese like they had the North Koreans, Chinese, and German Luftwaffe previously...

The British RAF was itself influenced by US fighter doctrine after WWII and then again after Korea, as was the Royal Navy...

The biggest problem US pilots had was that there was a calculated, idiotic belief (for the second time, as it was a problem in Korea as well) was that that the fighter was now nothing more than a missile carrier to intercept bombers and the counter-intuitive belief that pilots were now merely technicians that were to have the old romantic, chivalric notions or one-on-one air combat beaten out of them - and Boots Blesse had a far larger impact in reevaluating the training the emphasis of US pilots than did the RAF or RN fleet air arm. British, and other NATO, pilots may have been involved, but only because the USAF and USN had both conciously purged any sort of air to air combat training from its pilots' programs..

Blesse's legacy were both the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon, which were the complete antithitis of the previous generation of "bomb-truck" fighters such as the F-105 and F-4 Phantom....

ELVIS

07-06-2009, 09:39 PM

I don't think Sesh watches the Military channel...:biggrin:

Nickdfresh

07-06-2009, 09:49 PM

It's hard to know just how much influence they had but it seems to have been significant.

Apparently back in the day there was a lot of 'politics' going on between the US air force and navy which led to navy pilots getting left behind.

Since then obviously the US Navy pilots have gone on to be some of the best trained in the world.

It wasn't so much "politics."

It was a clinical, pseudo-"rational" belief that dogfighting simply was obsolete because jets were too powerful and fast to maneuver and that fighter pilots were just romantic, sentimental jerks that yearned for the chivalrous, knightly days of yore with their ideal of honorable one-on-one combat. Their beliefs were now supposedly obsolete in the computer and jet ages. Furthermore, it was thought that the missile had made dogfighting and cannons irrelevant (the first F-4 Phantoms didn't even have an internal gun mounted, and they had to place external tanks containing 20mm Vulcan cannons). The problem was that the first couple of generations of missiles sucked, and a pilot still had to get his plane into position to get a missile-lock (as they do even today), which many analysts thought was almost automatic in the late 1950s...

letsrock

07-07-2009, 10:24 AM

The f105 lost over half of its produced airplanes during Vietnam.
And Yes the US took massive aiplane casulaties during Vietnam.
But the catch is this. There was virtually no dog fighting.
So that number is not relevant.
The US lost airplanes were from surface to air missles.

Seshmeister

07-07-2009, 10:49 AM

I don't think Sesh watches the Military channel...:biggrin:

All the documentary channels here are full of sharks and nazis. :)

You should try the Roth 'Would I still be here if I was blind?' doctrine with a lot of these Discovery Channel style programs.

A lot of them have a big intro then another intro after each ad break and at the end a cheesy overstated outro.

The actual informative part of the commentary for a 1 hour show could be written on a single sheet of paper.

Nickdfresh

07-07-2009, 04:36 PM

All the documentary channels here are full of sharks and nazis. :)
...

Here too! Isn't it great! :biggrin:

Nickdfresh

07-07-2009, 04:52 PM

The f105 lost over half of its produced airplanes during Vietnam.
And Yes the US took massive aiplane casulaties during Vietnam.
But the catch is this. There was virtually no dog fighting.
So that number is not relevant.
The US lost airplanes were from surface to air missles.

Um, the F-105 didn't lose "half" they're number. The losses were high, relatively speaking, as they were low flying bullet magnets. But that %-number is an exaggeration that would be unsustainable. The pilots themselves, most of whom already hated flying the "Thud" (nicknamed so because that was the sound it made when hitting the ground), would have mutinied and Congress would have halted the use after an inevitable investigation if the losses had been that high. They weren't...

The US did suffer some significant losses on Vietnam and the numbers of shot down aircraft and the tonnages of bombs dropped (more than in all of WWII) can be staggering. But they were made good without any real threat to Western national security, which is sort of staggering in its own right...

Most losses were suffered from anti-aircraft artillery, with sophisticated Soviet made missiles such as the SA-2 being a far greater threat than the MIGs of North Vietnamese Air Force, being second. However, there were some epic dogfights and the North Vietnamese, who usually fired their missiles and ran, did have some exceptional pilots who were aces.

