Would the F-111B have really been superior to the F-14?

I've read that the USAF had initially wanted their A-7D to have an engine with afterburner, but they evidently decided against this at some point.
Click to expand...
Yes. Afterburning TF30, because they had -from the Navy A-7A - understood it lacked thrust. So the simplest way to gain more thrust was an afterburning TF30... already flying on F-111s.
Which means that that "afterburning A-7" would not be similar to the A-7F : also an A-7 with an AB.
Which in turns brings an interesting question.
Would the AB TF30 A-7A be supersonic ?

Check out the Hearings --- https://www.google.fr/search?tbm=bks&hl=fr&q="A-7D""an+afterburner"

A-7D was to have an afterburning TF30. Then TF41 happened - unfortunately with no afterburner. Otherwise it would have been an A-7F, two decades before...
 
According to documents I attached to that post, Westinghouse did build and ground tested one APQ-81.

Meanwhile a Skywarrior got the Snoopy treatment and was ready to flight test the same APQ-81.

Finally, was the Douglas D-790: Skywarrior as an makeshift F6D.

Bottom line: if the Navy had wanted to piss-off McNamara and to avoid the F-111B forced commonality; they could have pushed instead for what I''d call an "Interim Missileer Force" .

A few VAH squadrons of Skywarriors modified like the 144825 - into makeshift D-790s.

Note that Skywarriors could operate out of CVA Essex.
 
Last edited:
I'm surprised they didn't test the radar on an A-6. F-111B's radar was not small.
 
MadRat said:
I'm surprised they didn't test the radar on an A-6. F-111B's radar was not small.
Click to expand...
A-3 "Whales" are bigger than an A-6.

Archibald said:
Bottom line: if the Navy had wanted to piss-off McNamara and to avoid the F-111B forced commonality; they could have pushed instead for what I''d call an "Interim Missileer Force" .
Click to expand...
I think that aerodynamically, the F-111B needed to be built so that Grumman would have the proper swing-wing experience for Tomcat. For example, note how much farther out the Tomcat wing pivots are compared to the 'Vark.
 
Scott Kenny said:
A-3 "Whales" are bigger than an A-6.
Click to expand...
Sure, but the A-6 had the proper nose plate and cockpit clearance whereas the A-3 was poorly suited. They didnt call them Grumman Ironworks because they were building poor airframe structures. Grumman was about rugged and reliable.

Could have been driven by vendor relationships. Douglas was big into Westinghouse products whereas Grumman was tied to turbopropellers not really any particular radar vendors. Grumman was never as big of fighter jet producer as Douglas. Its amazing it did the Intruder and Tomcat programs because they were pretty unique ventures for them. Giving them access to long range radar sooner. Hmmm.
 
MadRat said:
Sure, but the A-6 had the proper nose plate and cockpit clearance whereas the A-3 was poorly suited. They didnt call them Grumman Ironworks because they were building poor airframe structures. Grumman was about rugged and reliable.

Could have been driven by vendor relationships. Douglas was big into Westinghouse products whereas Grumman was tied to turbopropellers not really any particular radar vendors. Grumman was never as big of fighter jet producer as Douglas. It’s amazing it did the Intruder and Tomcat programs because they were pretty unique ventures for them. Giving them access to long range radar sooner. Hmmm.
Click to expand...

I’m not sure what you mean by “Grumman was never as big of fighter jet producer as Douglas”? Whatever the Navy’s opinion of the two companies may have been, by production numbers of the Panther and Cougar alone, I think you’d have to say that Grumman was the primary provider of fighter jets for the navy in the early jet age.
 
Grumman road its fortune on Panther, with 1500 orders. Cougar added another 2000. North American alone built 10000 Sabres. So, while it made fighter jets it was politically dependent on virtually garaunteed USN orders. But when their monopoly was broken they struggled. North American at the time was a rock star in comparison.
 
MadRat said:
Grumman road its fortune on Panther, with 1500 orders. Cougar added another 2000. North American alone built 10000 Sabres. So, while it made fighter jets it was politically dependent on virtually garaunteed USN orders. But when their monopoly was broken they struggled. North American at the time was a rock star in comparison.
Click to expand...
Oh, Grumman was dependent on the Navy, for sure. And they clearly got caught in the squeeze when the Navy committed to rationalizing their inventory. McDonnell's achievements after the war, having been nearly irrelevant as an aircraft manufacturer during the war, are particularly impressive, and caused a lot of trouble for Grumman. I just don't think we can say the A3 got tapped to test the apq-81 over the Intruder on the strength of Douglas's performance as a fighter jet manufacturer when the sum of all of their fighters produced only amounts to about half of Grumman's Panther production.
 
