How America's F-15 Fighter Almost Joined the US Navy (On an Aircraft Carrier)

[Onkel Neal]

How America's F-15 Fighter Almost Joined the US Navy (On an Aircraft Carrier)

Was the Sea Eagle a viable concept? The problem is the one that we are seeing with today's F-35: an aircraft that must serve more than one master inevitably sacrifices performance in some area (in fact, the F-14 was born after the Pentagon's abortive attempt to make the ill-fated F-111 a joint Air Force and navy fighter). To turn the F-15 into a carrier-based interceptor like the F-14 would have required so many design changes that the hybrid beast would probably have been inferior to either the F-15 or F-14.

Which points to the real problem: The Air Force and Navy have always had different requirements. In the 1970s, the Air Force wanted a powerful, highly maneuverable dogfighter to prevent a repeat of what happened when its F-4 Phantoms battled more nimble MiGs over Vietnam. Though ironically, the Air Force did at one point consider the F-14 as a replacement for the F-106 interceptor.

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