Tupelov Tu-128 Fiddler

Cold war, Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm - up to and including for example the A-10, F-15, Mirage 200, MiG-29, and F-18.
Elite 3K
Elite 3K
 
Posts: 3146
Joined: 02 Feb 2014, 15:43

by basher54321 » 13 Jun 2020, 17:10

outlaw162 wrote:
Lastly a trivia question: Who is the second most famous F-102 pilot after Gums?



George W Bush maybe - or is he the third?


Elite 1K
Elite 1K
 
Posts: 1748
Joined: 28 Feb 2008, 02:33

by outlaw162 » 13 Jun 2020, 17:17

George W Bush
....when he showed up for drill. :D

Mission Accomplished.


Elite 3K
Elite 3K
 
Posts: 3146
Joined: 02 Feb 2014, 15:43

by basher54321 » 13 Jun 2020, 17:21

outlaw162 wrote:....when he showed up for drill. :D

Mission Accomplished.


LOL did you know him at the time? - what did you think? - for people who only look through a generally filtered media?


Elite 1K
Elite 1K
 
Posts: 1748
Joined: 28 Feb 2008, 02:33

by outlaw162 » 13 Jun 2020, 18:05

Didn't know him. I think he left the Texas Guard somewhat 'early', shortly after I got in the Guard. He was in the Ellington unit. He probably didn't need the age 60 Guard retirement pay anyway.

He was evidently competent in the Deuce, but not quite the renowned aviator his Dad was.

(I get a chuckle out of the 'W' portrayal in the Tom Cruise movie, "American Made".)

Back to the other Fiddler, so to speak.


Elite 3K
Elite 3K
 
Posts: 3768
Joined: 03 Mar 2010, 03:12

by madrat » 13 Jun 2020, 18:57

I had read about F-106A and SAGE, which made me curious about F-102.

The Fiddler pre-dated the Soviet's SAGE counterparts, so it was more standalone platform than its successors. It sounds like Fiddler was more or less for filling gaps in the line at a time there was nothing else available.


Elite 3K
Elite 3K
 
Posts: 3146
Joined: 02 Feb 2014, 15:43

by basher54321 » 13 Jun 2020, 20:40

outlaw162 wrote:Didn't know him. I think he left the Texas Guard somewhat 'early', shortly after I got in the Guard. He was in the Ellington unit. He probably didn't need the age 60 Guard retirement pay anyway.

He was evidently competent in the Deuce, but not quite the renowned aviator his Dad was.



:thumb: Ahh cool - have not seen American Made but appears to be cheap on Amazon Prime so will give it a look.


Elite 3K
Elite 3K
 
Posts: 3768
Joined: 03 Mar 2010, 03:12

by madrat » 13 Jun 2020, 22:57

American Made is more about civilian prop planes and some other hot topics. But it's an entertaining movie.


User avatar
Elite 2K
Elite 2K
 
Posts: 2801
Joined: 16 Dec 2003, 17:26

by Gums » 13 Jun 2020, 23:51

Salute!

A topic worthy of its own thread Rat - SAGE and NORAD and ADC and datalink.

Making my bones as a fighter pilot was different in ADC than in TAC back then. We had much more cosmic avionics and stuff and we flew in all kindsa weather to field minimums. We could also fly in the T-33 besides the UE plane. So getting a thousand hours in a few years was no big deal. We also got to deploy to Tyndall each year and fire either the Genie or AIM-4 heater. Then there was the competition - William Tell. Even ABC Wide World of Sports had a sequence of this and years later they did the same for Gunsmoke at Nellis.

http://www.sharpshooter-maj.com/html/twtd03.htm

Not much history unless looking really hard, and my squad had been there the year before I arrived on station. I only got to get to Tyndall after my checkout there early '66 two times and fire the Genie. Then the stoopid war took over my carreer for almost ten years. The war also delayed WT for a long time, but it came back briefly.

Gums sends...
Gums
Viper pilot '79
"God in your guts, good men at your back, wings that stay on - and Tally Ho!"


Active Member
Active Member
 
Posts: 246
Joined: 14 May 2007, 19:46
Location: Southlake, TX and West Yellowstone, MT

by Meteor » 14 Jun 2020, 23:20

Speaking of the F-102....

My (now deceased) father-in-law spent 33 years in the Army Air Corps and USAF. He started out in the B-24 and finished up in the F-4E. Flew in three wars, got shot down in one, and looking through his logbooks, I find that he checked out in 59 different aircraft. One of those aircraft was the F-102. His "checkout" was rather unusual.

He was stationed on Long Island flying the F-86D, defending the eastern approaches to New York. He went cross country heading west, and ended up on a Friday night at an ADC base in the northern Great Plains. This base was the location of one of the first F-102 squadrons. He went to the bar at the Officer's Club to join the revelry, and ran into friends of his from WW2 and Korea. He asked them what they thought of the new delta-winged F-102. One of his friends said that he would meet my father-in-law the next morning at base ops, and would give him a tour of the new jet.

Seriously hungover, on Saturday morning they met up on the ramp. My father-in-law climbed in the F-102 cockpit, his buddy leaned over to show him how to crank up the engine, patted my father-in-law on his helmet, and told him to go out and get three landings. (Things were different back then...) He took off, did a couple of aileron rolls and a loop overhead the base, did two touch-and-goes, and one full stop. taxied back in, his friend helped him shut it down, and signed his logbook. My father-in-law walked over to his F-86 and launched for the west coast.

