Any engineers who worked on the LWF proposals?

[secretprojects]

Hi all

I've started research for a potential book on the Lightweight Fighter competition that spawned the F-16 and F-18. There's been a fair amount written about the program from the Air Force perspective - but my interests lie more in the configuration, design and engineering space, the tradeoffs considered, alternate approaches discarded, discovering more about how the designs submitted to the competition came to be, and then the challenges of subsequently turning those proposals to reality. I would love to hear from anyone who worked on the GD YF-16, Northrop YF-17, Lockheed CL-1200, Vought V-1100, Boeing 908-909 and their respective precursor designs.

I've found some new information already and have lots of avenues yet to explore for obtaining brochures, drawings and the like, but I would like to know a little about the people involved. For my book on the Hawker P.1121 program I was fortunate to be able to interview one of the senior Hawker Project Office engineers involved in the project who helped me understand the story beyond the dry facts and give me some feeling of the people involved, the company environment they worked in, and a few amusing anecdotes.

Sadly, most of the senior engineers involved in the LWF designs are no longer with us, but presumably some of the younger guys are still around. If that's you, or you know someone who was, I'd love to hear from you (or them).

Thanks,

Paul Martell-Mead (paul@secretprojects.co.uk)

[secretprojects]

Thanks for the feedback.

[saberrider]

I don't think the roll rate was better than Mig21 have, but the initial acceleration to the input it was impressionable. MlG 21roll rate is better.

[johnwill]

saberrider, I think lrrpf52 was saying the YF-16 roll rate was better than the YF-17, not better than the Mig-21. Please note the spec for YF-16 roll performance does not mention roll rate, only time to bank to various bank angle changes, such as time to bank 90 deg, time to bank 180 deg. In a 180 deg bank angle change, max roll rate is not attained, so so max roll rate does not matter. Roll acceleration is what counts, and YF-16 was very good. Max roll termination acceleration is almost double initiating the roll, very abrupt.

[secretprojects]

It couldn't be released or discussed for 40 years, which makes sense when you learn what that was, namely the HAVE Doughnut tactical exploitation versus the new LWF competitors out at Groom Lake.

The YF-16 was harder to see WVR, had better roll rate to get a reversal on the MiG-21, and had a deceiving shape that made it hard to tell if it was flying away oblique, or towards oblique.

The Red Eagle MiG-21 perspective played a very large role in that series of fly-offs.

I've not read anything specifically about Red Eagle LWF evaluations. Where did you find this?

[F-16ADF]

Secretprojects,


This video may interest you, it's from the perspective of USAF pilot (Bob Ettinger) who flew both YF-17 and YF-16. At the 13:00 minute mark he talks about combat relevant tasks of what the jets were suppose to perform (acceleration, .9 mach and 1.2 mach turns at 30,000ft, fuel reserves).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZnpC_4qMtg



He also comments at the end of this video. starting at the 43:00 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brvPtqYj3p0

[secretprojects]

Thanks!

There's a great book on Combat Relevant Tasks for the LWF:

https://media.defense.gov/2015/Sep/11/2 ... 11-041.pdf