They both were just incredible fighting machines.
The F15 had a motors tuned back in the about the time I was up
in Alaska, early 80s tuned tuned back, which just meant you
couldn't sustain 9 GS quite as high as the F16.
Excess power wasn't there. You know, I don't remember
exactly what the numbers were. Let's say you, you know, in, in
18,000 feet, you can do 9GS all day in both aeroplanes, but at
25,024 thousand maybe the only the F16 could do that.
If you're an Eagle in a nine G's you're, you've got to have your
nose downhill, you're going to lose energy.
So that was a difference. They were fundamentally,
obviously very different to fly, you know, a big stick in the
Eagle, a lot of feedback on the aeroplane, a lot of, you know,
controlling the plane with rudder, especially in the
second, the second-half of my career, a lot of throttle
movement. And you had a lot of movement in
the F15 cockpit. You know, you sat straight up
and down in the Eagle cockpit and you know, your basic skill
was the physical skill was to be able to turn, look over your
left shoulder and see the right tail.
You had to be able to do that. And then same with the other
way. But that was always a body
movement and a rotation. The 16, there's no room for any
of that and you're laying down in the F16, so it became more of
a neck machine. You'll see more F16 guys with
injured necks than you will F15 guys, but both communities have
it and the side stick. I love the side stick.
I mean I just thought this was the easiest thing.
I mean it moved a little bit, but it was just it was forced
input on that thing. So each aeroplane were very
identical for high G, high manoeuvring. 16 advantage was it
was a little smaller 16 would when you got to really high
alphas, the computer said this is all you're going you'd be
over the top in a fight and you'd be just trying to get the
nose back down back down in the fight.
Next thing you know the nose is going up and you're looking at
the airspeed you got 80 knots and it's going the other way.
You can see in the tapes it's going the other and it's what
it's doing is topping the plane from departing and it's like I
can't get the nose down. It's going the other way to
reduce the AOA on as you come over the top of this thing.
So you'd hang up there Eagle, you got it up on its back and
you just, you know, flap that stick back and the the stabs are
so big back there, which is flap its way right around.
And you could always point the nose immediately down.
And that was a huge advantage the F15 in a slow fight.
So the F16 models vary a lot with thrust.
The aggressors all flew the 220 motor, the big, big mouth, two
20s. I flew that 99% of the time or
90% of the time, 10% of the time we had an opportunity to fly the
big mouth 110 motors and it's just to me that plane never
cease to amaze me and we always fool the aggressors.
F sixteens clean. There was maybe an ACM iPod
hanging on it, but clean aeroplanes.
So they were just truly rocket ships.
One day after a big fight, we had a lot of gas and the Navy is
in this and Bad Bob, we used to call him Bad Bob, Black Tomcat.
And that was always, anytime the Black Tomcat was on the range,
no matter what side he was on, the aggressors were looking for
him. But the Black Tomcat got
upgraded to AD model with the 110 engine in it.
Same engine did the big mouth a block 30.
I was flying in and we're just going to do BFM.
It's the end of a fight. It was actually end of a test
mission. We're going to do a fight.
We come to the merge, go to the merge, and this Tomcat thinks
he's going to go, he's going to show me what those engines can
do. And we end up in a vertical
scissor starting at about 1820 thousand feet.
And at 35,000 feet, we're across the canopy from each other at
both of us had probably, you know, 100 knots, still looking,
waiting for someone to fall off. Both planes could just keep
going up to that. Yeah, it was just a shocking
thing right around around He was shocked the city didn't think
the the 16 could do that the big mouth 16 with the 110 motor in
it. But yeah, he fell off first so
I'll just say that just hung it. He fell off and then my issue
was getting the nose down. Here he goes get the nose down
that you know they end up and chasing and maybe fade away.
Fox 2 or something because he's he was able to get that nose
down and accelerate and I just trying to get down get they were
so that was an incredible fight just to we both were shocked
looking at each other literally 500 feet apart across the
canopy, him and the wizard looking at me and I'm looking at
them and we're like 35. You can see the whole world
around us. You never see that in a scissors
fight. You're always, you know,
typically scissors end up backing down all the way up to
up into the mid 30s. That was a great fight story one
day as an aggressor. So the toughest opponent would
be, you know, in overall air tactics, it would be someone on
the blue side executing the way they should.
Then they're going to kick your butt.
There's no doubt the toughest dog fight consistently was
against the F16A and there weren't a lot of them around.
They were, they're kind of going away when I was had a chance to
do some DACT with them in the late 80s, but they were kind of
fading away. But I think I remember being
down at Tyndall on a instructor deployment weekend down fighting
the the Makos down in Homestead. I think they still had A models.
As a matter of fact, I know they did.
And I was with a weapon school candidate that was going to
weapon school in a week or two. And we were out fighting these F
sixteens to kind of a prep for the weapon school.
And he hadn't seen an F16 A before we'd flown against F16
C's and it's just it's an amazing turning machine.
Yeah, it's just so light and it just turns on a dime.
I mean, they all turn on a dime, but it just eye watering.
I mean 6009 thousand foot setup fights on and you swear within 2
three seconds you're looking at, you know, 135 aspect almost
coming right back at you. Yeah, so and when I flew the
plane, there was no regard for G the Eagle.
You had to, you know, tweak to close to 9 and then work it in
there so you wouldn't overgee the aeroplane. 16 is just pull
as hard as you can on that stick, you know, set your vector
where you want, that's the critical part.
And then just pull for all you got and you didn't need to do
that. Maybe 10 lbs as pull all as you
needed, but you pull as hard as you want and never worried about
overgeeing the aeroplane. Yeah, if I guess the one.
