Grumman XF11F-2 Super Tiger

[SSgtC]

We know that in 1959, three years after the Sparrow II was canned, the single-seat Crusader III lost to the Phantom because (among other reasons) its lone pilot would have been overwhelmed with a) piloting the aircraft and b) handling SARH Sparrow III without a RIO in the back.

Not necessarily. The Crusader III was equipped with a very sophisticated autopilot and avionics suite for the era. In its intended mission as a fleet defense interceptor, pilot workload would have been relatively low. Once airborne, the autopilot could maintain heading and altitude, and could even be adjusted without having to disengage it. The way it was envisioned to work was, once airborne and under the direction of the E-1 or E-2, the pilot would engage the autopilot and devote himself to operating the radar and weapons systems.

For the avionics, once a target was selected on the radar, the computer would slave the radar to that target and keep it locked as long as it was within 60 degrees of the aircraft centerline. Now, this was the procedure that was to be used for defending against Soviet bombers, and in that scenario, pilot workload is manageable. The workload problem won't rear its ugly head until you're trying to use a Sparrow in a dogfight. At that point, yeah, the RIO becomes invaluable.

 

[Tailspin Turtle]

According to George Spangenberg there was a conference on all-weather fighters at Patuxent where a group of Navy pilots came down firmly in favour of two seats which helped feed a general conviction two seats were needed. With the avionics available and mission requirements, two radar sweeps could be the difference between success and failure so it made sense to have someone with eyes glued to the screen.

The F8U-3 test pilots might have had other opinions.

Based on my reading of contemporaneous documents, Paul has it right. With respect to “avionics available”, the radar of the time required a lot of adjusting for maximum performance (or even an adequate one), like a black and white TV with a rabbit-ear antenna receiving a weak broadcast signal. And that was without active jamming by the incoming bomber, which increased the degree of difficulty. Since the Fleet Air Defense mission that the F4H/F8U-3 were competing for was to keep the carrier from being sunk by cruise missiles, the imperative was to shoot down the bomber carrying them, not engage in manly air-to-air combat with another fighter pilot.

 

[Tailspin Turtle]

Also note that Vought went to great lengths to demonstrate that the combination of a single pilot and autopilot was adequate to the task. They even created and took to Washington a fixed-base simulator that provided a hands-on demonstration of it, not to mention timeline analyses that proved the guy-in-back was dead weight for 95% (or something like that) of the mission and putting him in the airplane (and two engines) increased its procurement and operational cost. Nevertheless, reducing the risk of losing a carrier was decisive.

 

[blackkite]

This picture is from #33 by fightingirish-san.
Unbelievable ventral fin design.
Something will happen when ventral fin rotation.

 

[fishpond]

If you look at the contemporary documents, they emphasize the fuel problem. Grumman kept looking for places to cram in more fuel. I remember that some of it ended up in the cheeks of the air intakes. I suspect that it is not only fuel fraction that counts. Remember that the F/A-18 was derided as the 'lawn dart' with grossly inadequate range, but the F-4 was considered good enough; that has to be more than just fuel fraction (and yes, I know that Phantoms generally needed drop tanks).

On the earlier comments about rear-seaters, Sparrow III is automatic: you lock on the radar and it tracks the target. You may have to monitor the lock-on, but that is not why they wanted a RIO. The RIO had to figure out what was happening based on the radar in search mode. It was believed that he woudl pick up a target much more quickly than a pilot with other things to do.

Sparrow II and III were parallel programs. There was also a proposal, early on, for an IR-guided Sparrow, but it never got far enough to be designated (say) Sparrow IV. The important difference between II and III, tactically, was that II would have been a fire-and-forget weapon. In theory an airplane using it could engage more targets. That might be important in a strategic interceptor like the Arrow. It should also have mattered in fleet air defense, but apparently the expectation was that the Sparrow would get to the target quickly enough to allow the fighter to engage another target right afterwards. It may be that a carrier could concentrate multiple fighters against incomers, but strategic interceptors like the Arrow tended to operate more singly. A lot would also depend on how many bombers were expected, as per whatever initial program documents (which I haven't seen, for the Arrow) would say.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Basically its fuel fraction, engine SFC, and drag which are important.

 

[zen]

No an ARH AAM with lock-on being at best 5-10nm is a close range weapon.
And 5-10nm is what was just possible with a 8" diameter seeker in X-band at the time using a small battery powered transmitter.
What is in it's favour is it's 'all aspect capability. At any angle.
Where this counts is head on, the easiest engagement to 'calculate' by fighter control, but the hardest to actually pull off due to the rapid closing rate.
However the potentially fully automatic capability has merit and could overcome that problem.

