Aircraft Quiz #85

DougRobertson

This quiz will be unusual as it is a true combination of my fantasy and the truth. (Ponder that anomaly!).

In the early 1970s I am piloting a sleek military aircraft on a test range at 20,000 feet altitude level on a heading of 270 degrees. Suddenly, my back-seater calls out a bogy on our tail at the same altitude and heading closing rapidly. I instantly respond with a max rate 360 degree high G left turn at same altitude to position behind the bogy who is now found on my windshield canopy banking left on a 240 degree heading. (The bogy has turned 30 degrees left while we have turned a 360 left).

This military test and evaluation official flight test event actually happened. (Altitude and degree headings may not be identical to the true event but the relative positions are entirely correct and the outcome is not classified). Identify each aircraft by make and model.

1a. My aircraft manufacturer, and 1b. Official nomenclature of the aircraft and common name.

2a. The bogy's manufacturer, and 2b. Official nomenclature of the aircraft and common name.

SunvisorFlyer

I'm not sure how to get this one Doug; two aircraft are flying on a test range, and both are banking left. One is a two seater military aircraft, no hints are given for the other.

I've looked for incident reports, or the like, but have come up empty handed.

DougRobertson

Thank you! I will wait for the customary 500 views-if no right answers they will be forthcoming, and may surprise. (There was no in-flight collision or shoot down between the two manned test aircraft).

DougRobertson

With over 500 views and no right answers, here are the answers.

1a. Grumman Aerospace Corporation, 1b. Grumman F-14A TOMCAT

2a. McDonnell Douglas Corporation, 2b. McDonnell Douglas F-4J PHANTOM.

All US Navy aircraft are built to individual type/mission-specific requirements manuals that specify just about everything about the aircraft, its contents and performance requirements. I have seen/read these comprehensive manuals when I was in Flight Test Division at the Naval Missile Center and subsequent Pacific Missile Test Center at Point Mugu, California.

NAS Patuxent River, Maryland has the US Navy Board of Inspection and Survey (BIS) requirement to first flight test and accept a new production aircraft against its contractual requirements including flight characteristics that also include aircraft carrier catapult launch and shipboard recovery done in the adjacent Atlantic Ocean.

Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Four-VX-4 at Point Mugu, California at the time had the mission of USN fighter aircraft combat maneuvering flight characteristics performance testing on the adjacent sea test range. The Quiz #85 maneuvering test described was actually done at altitude by VX-4 aircraft assets and found the exact as described results of the swing-wing F-14A in outperforming turn ability against the following F-4J; both were VX--4 flight test assets. Word of this outstanding air-combat maneuvering capability of the F-14 TOMCAT spread quickly aboard the base.

When fully swept (by automated control) the F-14's variable geometry outer wings' trailing edge is exactly parallel with the aircraft's horizontal stabilizers' leading edges, though above them with a short linear gap as viewed from directly above.

I used some unconventional terminology in the quiz on purpose. If I had used RIO-Radar Intercept Officer, for the backseater-it would have been a giveaway IDing the Tomcat, for example.

I thank all who were perplexed by this quiz.