Your F-15 vid is going to be fire.

Read the book "Bury us upside down"...Misty History

I wonder if the sensationalizing of MiG attacks on B-29s has a lot to do with the powerlessness of the bomber crews. Their .50s could do basically nothing, so they just kind of had to pray that the enemy didn't manage to hit anything important.

I'm just impressed to see the same picture of the F14 as was on the box for the Airfix model I built as a kid. Thank you for bringing back that memory!

great video. can you please make a video on the Folland Gnat and its performance in the India-Pakistan wars?

I like your research and attention to detail. Between WWII and Korea the United States, having forgotten the lessons from Pearl Harbor, down-sized its military budget in a big way including research and development. My Dad was a fighter pilot in WWII (POW for the last three months) and remained in the Air Force Reserves while he finished his college education after the war. He was put back on active duty in 1950 as we increased our military capabilities. After Korea, he struggled to get his minimum flying hours until he finally moved from the reserves to the regular Air Force. He got training in all-weather flying of fighters, but it was a crude system. I sometimes wondered which took more guts, flying combat or flying in a jet fighter with zero visibility. I marvel at how he landed a fighter in Georgia in zero visibility in 1954. It was shortly after this time the Century fighters were being tested and placed into production. Things got better from then on. I would have to say you can't rule out the role of politics in and out of the military in the few years before and after Korean War. I don't think the R&D budgets for all military services was robust enough and progress suffered. What is amazing it how they were able to achieve what they did with so little in the era you address in the video. The Century Series fighters (F-100, F-102 (introduced before the F-101), F-101, F-104, F-105, F-106) marked an era of rapid scientific and technological improvement in the mid-1950s through the 1960s. My Dad lived to fly fighters and was fortunate enough to actively fly fighters throughout his career in the Air Defense Command, retiring in 1968.

Jesus can’t help but feel frustrated and bad for the engineers and designers having to deal with OMEGA BUREAUCRACY. Seriously governments kill ideas

The OV-1 is in the top 5 of my favorite aircraft. A little funny looking, but screams pure utility.

Red storm rising is an absolute masterpiece. By far my favorite novel❤

I don't leave the house without a pistol. Why would I fly a combat aircraft over enemy territory without a gun? Common sense.

This is a superb presentation. Not A Pound For Air To Ground is rapidly becoming my favorite - and in my opinion, the best - military aviation content producer on KZbin.

It must have been something else, indeed. Thanks for these.

Great well researched video! However a few questions 1. Where does your claims of the Soviet guns “being less accurate in spread” come from? Technically, accuracy can also be higher spread increasing hit chance. Precision is better to describe a gun with low spread. Are you saying the Soviet guns have more or less spread? And what is that based on ? 2. Where does your claim MiG-23 being a gas guzzler come from? This is true for most aircraft, and MiG-23 did achieve being one of the fastest accelerating aircraft of its time, even beating the MiG-29 while supersonic 3. Where did hear about R-60 not being fired from MiG-23 for causing engine failure until an upgrade come from? I have never heard this before 4. This is less a question, but don’t you think it odd that in your comparison of weapons/aircraft at the end, you say MiG-21 struggled from being designed as an interceptor and not for low altitudes, and this is also connected to the “short range at low altitude.” However, isn’t the exact same true for Mirage III? As you describe in your own videos, it was basically handed to Israel as an interceptor, and their pilots were essentially the first ones to see a good dogfighter in it.

This is a fascinating look at a crucial but under-appreciated aspect of air combat and the Cold War. Most books and channels focus on air superiority fighters, but bomber interception would have been the most crucial aspect of a major war in the 1950s or early 1960s.

The understated sarcasm in this video is hilarious.

26:40 The NATO brevity code for launch of a semi-active radar guided missile is, of course, FOX-1 The nato brevity code to indicate a missile leaping off your aircraft when you were not expecting that to happen is religion specific.

Great video! I love learning about air to air weapons, especially with you. I think you could do videos on damn near any weapon system and you'd have me hooked, even if it wasn't related to aircraft whatsoever.

It should also be noted that the Digital Flight Control System (DFCS) on the F-14D was a game-changer for pilot workload and overall safety/handling. Combined with IRST, ground-attack capability, AMRAAM inclusion, digital avionics, and those huge engine upgrades… it was indeed the naval fighter/attack aircraft for the future. I think I get emotional about the Tomcat requirement because (in one of the only times in US aviation procurement) the aircraft replacing it was actually less capable by many metrics. I’d understand it if there was simply an obvious step-change in capability and price, but that wasn’t the case. Another thing you didn’t mention was that, in addition to their unceremonious and relatively early retirement, the US went on an all-out rampage destroying almost every tomcat AND part they could find. For one of the best (and certainly coolest) fighter aircraft of all time, its last few chapters were some of the most gut wrenching you can imagine. I’m SO grateful I’ve got one of the real Libyan MiG killers down the road at the Udvar Hazy Air & Space Museum.

