F-22A gun down by crappy F/A-18F

[shep854]

If anything, this looks good for the Raptor - I mean, a Hornet pilot obviously thinks he's sierra hotel because he scored what probably is a very rare kill in a type of engagement no sane F-22 pilot would ever engage in combat anyway.

...unless the F22 pilot was hamstrung by idiotic ROEs from Above.

[Guest pfcem]

It sounds as if you are describing a 90 degree shot, also. That is how I see the photo.

 

I don't have the book (it was his Salamander book on the F-18, in the "armaments" chapter), but his illustration depicted a similar crossing scenario.

I knew I had it packed away somewhere...I have the F/A-18 vs a Mig gun shot scenario in The Great Book Of MODERN WARPLANES, edited by Mike Spick & published by Salimander Books Limited in 2000.

 

It is not a "similar crossing scenario".

 

In the Mig-21 illustration, the F/A-18 is flying "straight & level" and a Mig flying "straight & level" at 500 kts crosses the path of the F/A-18. It assumes the F/A-18 pulled the trigger early enough that by the time the Mig "flew into the bullet stream", the M-61 had reach full ROF. in which case the Mig was struck by four 20mm rounds.

 

In the F/A-18 vs F-22 scenario the F/A-18 IS NOT flying "straight & level".

 

Upon close examination of the two HUD shots one can see that they are the same event - just two separate HUD shots a few frames apart. Note that the time code has not even changed so the two HUD shots are not even a significant fraction of a second apart. And you can see from the two HUD shots that the F/A-18 is "losing track" of the F-22, if there was a 3rd HUD shot of generally equal time (again this it s small fraction of a second) after, the center of the piper would be outside the F-22's right wing. Of course if there was a 3rd (or 4th) HUD shot before, it looks as though the center of the piper would be would be somewhere around the middle of the leading edge of the F-22's LEFT wing. So in the HUD shots the F-22 is moving from left to right but the F/A-18's "bullet stream" is moving top to bottom well. Therefor the F/A-18's "bullet stream" is not passing through the length of the F-22 as in the Mig illustration but accross it from left to right (top to bottom in the HUD shots).

 

Just a guess but it looks as though if this were a real gun shot the F-22 would have been hit (assuming perfect hit placement based on the piper) by perhaps two (three at the VERY most) 20mm rounds. Perhaps one hit to each wing and at the VERY most perhaps one to the fuselage somewhere between the cocpit & the aerial refueling receptacle. Of coarse the assumes that durring the split second durring which this even occured the F/A-18 did not make a significant correction/change in attitude in relation to the F-22.

[shep854]

PFcem, I bow to the open book. I was remembering the Mig drawing from the book (I had a copy of Gunston's "Great Book", but donated to the library). Even with my faulty reasoning, I only assumed 2-3 hits, at most.

[Sikkiyn]

[Exel]

 

[Yama]

Bah... If you look at the orientation of the two planes, the F22 in a steep dive, with the F18 probably reversing to follow, the Raptor was within firing solution for at most a 10th of a second. "IF" the Hornet driver had pulled the trigger fast enough, the chances of an actual hit were pretty low.

 

...probably why MiG-29 and Su-27 guns fire automatically when they get a solution.

[Guest pfcem]

The following was posted by Dozer on fencecheck.com and should clear up anything regarding this incident.

 

