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Comment by nickff

5 years ago

McDonnell Aircraft was a company with a proud history, responsible for remarkable engineering, including the F-4 Phantom II and Gemini spacecraft. Douglas also has a stellar history including the World Cruisers, DC-3, and A-4 Skyhawk. I see it as tragic that they merged and slowly failed.

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nickff

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justin66  5 years ago

If you're judging the quality of the companies and their iterations solely by the airplanes they produced for some reason, leaving out McDonnell Douglas's F-15 is a strange omission.

  • nickff  5 years ago

    I have mixed feelings on the F-15, and think it might have turned out better if it'd been a lighter fighter, as per Col. John Boyd's specification. I think the F-4 Phantom II was a more impressive engineering achievement.

    • dotancohen  5 years ago

      Better for what missions? Maybe had the air force had a single fighter plane, a lighter version of the F-15 would be ideal. But given that the lighter fighter role was to be filled by the YF-16 and YF-17 (today the F-16 and F-18), the F-15 was very well equipped and powered for the missions it would fill.

      The F-4 was an impressive engineering achievement only in the sense that it was far overpowered to make up for it being under-winged. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the F-4 and "Happy Phantom" is my daughter's Stack Exchange handle. It is an amazing airplane. But it was as much dumb luck as it was engineering. And none of that is relevant to the role of the F-15 in the United States Air Force, and other air forces around the world.

      The F-15 is not the F-35, which is meant to take the light-fighter and air superiority and ground attack and even recon roles. I do not think that a single plane can effectively take on all those roles. Even if the F-4 did!

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    • CapricornNoble  5 years ago

      The F-15 to this day has a nearly unrivaled kill-to-loss ratio (100+:0), and with the upcoming F-15EX variant will be a backbone of US air combat power for decades. I'd rate it as a superlative engineering program and aviation platform.

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    • justin66  5 years ago

      > I have mixed feelings on the F-15, and think it might have turned out better if it'd been a lighter fighter, as per Col. John Boyd's specification. I think the F-4 Phantom II was a more impressive engineering achievement.

      So it's curious that someone who takes Boyd's fighter prescriptions seriously is a Phantom enthusiast, but perhaps there's a reason for that. The part about the Phantom being a more impressive engineering achievement strikes me as somewhat crazy, to be honest, and I don't know what to say about it.

    • throw0101a  5 years ago

      > I have mixed feelings on the F-15, and think it might have turned out better if it'd been a lighter fighter, as per Col. John Boyd's specification.

      Can you go into who Boyd was, what was so important about the "specifications", and how the F-15 would have been better by following them (or is worse because didn't)?

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