Hornet: Best Dogfighter? | Tug Wilson (Clip)

Former USMC F/A-18 Hornet pilot (RAF exchange officer), Tug Wilson, shares his thoughts on the strengths and weakness of the jet and if it could be the best dogfighter in the world.
This is a clip from part 1 of Tug's interview which you can watch here - • Phantom to Hornet Pilo...
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Original thumbnail photo - TSGT Robert J. Horstman, USAF

[@Thetequilashooter1]

I know a couple retired F-18 pilots, and they both said the same exact thing. The F-18 has superb nose pointing ability. When fighting against the F-16 the strategy is always slow down the fight, which is where the F-18 excels.

[@sharizabel2582]

Once when flying backseat in the F-15E we were fighting a Hornet from a 9000 foot offensive BFM setup. At fights on I watched the Hornet going offensive while I was thinking, “Oh this is going to hurt.” By the time the thought was done he was gunning us. 😮

[@uha6477]

Awesome. I'll take his word for it. It's certainly an awesome looking plane.

[@bobthebomb1596]

Never forget seeing those square cornered loops the F18 could perform for the first time.

[@Steamerbeen]

Guy humble, so you know be was a beast. Not easy being overseas in someone else’s backyard using their equipment.

[@CombatAviationist]

Great insights!

[@yanktornado5121]

Definitely underrated in my opinion such a strong fighter stood the test of time already

[@fgeorge7434]

short legs and speed, but could go to fight and come back for sure.

[@AKlover]

@@fgeorge7434 It HAD to fight, it could not run away. Super Hornet can't either. If the Taiwan issue boils over the USN is going to lose A lot more planes than anyone expects.

[@nicholasmanning2253]

@@AKlover Good luck running from hypersonic and hypermaneuverable missiles lol

[@Случайноерусскоеимя]

@@AKlover I don't think this is right... A clean hornet running would likely defeat just about anything with missiles chasing...

[@henryvagincourt4502]

Brilliant!

[@BV-fr8bf]

I been educated today! Great clip!!

[@chrisdouglas4427]

Great Video dude!!!

[@PappyGunn]

The Green Mountain Boys used to come up and play with their F16s against the Hornets in Canada. I remember that the Hornets had their hands full when fighting the F16s. The Hornet served Canada well, being multi role and tough. Kudos to the techs servicing and fixing them, especially in the Northern FOLs.

[@joemd7775]

There is a video of a Canadian F/A-18 in 1988 at the Toronto CNE doing a full 360 degree turn in slightly under 18 seconds. The Marine Corps received the majority of the -402EPE powered Hornets, and it sounds like a very tough fight with a good pilot.

[@MC-nb6jx]

Love reading all these FB Ex Hornet pilots telling us they flew.. No point in listening to the actual real pilot being interviewed.. Thanks everyone 👍🏻👍🏻

[@fgeorge7434]

The F18 have" live wings" and asymmetric slats deflection for rolls +/-3 degrees,7.5 -9"soft' G's

[@2ZZGE100]

While F-18 was incredible at high AoA and slow speeds below 100 knots, there are some pretty easy ways to beat a Hornet in a high thrust fighter especially in guns-only scenario in the fighter community. It was very dragy (hence the slower speed) and did not have good energy addition rate. You did a max pull G radius turn and better be hoping your nose is pointing at your opponent and you get the kill because after that, the Hornet was done. It would bleed all energy and was not easy to recover it quickly. It was basically done after that. The opponent (with much higher thrust) could go vertical and get a kill on it high-to-low as it did not have the energy or the thrust to go up. Also, the slow speed nose authority and maneuvering works well in a 1v1 situation. Not so in many vs many where you could not slow down even if you were locking someone up as you needed speed in case you need to get out of someone else tracking and getting a lock on you. You needed energy/knots to have even a remote chance of dodging an incoming missile. As they say, speed is life.

[@mikelong5207]

game play not reality!

[@2ZZGE100]

@@mikelong5207 It is based on their EM diagram performance. It is based on what real life aviators like 'Okie', 'Mover', 'Jungle', 'Oral' etc. and even Tug Wilson himself said in his interview. Taking fight one-circle and driving it slow was the strategy every F-18 pilot followed. No one wanted to go two circle or vertical scissors in an F-18 as it would be an automatic loss. F-18 is great for slow speed fight, but no match when it came to vertical performance or in a 2-circle rate fight. NATOPS even prohibited double-immelmans for the same reason in F-18 while other high thrust fighters could actually accelerate in the vertical while the F-18 could not. High drag/ due to and low thrust to weight were the two reasons.