You took that as my argument from my earlier post? I figured Westinghouse's relationship with Douglas drove the decision to do the Snoopy A-3. Westinghouse may not have considered A-6 as they may not be too familiar with Grumman's manufacturing whereas they worked with North American quite often. I'm thinking someone driving A-6s might have wanted to run with some offshoot of the design to add new wrinkles to A-6. That radar was simply ill-suited for the A-3 for the testbed to lead to anything productive beyond confirmation the test subject worked. So when F-111B fell out all that work was down the drain. But now if an A-6 version made mission sense then you save the potential for your program.

F-111B and APQ-81 certainly were for fleet defense. Might not have hurt to have a KA-6 and F/A-6 support F-111B patrols. The A-6s stay back to provide gas and plug any leakers in a pinch. F/A-6 also takes on a potential role lobbing long range ASuMs at the enemy.
 
The Navy's component of TFX - the F-111B was designed to their then parameters of Fleet Air Defence (FAD), so at the end of the day the USN should and needs to take a lot of responsibility - including the side-by-side cockpit arrangement, escape module and the TF-30. As later demonstrated by the F-111B CWIP, as conducted by Grumman, a much better, lighter and more refind design of the F-111B could have been delivered. But by this time, as rightly pointed out by BlackBat242:
When the US entered the Vietnam War in 1965, they quickly learned that fighters still had to be maneuverable to survive - speed and missile load were not enough, especially since missiles were missing far more often than their testing had indicated they would.
Click to expand...
The truth is, the USN had decided and was 110% committed to strangling it's participation in the F-111B, come hell or high water, so hence their obsession with their 'golden child' VFX/F-14 program mentality.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is for the time, effort and political games (as so eloquently denoted by Tommy H. Thomason -
subsequent passive-aggressive cooperation
Click to expand...
) the USN played in killing the F-111B to pursue the VFX/F-14, perhaps the divergence of 'commonality' stipulated by SecDef McNamara could have allowed for the refined and more naval centric F-111B CWIP derivative and as such saved a vast amount of $$$$ to develope and incorporate the P&W F401 turbofan engine as a replacement for the troublesome and underpowered TF30, as a consequence.
Who knows, maybe the USAF itself might have seen merit in a derivative of the F-111B CWIP....



Regards
Pioneer
 
Last edited:
GregoryUSSR said:
Amazing. When chose the composition of the air group for the strike aircraft carrier 1143.5 "Admiral Kuznetsov", we also thought what to choose. MiG-29K or Su-33. As a result, for some reason they chose the Su-33 (a deck modification of the Su-27), and it is as large as a strategic bomber of World War 2. Naturally, the air group turned out to be not very numerous, despite the gigantic size of the aircraft carrier (length more than 300 meters).
Click to expand...
GregoyUSSR, I'm under the impression that the Su-33 was chosen over the MiG-29K because of the Su-33's inherent greater range and growth potential in other roles. Where as the smaller and lighter MiG-29K would need external fuel, at the cost of weapons, to achieve the desired range.....

Regards
Pioneer
 
MadRat said:
You took that as my argument from my earlier post? I figured Westinghouse's relationship with Douglas drove the decision to do the Snoopy A-3. Westinghouse may not have considered A-6 as they may not be too familiar with Grumman's manufacturing whereas they worked with North American quite often. I'm thinking someone driving A-6s might have wanted to run with some offshoot of the design to add new wrinkles to A-6. That radar was simply ill-suited for the A-3 for the testbed to lead to anything productive beyond confirmation the test subject worked. So when F-111B fell out all that work was down the drain. But now if an A-6 version made mission sense then you save the potential for your program.

F-111B and APQ-81 certainly were for fleet defense. Might not have hurt to have a KA-6 and F/A-6 support F-111B patrols. The A-6s stay back to provide gas and plug any leakers in a pinch. F/A-6 also takes on a potential role lobbing long range ASuMs at the enemy.
Click to expand...
One would think the spotting factor alone, along with the interoperability/commonality of the A-6 Intruder would have favoured the likes of Grumman Design 128E FAD derivative as an interim FAD vs the A-3 Skywarrior FAD derivative....

Regards
Pioneer
 

Attachments

  • 128E.jpg
    128E.jpg
    53.8 KB · Views: 11
Last edited:

Similar threads

Please donate to support the forum.

Back
Top Bottom