59:35 4 aircraft launched in 14 seconds - that’s just insane! Decades ago no less. Certainly another huge issue that the Soviets would have to contend with. 1:07:32 - that is just… a sexy airplane. Period. Right up there with the famous telephoto carrier deck sunset oversweep photo.

seeing russia in action today makes me wonder what the big fuss was all about

Justice done, mate. Loved this plane long before Top Gun, it was on the cover of an encyclopedia of military aircraft I got as a kid in 79 or 80.

Coolest fighter ever. Thanks very much for an outstanding presentation.

F-14 was such a great aircraft, that they retired it in 2006

Fantastic video! Funny engine related fact; SAAB Viggen used a modified and licence made version of the JT8-D engine (the bigger brother of the TF-30). Yes, you guessed it. Notoriously sensitive to compressor stall in high AoA situations.

16:15 "The Navy learned their lessons (about reliability) [...] the AWG-9 had a MTBF of once every 34 hours." Geez, aviation maintenance is nuts.

1:02:13 that's factually untrue, the Su-27s Sorbstiya pods would have seriously degraded the AIM-7 and Phoenix and was broadly superior to the built-in ECM on the Tomcat, and those were becoming available towards the tail end of the cold war. Even older Soviet ECM pods like Gvozdika were able to effectively decoy the AIM-7Fs and Hawk missiles in the Iran-Iraq war, though they weren't available to the Iraqis in large numbers, so those systems still did achieve some kills. Outside of 50km the F-14 would have had an edge due to Phoenix, but within 50km R-27 has superior kinematics and would have posed a serious threat to the Tomcat. And of course within visual range the R-73 was far superior to the AIM-9 models available at the time.

Excellent, very enjoyable

I am in awe. Very good video!

The F-14D was the version that everybody wanted but it came too late to save the program. Military aircraft procurement is a huge gamble based on many variables. Sometimes the assumptions are wrong and a particular warbird gets shortchanged.

26:41 this audio is from the SECOND Libyan incident, and the "Oh, Jesus..." is the RIO, not the pilot. The Ward Carroll video on this incident is explicit on that fact. The 2nd Gulf of Sidra Shootdown was a US Navy pilot who decided he WOULD HAVE a shootdown to his credit, ROE be damned, and so he shot down a Libyan "Flogger" that was proven later to be running away, not attacking. The jackass got the kill marker and the bounty anyhow. He's why the US no longer allows kill markers or bounties/rewards for "kills".

14:25 all I can think about is Rooster. "Wha-Ohhh!! This thing is SO OLD!" "What? There's about a zillion breakers back here! Which one is the one I'm looking for?!" "Maverick! This is a TAXI-way! A very SHORT taxi-way! How are we going to get this MUSEUM PIECE in the air?!" "Wait... why are the wings moving?"

Great episode! Informative, with a sense of humor. A++

What a beautiful airplane. I have a soft spot for them as I grew watching drawings of these planes fighting in Korea and Pakistan.

I watched this entire video in its entity, genuinely love how deep you go into the mechanics of each version

Commercials every 30 seconds.

Great video! Looking forward to a Phoenix video!

The first reconnaissance photographs of damage in Alaska following the 1964 Good Friday earthquake were provided by the OV-1 Mohawk.

Absolutely fantastic episode. Well done!

Very interesting and informative. I was in Tac recce from about 20 years. The last base where I was stationed was Bergstrom AFB, and they had what they called an RF-100 in their air park. So I knew a little about the Slick Chicks, but I didn't know how little they were used or why. Having watched this video, I'm now wondering whether the one at Bergstrom was actually one of the Slick Chicks or not. I'm guessing it wasn't, but I don't really know, or what happened to it. Thanks for the info!

So they built 69,000 of these things and of all that were fired, they only shot down 140 over a period of 50 years, and at $133.333 ($1,161,000 in todays money) a pop during Vietnam, insane. I can't believe they would give or worse, the military would accept a weapon and deploy it with a 8% chance of working.

Dear, NAPFATG, this is an excellent episode. But I must say, the final sentences very much leave us wanting more. That direct fourth-gen comparison video of the Teen Series is very much needed. Having said that, great episode and keep up the great work.

I still think they should have put F-111's on carrier for long range strike along side the F-14 and never produced the F-18.

Yeah, I think you gave it quite a food summarization. I always wondered if they had pushed giving the Tomcat Aim-120 would have helped its lifespan but it seemed like congress was convinced the 14 had exceeded its relevance compared to the F-18. I wonder if the decision was done today if they would choose the same considering the situation with Aim-174 looking a bit big on the F-18.

During those Sidewinder engagements I just could not help but think about the good old F-8 in that type of engagement and how effective it was.

Superb documentary Sir! You really do have a talent for this. Great stuff!

11:31 that’s interesting Why would still be classified We don’t use it anymore Something’s sus

An aircraft us😊ed for photography and observation it doesn't useless...

51:06 which would eventually bear fruit (Fighter Mafia)

A US Navy F-14 killed a USAF RF-4