Six months later his squadron commander called him into his office back on Long Island. Told my father-in-law that he was going TDY to be the detachment commander for the small F-102 unit at Thule, Greenland. This was not a good deal. It was a six month remote in awful weather conditions, and he had a wife and five kids (including my future wife) at home. (For you youngsters, there was no internet back then.) He quickly told his squadron commander that he obviously couldn't go, because he wasn't checked out in the F-102. His commander pulled out my father-in-law's records, and showed him that he had qualified on the F-102 six months previously in Montana. "Too bad, so sad, you're going!"

A couple of weeks later he stepped off of a C-124 at Thule. His predecessor was at the bottom of the ladder, shook his hand and said, "Good luck," then disappeared into the C-124. My father-in-law walked down the flight line to the F-102 alert detachment. There were eight very sad looking pilots waiting for him. He asked which one of them was an instructor, because he only had 30 minutes and three landing in the F-102. They pointed at one pilot, and said he had 40 hours in the jet, mostly gained during the five months he'd been at Thule. Everyone else had less than 40 hours.

Turns out that the ADC pilots at the first F-102 base got tired of covering the remote northern alert detachments. Whenever a semi-qualified pilot showed up at their base, they had them go out and get three landings, then sent the "qualification paperwork" off to the personnel center. The rule at the time was that you didn't have to go do a second remote until everyone else had done at least one. Consequently, the trained F-102 pilots got to stay home, and all these other guys that had no clue what they were doing ended up in the Artic for six months of darkness.
F-4C/D, F-16A/B/C/D, 727, DC-10, MD-80, A321


Active Member
Active Member
 
Posts: 147
Joined: 06 Apr 2020, 15:01

by nastle » 16 Jun 2020, 12:17

How successful was the use of the IRST/missiles by F-102 in the truck busting role in vietnam ?


Elite 3K
Elite 3K
 
Posts: 3768
Joined: 03 Mar 2010, 03:12

by madrat » 16 Jun 2020, 12:41

I think you mean campfire-busting...


User avatar
Elite 2K
Elite 2K
 
Posts: 2801
Joined: 16 Dec 2003, 17:26

by Gums » 16 Jun 2020, 19:27

Salute!

Correct, Rat.

The Deuce detachment from Clark was there at Bien Hoa for a while when I arrived in late 67. They actually fired some AIM-4 missiles at VeeCee camp fires. Remember, the "Fig 8 " Deuce had the IRSTS. So take out two missiles from each bay and have two to play with. Get a decent vector, search and get a good tone, launch at 3 or 4 miles and 2,000 or so feet in a shallow dive and walla!

Seems to me that the Deuce detachment packed up and went home to Clark spring of '68, because we took over their hootch on the flightline that summer.

About that time the Tropic Moon folks showed up in both Skyraiders and Canberras. They had super duper night vision stuff, but no IR missiles to home on the trucks, and the laser bombs were just being tested up in north Laos.

Our night interdiction detachment at Pleiku had Covey FAC's using crude "starlight" scopes and dropped "log flares" next to the road when they found trucks. We used CBU-25 bomblets and dropped down real low if we had a decent moon. Otherwise, we needed a flare or two up a few thousand feet above the jungle. I still can't believe we did that, and we didn't lose anyone but killed plenty of trucks.

Gums sends...
Gums
Viper pilot '79
"God in your guts, good men at your back, wings that stay on - and Tally Ho!"


Elite 5K
Elite 5K
 
Posts: 5184
Joined: 13 Mar 2013, 08:31
Location: Finland

by hornetfinn » 17 Jun 2020, 14:18

madrat wrote:I'm surprised Fiddlers and Foxbats did not have an equivalent to the Genie. Their guided missiles were not substantially faster than their own top speeds and were not really successful in the first generation. The Foxbat missiles were refined, but the Fiddler seemed to soldier on with the same obsolete crap it largely started with.


I've been wondering why the Soviets didn't upgrade those Fiddlers with the same radar and missiles as they had in MiG-25. R-40 was about the same size as R-4 and the radars were similar in size AFAIK. Strange thing that R-40 and R-4 were developed quite close to each other by the same design bureau but R-40 had significantly higher performance.


User avatar
Elite 2K
Elite 2K
 
Posts: 2801
Joined: 16 Dec 2003, 17:26

by Gums » 17 Jun 2020, 23:28

Salute!

Good points, Finn

At the time, USAF and NATO were getting into the cruise missile and standoff weapon launch tactic. So the long range of the Fiddler was good but the plane needed a look-down-shootdown radar and missile. USAF was improving the Eagle radar about then and was equipping the Air Guard with them and phasing out the F-4. Viper was about to follow for both Guard and Reserve units.

My feeling is the Soviets simply "gave up". And about that time we started to see "tactical" aircraft designs come to the fore. They were not so much for "homeland" defense, but could be exported like the Mig-21 was.

Oh well, some good history here lately, glad to see it.

Gums sends...
Gums
Viper pilot '79
"God in your guts, good men at your back, wings that stay on - and Tally Ho!"


Elite 5K
Elite 5K
 
Posts: 5184
Joined: 13 Mar 2013, 08:31
Location: Finland

by hornetfinn » 18 Jun 2020, 07:03

Thank you Gums! Your take on the matter makes perfect sense and I agree that the Soviets probably gave up on Fiddler. They probably saw that MiG-25 was significantly better fighter/interceptor and put all resources on it. Tu-128 probably soldiered on just because it existed and worked, despite soon being obsolecent due to cruise missiles and other stand-off missiles as you mentioned.


PreviousNext

Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests
cron