"The Hornet "snap" shot - good story. Happened here at Langley. It was a stock, combat configured F-22 flying a BFM (dogfighting) sortie against an airshow configured, i.e. squeeky clean, not combat configured or loaded, Super Hornet (not at all representative of how it performs with 8 pylons, an EA pod and 4-6 or missiles hanging off the rails and probably a fuel tank or two or their out of gas real quick...). It started from a 9000 foot line abreast 300 knot setup (which AF pilots never fly) where they turned into each other at the "fights on" call. It's not a scenario we fly because we never find ourselves in those parameters, we try to set up realistic parameters we expect to see in combat - otherwise the lessons learned aren't applicable and while it might be fun it's not a good use of scarce training time (I don't know if that's a setup the Navy flies or it might just have been a quick attempt to get a last engagement in if they were low on gas - I don't have that info). The Hornet pilot gave up everything he had to point at the Raptor and take a snap shot - it was NOT a tracking shot (stabilized and enough bullets to cause a kill), it was about 2 or 3 frames (many more required to cause a kill - OK - for you skeptics there's always the golden BB but let me finish first...). The AF pilot honored the training rules we're all supposed to abide by, they've been written in blood because pilots have been killed in these scenarios so our training rules look to prevent those scenarios by causing guys to quit manuevering for the shot to prevent a mid-air collision. With greater than a 135 aspect angle and inside of 9000 feet we're supposed to avoid pure or lead pursuit to avoid that head on collision, inside that range at our tactical speeds there's not enough time to react to prevent a collision once you realize it's going to happen. The Navy pilot completely blew off that rule, the AF pilot honored it, the Navy pilot pulled lead pursuit all the way into the high aspect (greater than the 135 degree gun shot rule) snap shot, the AF pilot lagged off to prevent the mid-air collision potential, the Navy pilot was still on the trigger inside the 1000 foot rule (we're supposed to avoid getting inside of 1000 feet from each other to also help prevent mid-air collisions), attempting to get the snap shot, he's inside the 1000 foot range with the trigger on, flies within about 200 feet of the Raptor (remember who's backed off to honor the training rules), and dang near kills himself and the Raptor pilot and causing what would have been one of the worst fighter to fighter disasters in recorded history. I've had that happen twice to me when I was flying the Eagle as a weapons officer (close enough to hear very loud engine noise and I figured I was dead both times, but God wasn't ready to take me yet), and both times I knocked off the fight, made the guy fly home, busted him on the ride and he had to explain to me and the boss why he was being stupid. That is the ONLY gun shot video I have ever heard of or seen from ANY Hornet engagement, ever. And it was a hugely B.S. and completely boneheaded act as you can see from the actual circumstances. In the real world - the Hornet never saw the Raptor and he was dead w/o ever knowing what hit him - that's the cold hard truth, like it or not - sorry if you're a Hornet fan but that's how all of our engagements with Hornets, Tomcats, Eagles, Vipers, etc. have gone. You would be amused if I had time to tell you how the hundreds of engagements went I've had with aircraft of all types, the biggest problem we have now is getting anyone to fly with us because they get no training, they never see us and they just die. Unless we promise to do some within visual range manuevering with them where we start and can see each other at the start, no one (Navy or AF) wants to fly vs. the Raptor anymore - that alone ought to tell you what the truth is."

 

***

 

For those of you who do not know Lt. Col Michael "Dozer" Shower is a F-22 pilot & has been perhaps the best "unofficial" source of information concerning the F-22 (he himself has even had some of his comments posted on fencecheck.com removed as he himslelf determined they revealed too much). He flew the F-22 at airshows for a time but as of late 2006 no longer does. One of the reasons is because his routines "showed too much of the F-22's flight capabilities" (the current routines were developed by Lockheed Martin & the USAF & are much "toned down" from what Dozer was doing). Dozer has commented concerning the F-22's flight capabilities that the F-22 can do ANYTHING anybody else can do & then some (anyone who has seen Dozer fly the F-22 would have to be inclined to agree - Dozer is the pilot of the absolutely fantasic F-22 videos you find on the net).

[Scythe]

For those of you who do not know Lt. Col Michael "Dozer" Shower is a F-22 pilot & has been perhaps the best "unofficial" source of information concerning the F-22 (he himself has even had some of his comments posted on fencecheck.com removed as he himslelf determined they revealed too much). He flew the F-22 at airshows for a time but as of late 2006 no longer does. One of the reasons is because his routines "showed too much of the F-22's flight capabilities" (the current routines were developed by Lockheed Martin & the USAF & are much "toned down" from what Dozer was doing). Dozer has commented concerning the F-22's flight capabilities that the F-22 can do ANYTHING anybody else can do & then some (anyone who has seen Dozer fly the F-22 would have to be inclined to agree - Dozer is the pilot of the absolutely fantasic F-22 videos you find on the net).

 

He also notched a MiG-29 kill during the first night of Allied Force flying F-15Cs for the 493rd FS. Thanks for posting the excerpt.

Edited July 12, 2007 by Scythe