Comments by "" (@ronjon7942) on "Best Fighter Never Built? The Grumman F11F-1F Super Tiger" video.

  1. Why would Grumman believe that dropping in a J-79 would result in only the most modest of performance gain? That just doesn’t make sense, unless the first iterations of the engine were extremely derated or something. Oh, and great topic, Mr. Nash, as always. Nice work.
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  2. U know, the very same thought popped into my head.
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  3. Great comment, Gort. Well, I suppose it could be a very poor comment but I happen to agree with it; therefore, I stand by my initial response.
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  4. I agree, Gort, it’s part of the 104 myth now, and I’m afraid people just accept it as true with no research to back up their mistaken belief. It is getting tired, and it’s disappointing that regardless, the myth will perpetuate.
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  5.  @All2Meme  ooooooo, OUCH. Good1.
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  6.  @barryervin8536  That is great. In fact, you should re-post it as a comment rather than just a reply.
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  7. Touche, Paul
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  8. Wasn’t everyone making or taking bribes and contributions then? That was just the way it was done, and naturally everyone’s going to get as close to the line of what’s acceptable and not acceptable. 20 some years ago in the IT industry, we were ‘bribed’ by vendors all the time, the more $ the more commensurate the handouts. It’s also not really fair to judge a company’s sales practices with today’s ethical standards; if every manufacturer is doing the same thing, is it really a manufacturer’s fault for trying to equalize their competitive landscape? Ask Grumman, I guess, but you can bet they learned fast - either know whom to make contacts w, or stay out of the export market. There isn’t a company out there that wouldn’t push their sales strategy to the absolute limit of what they could get away with. A pet project of mine is to delve into the various tenders that ended up making the F-104 the de facto NATO fighter of the time, and I’m trying to find the various aircraft and manufacturers the F-104 was competing with. It’s a little difficult bc each country then, like now, managed their own bidding process, so the potential contender list was different. My goal is to provide evidence that what’s called bribery now was sales strategy then, and most everyone did it, and also to prove that amongst the various designs submitted, the F-104 was either generally the highest performing (against the Fiat G91, for example) or comparable enough in performance (MirageIII) to its competition. So if anyone would like to help or collaborate, please let me know! The insights Ed provided in this episode were amazing, especially learning of what the pilots thought of the 11 vs 104. The F-104’s one of my favorites, and so is Lockheed Martin for that matter, and both will always be; that’s the motivation to care about looking into this task. But if it turns out bribery wasn’t a common sales strategy, or that the F-104 was always the inferior pick, well, I’d like to find that out too. Maybe I’ll be surprised.
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  9. I think the SEPECAT Jaguar and English Lightning had AAMs on top of the wings, but I’ve not seen any on top of a fuselage before. I can’t quite recall, but I’m thinking a Soviet era aircraft also did an above-wing or -fuselage mount….Su-25???
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