[@johnmilner5485]

It's been widely known since the 80s that the hornet could get it's nose on you faster than anything else.

[@lycossurfer8851]

Another nice interview

[@kpsig]

Every Hornet pilot says the same thing about this Beaty. Until they face a well flown M2000 :-) Other than half joking, a truly enjoyable interview, well done.

[@AKlover]

Always thought they should refit A batch of legacy Hornets with the super hornet's engines and thrust vectoring for training purposes.

[@AKlover]

@NoSoyAllowed Because "Peer" adversary fighters have it. Did you miss the part about "Training".

[@koc988]

A lot of stat card reading keyboard warriors that haven't done a single BFM set irl are really out here ready to tell an actual fighter pilot about his own aircraft.

[@BosworthMcG]

Lol IKR, or couch warrior DCS geeks.

[@michaelmulligan0]

What time period is he talking about?

[@TowGunner]

Assuming the early 2000’s. He mentioned the Iraq war.

[@PappyGunn]

Weakness: How do you rate the Hornet as an interceptor?

[@margareteadie9761]

F 18 is simply a twin tail,enlarged f5.wich is the best looking jet,s ever made..f 22 is the only American plane that does the roll,it was d designed to do.f18 is a 50 year old design..they have spent more on adaptions than on the purchase cost.you can only whip an old horse for so long.

[@wojciechczupta]

isn't that the old good interview?

[@265justy]

F-16 is a better dogfighter than the F/A-18....And always was. The YF-17 was basicly the Hornet prototype and it was much faster and more agile than the F/A-18 it later became. But the F-16 beat it out..The Hornet was good below 200 Knots. But above it the Viper nailed it.

[@nicholasmanning2253]

2 circle vs 1 circle, learn this. Keep in mind the Navy and Marines rejected the F-16.

[@265justy]

@@nicholasmanning2253 Because it only has 1 engine. They wanted 2 for over water operations back then. Also remember the USAF rejected the YF-17 in favour off the F-16.

[@bazej1080]

To be honest, similarly, lightweight radar-less YF-17 was better dogfighter than serial F-16. Which was lamented by one of it's designers group lead by John Boyd.

[@265justy]

@@bazej1080 It was not a better dogfighter than the YF-16 nor the F-16A. If it was... It would be in the USAF.... End off.

[@bazej1080]

@@265justy Oh, you didn't understand me, i just said YF-17 was more maneuverable than serial F/A-18, just like prototype YF-16 was more maneuverable than serial F-16. Prototypes are always better in maneuvering being lighter, not carrying full avionics suite, radars etc.

[@lancraft]

F-16.

[@gaHuJIa_Macmep]

7.5 g-limited airplane - and the best dogfighter??? Hmmm...

[@no_regerts5176]

You can override it with the paddle.

[@gaHuJIa_Macmep]

@@no_regerts5176 the paddle???

[@Jacksonflax]

G limit has literally less than nothing to do with the performance of a 1-circle AOA fighter. If for whatever fantasy reason you need more Gs than you can pull the paddle switch and it will give you 30% more.

[@gaHuJIa_Macmep]

@@Jacksonflax what is "paddle switch"? You mean g-limiter which you can switch off?

[@fgeorge7434]

Sorry, but MIG 29 wipe the legacy Hornet if ROE allow visual dogfights ,guns only.

[@bazej1080]

Actually there is an extensive Interview with Lt. Col. Clifton titled: How to win a dogfight, he had huge amount of flight hours in MiG-29, F-16 and F-15. He was a part of MiG-29 evaluation program and he mock-dogfighted all NATO fighters in MiG-29, a lot. In short MiG-29 in maneuverability was slightly better than F-15, but slightly worse than F-16. It's main strong point in visual combat was helmet sight, not necessary it's maneuverability, which was very good but not exceptional, and main weak point was poor cockpit visibility, poor ergonomic, static stability aerodynamics and low situational awareness. Overall he enjoyed flying MiG-29. The whole interview is fantastic read.

[@fgeorge7434]

@@bazej1080 True,but bad cockpit ergonomics was the same for all Russian fighters because of commonality.

[@mikelong5207]

yeah i'm sure you know better than the guys who have flown them!

[@bazej1080]

@@fgeorge7434 Soviet Union operated nearly 10x (ten times) more combat aircrafts than today's Russia so commonality was very important. It restricted more recent types from benefits of improved ergonomic, but pilots could easily retrain to different types.