That much? I did.
I did fight against the Hornet and the Super Hornet.
I got a back seat ride in the Canadian Hornet once.
I was very impressed with the alpha and the smoothness of the
plane. You know, it didn't have the the
the wing rock in the rattle. The Eagle had high alpha.
But I flew against the Hornets a lot and then the Super Hornet
came out and the their rag instructors just getting
qualified came to New Orleans, which was towards the end of it
was my last assignment. We're flying a model F fifteens
and the new Super Hornet and those two planes were almost
identically matched in rate radius excess power for
sustained high G turn performance.
The F the F18 could just get a little further nose high than
the eel could, but the planes are very similar in fighting.
So we did that for several weeks just to get the instructors up
to they literally had 10 hours in the aeroplane, you know, very
experienced instructors. But here's a new super Hornet
coming out. So I had a chance to fly against
some a couple times a day for about two weeks.
It was more dog fighting, more BFM.
It's fantastic Mechanically I had I think I landed the F15
four time single engine in my career in the the 2800 hours or
so. One was when I was very junior
in the plane up in Alaska rolling in from a very high
attack straight above. Someone had determined at the
time didn't know what it was, but determined the four the four
stages of turbine disintegrated and it just in the cockpit.
It appeared as a stag stall, which was classic of those
engines. Even though I wasn't going in
out of burn. I just come back to idle as a
rolled over, you know, bang bitching Betty and firelight and
and so oh stag stall off on and then all hell broke loose and I
could not see anything in the aeroplane that vibrated so much.
And what had happened was, is we end up flying, you know, it
scared the hell out of me. I'm coming level off, knock off
the fight. I'm trying to, I'm thinking
about jettison the tank. We own a single bag on the
centre line there. I'm, I'm afraid to go across the
Alaskan range back to Elmendorf, which is, you know, there's a
4050 mile stretch there of Arctic mountains and ice.
You jump out there, no one's going to find you.
So I'm going to divert down to King Salmon, which was closer,
no mountain ranges, but end up going down there and landing in
a raging snowstorm, grabbing a hook and approach end and
stopping the jet getting out and there's no turbine.
It's gone. And what had happened 1 is that
thing came apart, disintegrator, some blades laying in the back
of the burner. Can it it just vibrated and it
vibrated so much in the engine that the the whole instrument
panel, the aeroplane was just unbelievable to vibrate.
You couldn't I mean, you can tell up and down on an attitude
indicator, but only because it was black and white or black and
grey. But reading instruments was
almost impossible in that. So that was a big learning, you
know, oh shit experience for me, but you know, I did what I was
taught, you know, took a couple deep breaths and got the plane
back on the ground. The other ones were I I think in
the Iceland had a throttle lock, you know, take off and go out
and pull the throttles back to cruise in like 1 engine stuck
just below mill power won't come back.
So I can't land like that. So we end up, you know, fly
around, do some of the mission and then some of the training
and then just shut it off and land.
And the other two, I think we're just were real classic stack
stalls with no restarts. And I think those two were
Tyndall, if I remember correctly.
I my last two assignments, I've never had any mechanical
problems, serious mechanical problems.
So did you scare? Yourself.
Out in the aeroplane, I'm sure I did.
There were a few times where fuel was critical.
But I, I can't remember thinking of any time like oh shit, I
almost hit the ground or things like that.
You know, I got, I had learned enough from people ahead of me
that made mistakes that I think most of the time I saw myself
going into a situation that I didn't like and I don't, I can't
remember any time going. I really scared myself.
I was scared because of what initially happened in the F15,
very inexperienced in the plane. But the rest of the time I'm
taking my time in the F16 single engine that that motor worked
for four years like you read about in and out of burner
everything. Never had an issue with it,
never flew over water with it. They always over land.
But I can't really remember. Maybe if I think about it some
will come up, but. Did you get shit from your eagle
buddies for flying 16? Different than the weapons
school guys. Yeah, you know the weapons
school every year has a re blew where they bring in you know, if
you can get there, you come back, they go over the latest
and greatest and upgraded software and systems and that
first re blew. I was that wasn't first.
It was probably a couple. I was at Nellis sign there with
the F sixteens and I don't want to say they say you're not
invited, but don't you have other things to study with the
F16, which I did so and I spent some time with the F sixteens
going just over the air to air stuff with some of their reblue
and then they go, you're not dropping bombs.
You sure you want to be here anymore.
So it was nothing just part of the game.
You know, probably the the expectation and anticipation of
what you're about to do. You know, with the experience,
you could go in with a much more, you know, relaxed
attitude. You're able to deal with a lot
more contingencies, let's say in an air threat.
You were expecting this, you saw this, this changed because
you've seen a lot. You can adapt a lot easier.
And then with the new technology being fed into that, it made it
easier. However, you know, I think I was
454445 when I retired. I was still the day before I
retired. I'm not pulling 9 GS every day.
I mean, physically you had to stay in shape to do that and,
and I never really had any, you know, significant issues.
The combat edge, I don't know if we mentioned that on our
discussion, but the combat edge made such a significant
difference as that came out in the 90s for especially for older
guys. I think sustained in high GI
mean it just made it. I don't want to say it's easy,
but it it reduced the fatigue and workload and you could
concentrate on what you need to in a high G fight.
But up to the day before I retired, I was out pulling jeans
just like I did when I was, you know, 25 S.
Yeah, I did mention before about the some of the sorties we would
put together in the guard, but it wasn't uncommon to have
everyone in the guard, everyone in your flight, even a chip,
everyone's a weapon school grad. So you're kind of back to that
and maybe a little rust here and there, but that, it just was
amazing to see a good execution. Yeah.
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