I recall there was a classic two hour dogfight between a US Navy F-4 Phantom, whose pilot had totally misjudged and underestimated his enemy, and a North Vietnamese ace flying a MIG-21. Thinking the NVAF pilot would fire and run giving him an easy kill, the Navy pilot (who might have been the defrocked CA Senator Randy "Duke" Cunningham) was almost shot down as his foe completely confounded him and turned back towards him after feigning a retreat.

The F-4 pilot only was able to shoot him down after the NVAF pilot, Nguyen Toon, made only a slightest of mistakes...

Nguyen Toon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguyen_Toon)

More:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Cunningham

During his service, Cunningham and his Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) "Irish" Driscoll became the only Navy aces in the Vietnam War, flying an F-4 Phantom from aboard aircraft carriers, and recording five confirmed kills. He was one of the early graduates of the Navy's TOPGUN school that taught dogfighting techniques to F-4 Phantom pilots and RIOs.

It has been alleged that Cunningham downed a MiG-17 piloted by North Vietnam Air Force fighter ace Col. Nguyen Toon, aka, "Colonel Tomb". Although "Col. Toon" was an American-manufactured myth, several Vietnamese pilots were superb dogfighters, and the North Vietnamese Air Force helped perpetuate the myth of "Colonel Toon", or "Tomb".[8] "Colonel Toon" was not only skilled but unorthodox, as Cunningham found out, when the Navy pilot made an elementary tactical error engaging him. The resulting dogfight became extended. Cunningham climbed steeply, and the MiG pilot surprised Cunningham by climbing as well. Remembering his TOPGUN training, Cunningham finally forced the MiG out ahead of him and destroyed it with an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile.

Igosplut

07-07-2009, 05:20 PM

Slightly off into left field, but the best documentary (Vietnam/plane-wise) bar none was "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Dieter_Needs_to_Fly). The Gar=Wiki link does not do it justice. Absolutely a riveting film...

ELVIS

07-07-2009, 05:56 PM

Never saw it...

stringfelowhawk

07-09-2009, 06:43 AM

Freakin Navy pilots suck.................

All they have to do is land on a little speck 4 1/2 acres big in the middle of 3 million square miles of rolling ocean and come to a complete stop before going for a chilly swim and having to dodge 4 twenty-two foot props.

If they're lucky enough to be very good at that for a long time then NASA might let em fly the space shuttle.

Of course if you're unfortunate enough to miss every arresting wire and fail to "touch and go", hopefully you bail out to one side or the other cause it takes a mile to stop a carrier.

;)

I hope the sarcasm in that post isn't missed so some fool can accost me for saying such a thing about Navy pilots. Especially coming from a former swabbie.

hideyoursheep

07-09-2009, 06:53 AM

Allright..

How many Hellfires can the Vette carry?

Ha!

BITEYOASS

07-09-2009, 11:00 AM

Like any sports car can beat a combat aircraft, give me a fuckin break! He didn't even have that Hornet at full throttle. You should see how fast those USMC Hornets take off in Iraq, they slam that throttle all the way in order to lessen the chance of getting hit by indirect fire.

letsrock

07-09-2009, 11:30 AM

Point is the F105 took a severe beat down during Vietnam.

letsrock

07-09-2009, 11:36 AM

This is the only production number i could find.
833

The F-105D all-weather strike fighter and the two-place F-105F dual-purpose trainer-fighter were also built before F-105 production (833 aircraft) ended in 1964. No "C" or "E" series were produced and "Gs" were modified "Fs" outfitted with extensive electronic countermeasure equipment. F-105G aircraft were nicknamed "Wild Weasels" and specialized in jamming enemy radar and destroying surface-to-air missile sites.