 

[Archibald]

If you look at the contemporary documents, they emphasize the fuel problem. Grumman kept looking for places to cram in more fuel. I remember that some of it ended up in the cheeks of the air intakes. I suspect that it is not only fuel fraction that counts. Remember that the F/A-18 was derided as the 'lawn dart' with grossly inadequate range, but the F-4 was considered good enough; that has to be more than just fuel fraction (and yes, I know that Phantoms generally needed drop tanks).

A peculiar example is Dassault faced with providing a decent range to a Mirage IVA powered by quite voracious Atar 9s.
He ended cramming 500 L of kerosene... inside the vertical tail ! I think the 4000 brought back the idea later.

 

[henshao]

We know that in 1959, three years after the Sparrow II was canned, the single-seat Crusader III lost to the Phantom because (among other reasons) its lone pilot would have been overwhelmed with a) piloting the aircraft and b) handling SARH Sparrow III without a RIO in the back.

Not necessarily. The Crusader III was equipped with a very sophisticated autopilot and avionics suite for the era. In its intended mission as a fleet defense interceptor, pilot workload would have been relatively low. Once airborne, the autopilot could maintain heading and altitude, and could even be adjusted without having to disengage it. The way it was envisioned to work was, once airborne and under the direction of the E-1 or E-2, the pilot would engage the autopilot and devote himself to operating the radar and weapons systems.

For the avionics, once a target was selected on the radar, the computer would slave the radar to that target and keep it locked as long as it was within 60 degrees of the aircraft centerline. Now, this was the procedure that was to be used for defending against Soviet bombers, and in that scenario, pilot workload is manageable. The workload problem won't rear its ugly head until you're trying to use a Sparrow in a dogfight. At that point, yeah, the RIO becomes invaluable.

This is basically how the Foxbat worked, among others in the Soviet doctrine

 

[kaiserd]

I think reports above of “low workload” are perhaps over optimistic in this context and are likely to be reliant on scenarios of unrealistically co-operative targets.
I.e. a “dogfight” could easy end up being most scenarios where the opponent isn’t large, completely unaware and flying nice straight and level.

It should also be noted that Soviet doctrine in this area similarly didn’t age well and has (perhaps somewhat unfairly) become seen as rather backward and discredited.
As in all things context and nuance are important.

 

[Supacharjed]

Hey fellas,

Could someone tell me if my generalisation of the Super Tigers is correct and perhaps help me get at some apparent discrepancies?

F11F-1F is just a re-engined F11F-1 with the J79 from what I can interpret, of which two were actually made.

G98J is the general baseline Super Tiger with the J79 engine, cannon armament, the 250sqft wing and 6650lb (~990 gallons) internal fuel. Was this just the internal Grumman designation for the F11F-1F?

G98J-2 looks to be the all-weather interceptor with Sparrows and AN/APQ-50 but sans-RIO.

G98J-5 seems like the above but gives two fuel values for with and without cannon armament; 6648lb (~990gal) and 7836lb (1170gal) respectively. I'm not actually sure how this differs from the J-2.

G98J-7 is a two-seater all-weather version which is a bit longer with 7310lb (1090 gallons) internal fuel (and no cannons) I assume the second seat eats into the fuel compared to the J-5

G98L is a single seat fighter with the larger 350sqft wing, I don't know much else about it

XF12F seems to be the G98L (it has the larger wing) but the characteristics sheet lists no cannon armament and 6391 (954 gallons) of internal fuel.

What I'm confused about (which could just be because I'm not that knowledgeable about planes) is that the given takeoff weights and ranges seem to be wildly different for what are ostensibly similar aircraft.

J-5 is given a takeoff weight of 23.245lb (similar to the gross weight of the J-7) and a ferry range of 1100nm on internal fuel (1170gal) but the XF12F is given a takeoff weight of 20,672lb and a combat (I assume it means ferry) range of 1,470nm on internal fuel. (954gal) Why is there such a weight difference? Is the radar set that much heavier? Also is the XF12F supposed to have cannons? The fuel load puts it in line with the cannon-armed proposals but the sheet does not list it in armament.

Sorry if it's a lot of questions I'm just left very confused trying to make sense of this. Perhaps when the books arrive it will all be made clear.

 

[bobtdwarf]

Hey fellas,

Could someone tell me if my generalisation of the Super Tigers is correct and perhaps help me get at some apparent discrepancies?

F11F-1F is just a re-engined F11F-1 with the J79 from what I can interpret, of which two were actually made.

G98J is the general baseline Super Tiger with the J79 engine, cannon armament, the 250sqft wing and 6650lb (~990 gallons) internal fuel. Was this just the internal Grumman designation for the F11F-1F?

G98J-2 looks to be the all-weather interceptor with Sparrows and AN/APQ-50 but sans-RIO.

