Comments by "" (@RedXlV) on "Best Fighter Never Built? The Grumman F11F-1F Super Tiger" video.

@grndzro777 I can't say for sure that the Tigershark would for sure have been better than the F-16, since it's a highly successful fighter in its own right. That said, I see no reason they couldn't have coexisted. The Gripen proves that there's a place in the market for a smaller, lighter, and less expensive to fly multirole fighter. The Tigershark would've been the Gripen of the 80s had Northrop just been allowed to sell them.
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The F-104 is a perfect example of how you can't just strap bombs on a single-role fighter and call it multi-role. Some fighters turn out by accident to be easily adaptable to the ground attack role ("not a pound for air-to-ground" was the motto in designing the F-15A/B, yet the F-15E is an excellent strike aircraft), but some just aren't.
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Canadian nicknames: Lawn Dart. Aluminium Death Tube. German nicknames: Erdnagel (tent peg). Fliegender Sarg (flying coffin). Witwenmacher (widowmaker). Pakistani nickname: Badmash (hooligan).
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@MrArgus11111 Even taking into account that 1960s jets pretty much all had high accident rates, the F-104 had the highest of any of the Century Series by a wide margin. And these were USAF pilots, who weren't brand new to supersonic jets like the Luftwaffe pilots. The F-104 was a challenging plane, and shoehorning it into roles it wasn't designed for definitely didn't help.
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It's easy to imagine that if the Super Tiger had a successful export run, Grumman might've offered a "Super Super Tiger" in the same vein of how Northrop created the F-20 Tigershark out of the F-5: give it a new radar and an F404 turbofan. And then just like Northrop, they'd get screwed over by the Pentagon and Congress seeking to maximize F-16 export sales and thus reduce its unit cost to the USAF. Though perhaps Grumman's long history with the US Navy would've allowed them to snag that aggressor contract.
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The thing I found most puzzling about the Australian Mirage III is that even though Dassault specifically tested one with an Avon 67 engine, the RAAF ended up sticking with the Atar 9C for their Mirages. Despite the Avon being not only an engine already being license-built (in non-afterburning form) in by CAC, but also just a better engine than the Atar in all respects. Marcel Dassault had simply assumed that this would be necessary to obtain the contract (hence going to the trouble of building an Avon powered prototype before even securing the deal), and was surprised when the Aussies opted for the regular Atar powered Mirage III.
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@mrjockt Because what does the most successful fighter pilot of all time know about fighters? Obviously the bribed politicians knew better. /s
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Had the F11F-1F gone into production, I think France would've also revisited the Super Tiger in a few years. The French Air Force wasn't going to buy American, but the French Navy is another story. It would've been a better option than the F-8 Crusader for their carrier-based fighter.
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If the Super Tiger had been bought by Germany and Japan, there probably would've been further export orders. Given that French Air Force had already looked at it and were impressed but uninterested in buying foreign, it seems like there would've been a good chance of the French Navy choosing it rather than the F-8E Crusader for their carrier-based fighter. (None of the Mirages were suitable for carrier operation, so there wasn't any domestic competition for that contract.) But what I'd really love to see is what some smaller nations might do to upgrade their Super Tigers when their budget doesn't allow for buying brand-new fighters. Imagine if in the 1980s somebody replace the J79 with an F404 turbofan and the AN/APG-50 radar with AN/APG-65.
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@doc7000 That's what the Luftwaffe wanted, certainly. But the Bundesmarine had no need for an interceptor. They wanted only a strike aircraft. I can understand West Germany opting to buy the same jet for both services, since in theory that saves a lot of money on logistics. But the F-104G was clearly the wrong plane for the job.
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The F-104 had by a wide margin the worst accident rate of any any USAF jet fighter.
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@davidcarr4991 Presumably you load the missile after the pilot is strapped in and closes the canopy. Meaning you'd have to fire off that missile before you land.
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Imagine it reengined again, this time with an F404.
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Yeah, that's pretty odd that they expected so little out of the J79, seeing as its dry thrust was significantly higher than the J65's afterburning thrust. (A fact which leaves me wondering if the Super Tiger could supercruise.)
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@stephengloor8451 That was the German joke about the F-104.
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