Ask.com Search Engine - Better Web Search (http://www.ask.com/bar?q=how+many+f105+were+produced%3F&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fas.org%2Fnuke%2Fguide%2Fusa%2F airdef%2Ff-105.htm)

letsrock

07-09-2009, 11:40 AM

How many lost during Vietnam?
see below.

f the total 753 F-105D/Fs manufactured by Republic, 393 were lost to various causes over Southeast Asia. The aircraft's familiar nickname refers to the sound of an F-105 smacking into the earth. In 1966 alone, 124 F-105s plummeted from the sky, many of them onto "Thud Ridge," an infamous mountain range bristling with antiaircraft armaments just outside Hanoi.

Ok so 393 isnt 1/2 of 833. Its at least greater than 45%.
I dont do math. But i think you get the point. It took an ass kicking.

link:
Amazon.com: F-105 Thunderchief: Workhorse of the Vietnam War: Dennis R. Jenkins: Books (http://www.ask.com/bar?q=how+many+f105+were+lost+during+vietnam%3F&page=1&qsrc=2417&ab=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FF-105-Thunderchief-Workhorse-Vietnam-War%2Fdp%2F0071355111)

Nickdfresh

07-09-2009, 06:49 PM

How many lost during Vietnam?
see below.

f the total 753 F-105D/Fs manufactured by Republic, 393 were lost to various causes over Southeast Asia. The aircraft's familiar nickname refers to the sound of an F-105 smacking into the earth. In 1966 alone, 124 F-105s plummeted from the sky, many of them onto "Thud Ridge," an infamous mountain range bristling with antiaircraft armaments just outside Hanoi.

Ok so 393 isnt 1/2 of 833. Its at least greater than 45%.
I dont do math. But i think you get the point. It took an ass kicking.

link:
Amazon.com: F-105 Thunderchief: Workhorse of the Vietnam War: Dennis R. Jenkins: Books (http://www.ask.com/bar?q=how+many+f105+were+lost+during+vietnam%3F&page=1&qsrc=2417&ab=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FF-105-Thunderchief-Workhorse-Vietnam-War%2Fdp%2F0071355111)

The F-105 was designed primarily for low-level interdiction and its low-altitude speed was its greatest asset when dealing with Soviet-made MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters. The Thunderchief's highly loaded wing was excellent for speed and aerodynamic stability but not for sustained turns in a dogfight. Nevertheless, the F-105 managed 27.5 officially credited air-to-air victories against North Vietnamese aircraft at the cost of 17 aircraft lost to enemy fighters (North Vietnamese pilots claimed to have shot down an additional 23 F-105s but none have been confirmed by USAF).[6] All victories were against MiG-17s. A total of 24.5 were shot down with cannon fire (one victory was shared with an F-4), and three with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles.[7] F-4 Phantoms were tasked with escorting the Thuds from enemy fighters, but they lacked the internal gun and ranging gunsight of the Thunderchief until late in the war.
...

Unfortunately, the low-altitude attacks and dive bombings brought the F-105s into the range of North Vietnamese anti-aircraft fire; the attrition rates were so high that the USAF began experiencing shortages of combat-ready aircraft. A total of 382 aircraft were lost in Southeast Asia, 320 of those in combat. The vast majority of losses were the result of enemy ground fire. Of the 610 single-seat F-105Ds built, 283 were shot down and 52 lost operationally. Of the 143 F-105F/G two-seaters, 37 were shot down and 10 lost operationally (one "Ryan's Raiders" night interdiction aircraft and one Combat Martin jammer without a back-seat WSO were lost in combat, the other 45 losses were Wild Weasel aircraft).[1]

F-105 Thunderchief - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-105_Thunderchief)

The USAF lost 320 in combat, and roughly 62 to other causes such as mechanical failure and design problems with the air intake. However, as the first para indicates, there was indeed dogfighting that went on during the Vietnam War. It should also be noted that while around 40% were lost in combat, the total number produced is low at only 833 somewhat skewing that statistic.

Vietnam showed that USAF and USN designs conceptualized during the 1950s were deeply flawed and production was shut down somewhat early and the US was already planning its next generation of dogfighters such as the F-15 and F-14 Tomcat. It should be said that the F-105 was successful in the end and flew until 1984 in a "Wild Weasel" anti-SAM role, but the fact that it was created out of a tunnel vision of a singular mission focus was a major weakness that was hard to overcome....