G98J-5 seems like the above but gives two fuel values for with and without cannon armament; 6648lb (~990gal) and 7836lb (1170gal) respectively. I'm not actually sure how this differs from the J-2.

G98J-7 is a two-seater all-weather version which is a bit longer with 7310lb (1090 gallons) internal fuel (and no cannons) I assume the second seat eats into the fuel compared to the J-5

G98L is a single seat fighter with the larger 350sqft wing, I don't know much else about it

XF12F seems to be the G98L (it has the larger wing) but the characteristics sheet lists no cannon armament and 6391 (954 gallons) of internal fuel.

What I'm confused about (which could just be because I'm not that knowledgeable about planes) is that the given takeoff weights and ranges seem to be wildly different for what are ostensibly similar aircraft.

J-5 is given a takeoff weight of 23.245lb (similar to the gross weight of the J-7) and a ferry range of 1100nm on internal fuel (1170gal) but the XF12F is given a takeoff weight of 20,672lb and a combat (I assume it means ferry) range of 1,470nm on internal fuel. (954gal) Why is there such a weight difference? Is the radar set that much heavier? Also is the XF12F supposed to have cannons? The fuel load puts it in line with the cannon-armed proposals but the sheet does not list it in armament.

Sorry if it's a lot of questions I'm just left very confused trying to make sense of this. Perhaps when the books arrive it will all be made clear.

You are not the only one confused.. we all are to varying degrees. Nearest I can figure and from things I have picked up over the years (which may or may not be factual), some of the weight differences is because some of them had reinforced airframes to increase the G load limit from 6.5 to 7.5. Yeah the G-98J is the internal company designation, and the 98-L is supposed to have a pair of 30mm cannon as do some others.

 

[bobtdwarf]

Also worth noting is the implied difference in wing shape and sizes in the above figures. Sure some of it could be an engineer or draftsman rounding figures but if you divide the wing area by the wing span to get the average "width" of the wing they aren't the same number. If you multiply the number derived from the F-11 listing at 300 sq.ft. by the wingspan of the F-12 you get about bang on 350 and probably dead bang on if you convert to inches... which I was to lazy to do after getting 348 being a slacker. Doing the same with the 98-L gets you IIRC 322 or so.

IF, and it is an IF.. the wings are slightly different sized and shaped some of the weight difference will be in metal.

 

[Supacharjed]

Also worth noting is the implied difference in wing shape and sizes in the above figures. Sure some of it could be an engineer or draftsman rounding figures but if you divide the wing area by the wing span to get the average "width" of the wing they aren't the same number. If you multiply the number derived from the F-11 listing at 300 sq.ft. by the wingspan of the F-12 you get about bang on 350 and probably dead bang on if you convert to inches... which I was to lazy to do after getting 348 being a slacker. Doing the same with the 98-L gets you IIRC 322 or so.

IF, and it is an IF.. the wings are slightly different sized and shaped some of the weight difference will be in metal.

It's intuitive that the weight difference would be in metal yeah though I find it curious that the larger winged craft wind up being the lighter of the ones with weights given. XF12F is for example listed as lighter than the F11F-1F while carrying like 3 sidewinders (though they're closer to each other than either is to the 98L's given numbers) Part of this is invariably going to be a result of just how weights are calculated or some other such bureaucratic tomfoolery, though a rogue 2500lb between the lightest (XF12F) and heaviest (G98J-5) is still worrying.

I suspect the J-5 numbers are without the guns and with the larger fuel number, which is at least 500lb of weight (1000lb fuel -500lb guns+ammo) plus the ~600lb radar set (estimate taken from another thread) gives about 1100lb, which subtracted from the 23,245lb given weight for the J-5 gives 22,100, which is like within a stone's throw of the 98L (21,829) at the very least. Though the 98L has its two sidewinders and the takeoff weight for the J-5 doesn't actually specify its load.

This is mostly just conjecture though as I'm making fairly large assumptions.

 

[Kota]

It seems this book has a pretty detailed section on the G.98J-11, but the sample scans are in poor resolution, so I was thinking about just buying the book unless someone has a better scan of this page.

 

[bobtdwarf]

It seems this book has a pretty detailed section on the G.98J-11, but the sample scans are in poor resolution, so I was thinking about just buying the book unless someone has a better scan of this page.

Those are probably shots of the prototype and not specifically the J-11 variant.. Corky's book doesn't have an illustration, nor any meaningful details on the J-11 so it would be great if you could translate what this says about it.

 

[Kota]

so it would be great if you could translate what this says about it.

Its really difficult to make out a lot of the text so if I do make the buy then I will share my findings here.

