Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbuna
Designed as an 'interceptor' eons ago and fullfilled her requirement adequately 
Pity about the crap ordnance she carried  |
That could be argued. As far as I am aware the kill ratio of the Lighting is 1:0(and that was a RAF Harrier whose pilot had ejected the plane kept flying so a Lightning was sent to destroy it.) it never got to actually intercept and shoot down an enemy aircraft so we can only take an educated guess as to how well it would actually perform.We also know that it ordnance was lousy so it would have had to resort to the 30mm cannon most likely at least in the early part of its career.
Of course you could also say that given the nature of the Cold War the Lightning was around to give Soviet Long Range Aviation something to worry about and from that stand point the Lighting did a good job.It should aslo be taken into account that of all nations that have employed missile armed interceptors there have only been a handful of combat intercepts of bombers too few to truly evaluate effectiveness. You would have to go back and look at WWII air combat to have solid enough numbers on such aircraft(in the interception role) and of course the Luftwaffe is kind of bomber interception.
The F-15 on the other hand has a ratio of 105.5:0 (though supposedly an JADF F-15 shot down another JDAF F-15 by accident once and two USAF F-15Cs once collided in mind air during 4 vs. 4 training).
As you say as well two different aircraft designed 20 years apart with a differing concept of role.The F-15 was originally designed to be an air superiority fighter(or killing the enemies ability to control air space namely killing fighter aircraft).The F-15 of course can strictly intercept of course but at the time of its design another aircraft the F-106 had this specific duty.Being an air superiority fighter the F-15 needs it agility in both speed and maneuverability.The F-15 has an unfair advantage as well because it used missiles that had over 95% reliability so when an F-15 fires a missile the odds are very high that another aircraft is about to become scrap."F-15 leading supplier of MiG spare parts"
The Lighting on the other hand was designed to intercept bombers and therefore only needed agility in the area of speed and namely climbing it did not need to dog fight.
The Lighting has the advantage of being the best looking 2nd generation jet fighter and is easily the second best looking British designed jet fighter(Hawker Hunter is number 1) and that is easily worth 20,000 points.