Seshmeister

07-09-2009, 09:53 PM

320 is a fuck of a lot though isn't it when fighting against a crappy little country like North Vietnam?

Compare to the gulf wars. Something very significant happened and that was Dick Lord! :)

letsrock

07-10-2009, 03:16 PM

I think you get the point.

letsrock

07-10-2009, 03:17 PM

320 is a fuck of a lot though isn't it when fighting against a crappy little country like North Vietnam?

Compare to the gulf wars. Something very significant happened and that was Dick Lord! :)

And thats just one model of airplane, it doesnt include:
F-4
A-4
B-52
C-141
C-130
B-58
A-7

and many others.

Nickdfresh

07-10-2009, 08:17 PM

320 is a fuck of a lot though isn't it when fighting against a crappy little country like North Vietnam?

Yes. But then, that crappy little country was armed with first line Soviet surface to air weapons. Fuck, sometimes there were Soviets manning their first line soviet weapons...

I don't want to get into it here, because I begin to sound like some revisionist pro-War hawk, which I am not. But it has been argued that the air war over Vietnam was relentlessly politicized to the degree that targets such as North Vietnamese air bases were not attacked early on and air defenses were deliberately avoided for fear of killing Soviets, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans...

Keep in mind though, those F-105s were very cheap to produce as were most US aircraft of the day in comparison with the third generation jet fighters such as the F-15, F-16, A-10, F-14, F-18, etc...

Compare to the gulf wars. Something very significant happened and that was Dick Lord! :)

Right. The US, and hence NATO, learned that sophisticated fighters featuring top of the line electronics, maneuverability, and versatility were what was necessary. In many respects, the Gulf War was the culmination of lessons learned in Vietnam and during the Arab-Israeli Wars...

Nickdfresh

07-10-2009, 08:18 PM

And thats just one model of airplane, it doesnt include:
F-4
A-4
B-52
C-141
C-130
B-58
A-7

and many others.

Don't forget the choppers...

Blackflag

07-10-2009, 11:30 PM

Isn't the "i'm a pseudo-commando wannabe military geek" jerk-off fest over yet? It's been a fucking week already.

Nickdfresh

07-11-2009, 04:30 AM

Isn't the "i'm a pseudo-commando wannabe military geek" jerk-off fest over yet? It's been a fucking week already.

I dunno. Is the "I'm a libertarian rebel poser that supports an unworkable system of anarchic non-gov't that will never exist, and a guy that would never get elected, anyways. So I pretend to be a rebel on the internet," douchebag-fest over yet?..

ELVIS

07-11-2009, 05:05 AM

What ??

You need to stop drinking or something...

Nickdfresh

07-11-2009, 07:18 PM

What ??

You need to stop drinking or something...

Actually, you need to start drinking again, or something. Then maybe you wouldn't be such a ticky, mental case assclown...

letsrock

07-12-2009, 10:30 AM

Anyone have numbers on helocopters?

Nickdfresh

07-12-2009, 02:00 PM

Anyone have numbers on helocopters?

I've heard that upwards of 5000 were lost to enemy fire, accidents, maintenance failures, etc... But that is strictly IIRC...

Blackflag

07-12-2009, 02:06 PM

:confused13:

hideyoursheep

07-12-2009, 11:30 PM

:confused13:

:handjob::turninggay::dickhead:

letsrock

07-13-2009, 09:06 AM

I've heard that upwards of 5000 were lost to enemy fire, accidents, maintenance failures, etc... But that is strictly IIRC...

Does that include the ones the navy pushed over the side of the carriers to make room for refugees?

letsrock

07-13-2009, 09:07 AM

That pissed a ton of people off back then.

BITEYOASS

07-13-2009, 11:51 AM

I've heard that upwards of 5000 were lost to enemy fire, accidents, maintenance failures, etc... But that is strictly IIRC...

Of course that was before attack helicopters. They rarely would ever fit a forward gun system before the AH-1 Cobra was commissioned.

Seshmeister

07-13-2009, 02:20 PM

They did in James Bond films all the time.