 

[bobtdwarf]

From the Alt-F-11 thread.. two videos.

View: https://youtu.be/bwQldakCLM8?t=348
. This one claims that Grumman was dancing on the edge of anti trust problems. Source is Gaijan but there are things said in Corky's book that would lend credence to it. He never says the words "anti-trust" but does refer to things like "getting too big", "cutting you back" and some talk about specific programs that might need to be cut or contracts cancelled. Now I have been as guilty as others about interpreting that through a conspiratorial lens and I am not entirely certain if Gaijan has a source stating it or if they have extrapolated from those bits from Corky's book to reach this conclusion but they do make a LOT more sense than the conspiracy angle: It is very easy to forget that the US government used to be a LOT better about enforcing trust law and Grumman really had a huge hunk of the naval aircraft market particularly after they get the A-6 development they would be able to provide all the aircraft but the helicopter for an air wing.

The other video?

View: https://youtu.be/GOuQFpUhgKk?t=601
I was unaware that the congress limited the navy to a single type of high end fighter...but apparently they did.
The combo of these two is really what kills the supertiger

 

[Kota]

so it would be great if you could translate what this says about it.

Its really difficult to make out a lot of the text so if I do make the buy then I will share my findings here.

Order placed, expected mid-late March.

 

[R_K_M]

When did the F-11 get its LERX? I assumed it was added on the Super Tiger, but some photos show the normal F-11A with LERX too. Yet others don't have the LERX and instead show it with a "straight" wing root. What is going on here?

 

[BlackBat242]

This one claims that Grumman was dancing on the edge of anti trust problems. Source is Gaijan but there are things said in Corky's book that would lend credence to it. He never says the words "anti-trust" but does refer to things like "getting too big", "cutting you back" and some talk about specific programs that might need to be cut or contracts cancelled. Now I have been as guilty as others about interpreting that through a conspiratorial lens and I am not entirely certain if Gaijan has a source stating it or if they have extrapolated from those bits from Corky's book to reach this conclusion but they do make a LOT more sense than the conspiracy angle: It is very easy to forget that the US government used to be a LOT better about enforcing trust law and Grumman really had a huge hunk of the naval aircraft market particularly after they get the A-6 development they would be able to provide all the aircraft but the helicopter for an air wing.

It was nothing to do with "anti-trust" laws, but rather something called "maintaining a sufficiently-broad industrial base".

Simply put, the US DOD was deliberately following a policy of making sure that several manufacturers of a particular type of military hardware all had enough work to keep them busy, financially solvent, and capable of taking on more work in an emergency. This went for shipyards, aircraft manufacturers, and so on (including subcontractors/parts manufacturers).

It is believed that Ling-Temco-Vought got the A-7 contract over the Douglas "enlarged A-4" to keep them working and showing a profit.

There are many who state that this is why General Dynamics' F-111 design was chosen over the Boeing TFX design that was the preferred option by the USAF - Boeing was sitting "fat" with all of its airliner/transport and aerial refueling aircraft contracts, while G-D was seriously in need of a good contract to keep from going bankrupt (since the F-106 and B-58 were no longer in production - Convair having been bought by G-D in 1953).

 

[bobtdwarf]

It was nothing to do with "anti-trust" laws, but rather something called "maintaining a sufficiently-broad industrial base".

Simply put, the US DOD was deliberately following a policy of making sure that several manufacturers of a particular type of military hardware all had enough work to keep them busy, financially solvent, and capable of taking on more work in an emergency. This went for shipyards, aircraft manufacturers, and so on (including subcontractors/parts manufacturers).

It is believed that Ling-Temco-Vought got the A-7 contract over the Douglas "enlarged A-4" to keep them working and showing a profit.

There are many who state that this is why General Dynamics' F-111 design was chosen over the Boeing TFX design that was the preferred option by the USAF - Boeing was sitting "fat" with all of its airliner/transport and aerial refueling aircraft contracts, while G-D was seriously in need of a good contract to keep from going bankrupt (since the F-106 and B-58 were no longer in production - Convair having been bought by G-D in 1953).

It could be argued that is the point of anti trust laws: Keeping a broad pool of competent competitors

 

[bobtdwarf]

When did the F-11 get its LERX? I assumed it was added on the Super Tiger, but some photos show the normal F-11A with LERX too. Yet others don't have the LERX and instead show it with a "straight" wing root. What is going on here?

I believe those were added in the early super tiger development and retro-fitted to existing airframes to some degree after that

 

[Tailspin Turtle]

The leading edge extensions were part of the Super Tiger development and added to the second lot of F11F-1s (long nose for a visual-assist radar that was never installed) in the Grumman belief that they were much more worth than the added weight from a performance standpoint. There were no retro-fits.