Sidewinder

[CCIP]

Really had its share of teething problems, but survives to this day as one hell of a weapon

[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by CCIP

Really had its share of teething problems, but survives to this day as one hell of a weapon

That is true, in Vietnam the Sidewinders were about as reliable as the Sparrow was, and needed a near perfect sight picture (not near the sun or pointed towards the ground, and almost dead astern). Plus like the sparrow it would often go ballistic, or fail to ignite or release.

[krashkart]

On planes without guns, in some cases.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by krashkart

On planes without guns, in some cases.

The guns were not always reliable either. The quad 20mms on the F-8s tended to jam after a high G turn. Over half the F-8s kills were with the Sidewinder.

[krashkart]

That I did not know.

[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

The guns were not always reliable either. The quad 20mms on the F-8s tended to jam after a high G turn. Over half the F-8s kills were with the Sidewinder.

Yep that was true, though they would jam when being fired while in a high g turn if I remember correctly (a frequent scenario when dogfighting Migs). The Vulcan 20mm was better, but only available as gun pods for the F4's and other aircraft much later in the war (other than a few exceptions).

This was part of the reason why the kill ratio and rates were so poor in Vietnam as it wasn't unusual to have all attempts to use ordinance fail to function correctly, or just plain miss. Plus the F4 was designed as a bomber interceptor, not a fighter jet. Worst of all, the air force and navy had stoped training dogfighting and BFM before and during the first half of the conflict. The only way the pilots got any practice before going into combat, was to try to save fuel from other training missions and practice a bit of dogfighting on the sly.

[Bilge_Rat]

The AIM-9 sidewinder had a lot of problems in Vietnam, achieving about a 9% PK overall I believe.

part of this had to do with the missile's design. The seeker on the early missiles could only track an airplane from the rear where it could "see" the engine. The seeker does not actually track "heat", but infra red radiations emitted by the engine. The early seekers could be spoofed by the sun or clouds. The missile was refined over the war by adding a cooling unit which made the seeker more effective.

further more, the early missiles could not really pull high G turns. NVA pilots soon realized they had a chance to survive if they pulled a high g turn as soon as they spotted or were warned of the missile.

part of the problem had to do with the high heat/humidity in vietnam which led to a fair number of duds.

part of the problem also had to do with pilot training. USN/USAF pilots in the early 60s received very little dogfight training and many were not aware of the missile's capabilities. They would fire outside the missile's enveloppe. The USN started the TOP GUN school specifically to address this problem and the results showed in 1972.

part of the problem had to do with tactics, the USAF had a practice of firing every missile on the plane at a target, either all 4 AIM-9s or AIM-7s to increase PK.

the problem with the AIM-4 Falcon had to do with the cooling unit. The missile had to be cooled before it could track. The pilot had to manually turn on the cooling unit and it then took about 1-2 minutes before the missile was ready, the missile then had to be fired within the next 2 minutes or the seeker unit basically died. Once the cooling process was started, it could not be stopped. Needless to say, it was a totally unpractical system out in the field were dogfights start and are over in a matter of seconds.

The 20 mm quad gun on the F-8 crusaders had a different problem. If the pilot pulled more than a 3G turn (easy to do in a dogfight), the gun would jam.

[XabbaRus]

Another tid bit

Top Gun was set up by the British....British naval aviators were the first instructors.