Fighter performance; F-4 vs MiG-21; actual plane analysis

[michael82]

F-5 is beautiful light a/c but Mach 0.5 slower, 1/3 lower thrust/weight, maybe overall better... while Mirage, I would say, also very useful, but all performances are significantly lower...
21 and F-4 were war competitors and both top performers, very similar in perf.

[John Beaman]

The two planes were designed for different missions. The MiG-21 was designed as a rapid response point interceptor against bombers. By being small and simple the manufacturing is easy and you can make a lot of them and spread them around. The F-4 was designed as a long range bomber interceptor to defend the fleet from aerial threats a long way from the fleet; hence the two engines, large fuel capacity (for those thirsty engines) and a pilot and a radar/weapons guy. Very different missions. Later, both of course, were adopted for all kinds of missions never dreamed of in the original design specs.

The only reason to compare is, as someone remarked, they faught against each other in several conflicts.

[Six Nifty .50s]

This is not unlike comparing a Spitfire with a Mosquito. The performance envelopes were somewhat different, but one of them was obviously more versatile than the other.

The MiG-21 was a short-range interceptor with the same strengths and weaknesses as the F-5: both were valuable for local defense, but with limited offensive capability, little room to carry advanced sensors (radars, jamming equipment, etc), and the pilots were not able to fight very far from their own bases. Their success or failure was largely dependent upon the ground radar station that was controlling them. Even with air refueling equipment, both the MiG-21 and the F-5 required too much tanker support and ECM aircraft to be practical as long-range escort fighters.

Robert Wilcox in his Scream of Eagles gives a good background and overview on the creation of TOPGUN, and through various interviews he provides a step-by-step explanation of how U.S. Navy F-4 pilots learned how to outmanuever smaller jets. The navy's brand of "dissimilar" air combat training included the practice of intentionally throwing the Phantom out of control to gain the upper hand. The original TOPGUN instructor pilots noted that this type of advanced dogfight training was not intended for F-8 pilots because they did not need it, although some Crusader pilots asked to be reassigned to Phantoms after the F-4s began to consistently defeat the smaller F-8 during training exercises.

[mars]

I may wrong, but as far as I know, North Vietnam Mig-21 pilots rarely engated any dogfight because Mig-21 had fewer weapons than US fighters and there were simply too many US fighters around, their tacitcs were usually "hit and run".
And the US navy "top gun" programs was mostly about to develop correct tactics on high speed jet armed with modern missles, in the early stage of the Vietnam war, Americans still used tacitcs develped in WWII, and that caused many problems

[Six Nifty .50s]

By 1970 just about every air force in the western world (including German, Israeli and British) had copied the U.S. Navy's standard tactical formation, the Loose-Deuce, which was a slight modification of the World War II Thach Weave.

Before then, Germany's pre-World War II Schwarm (a.k.a. Finger Four, Fluid Four, etc.) was the most popular formation, but proved to be less flexible and controllable in jet vs. jet combat.

The USAF actually had a Fighter Weapons School before the Navy, but air force training still focused on intercepting bombers (non-manuevering targets). The air force also obtained flyable MiG-17s and MiG-21s, but these jets were not flown hard or evaluated thoroughly until after they were passed to the Navy. Meanwhile the USAF continued with Fluid Four tactics even after West Germany abandoned it. And unlike the U.S. Navy, the USAF officially tried to discourage realistic training (violent and dangerous manuevering in practice combats) because it resulted in more flying accidents. Many of the pilots did not agree with this logic, and due to internal pressures (and greater success enjoyed by the Navy) the USAF rebuilt its fighter training programs after the Vietnam War.

Technical limitations of missiles and radar was a separate issue, but some of the problems were caused by pilot error (firing the missiles well outside of the weapon's locking and tracking capabilities) and improper maintenance.