Warbird Information Exchange

is it me ??? or do i see more mig 29 crash videos & pics more than any current jet aircraft of any country?? i'm not knocking russia or their technology, but i've seen countless DIFFERENT mig 29 crashes on a number of different threads / venues. is it a widow maker??

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Tom, they aren't crashing airplanes, they are demonstrating their excellent ejection seats !

Russian aircraft have never been known for reliability -- the philosophy has always been quantity over quality.

Take a look at how many MiG-21s over in India crash. I think at one point within the last 2 or 3 years, they were having at least one fatal crash of a MiG-21 per month over there.

I don't think there's anything particularly dangerous or unsafe about the MiG-29 specifically. The Russians have had the bad luck of at least three Fulcrum crashes at major airshows over the last 15 years. Since there are always video cameras rolling...that's what gets the media attention.

That being said...we toss a whole lot of F-16s into the dirt, too. That's mostly a function of that single engine, though. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the historical Class A rate for the Viper is one or two per hundred-thousand flight hour higher than any other US military aircraft.

Hmmmm.....

"Russian aircraft have never been known for reliability--The philosophy has always been quantity over quality"

Randy, I'm not sure I'm going to buy that one. It's been my experience that Soviet aircraft are considerably more reliable than Western aircraft but they are frequently less complicated and that must play a role. I'm not sure about the "quantity" situation either. How many B-52s were produced in total? Compare that to the total number of TU-95s and just for fun, let's toss in some other Soviet strategic bombers. I suspect there were still more B-52s built. Crawl into the belly of a Boeing 727-231 and head for the area under the lavs or galley. Then do the same in the belly of a TU-154M. How many MiG-15s are flying inthe U.S. right now? How many F-86s? What's the crash rate per hours flown? Mechanical issues vs pilot error? How many Soviet/Russian aircraft crash due to mechanical issues vs the same for our stuff? I would speculate that the West has much "better" aircraft in general but they are frequently more complex. I would also speculate that we have always enjoyed better training in the West

Your thoughts? Anyone else care to jump in here? Come on then, tell me I'm nuts, prove me wrong.

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

Randy's right about Russian aircraft historically having a reputation for poor reliability, but in some cases they were better than we thought. Dave Burdine, a retired F-14 driver and current Mig 17 airshow pilot outlined some of the following in a recent article and I'll paraphrase/condense the essentials: Our intelligence on the early Migs (15s and 17s) was that they went in for "major inspection" every 300 hours. We concluded they must be poorly designed and troublesome if they were going in for a major inspection that often. The reality is that Soviet Air Force line crew chiefs weren't highly trained like ours and were only permitted to perform simple aircraft servicing tasks. This necessitated the airplanes be sent to a periodic 300 hour inspection so more complicated inspections and repairs could be performed as necessary by more capable maintenance personnel. Often times, there wasn't much done on these 300 hour inspections because the airplanes were in fact rugged and reliable. They had their weaknesses like the guns on the Mig 15 being inaccurate, but they were better engineered/built airplanes than we thought.

Well, I have a thought ...

In May 1992 two Bear-Hs visited the US, marking the very first time Russian bombers landed on US soil. They came to Barksdale AFB, LA (the main home of the B-52 with the 2nd Bomb Wing, and HQ of 8th AF since 1975, BTW), and brought along an AN-124 to haul all the guys (and Vodka!, but that's another story). They came back in 1994 with another two Bears -- oh, man, you would not believe my video and pics from both visits. Both times the Bears flew non-stop back to Russia, and being heavy they swayed the trees at the far end of BAD's 12,000' runway (where we were with cameras and video, of course)!

Sound? Exactly like a B-36. Beautiful planes, but, I digress . . .

Anyway, the last BUF was a FY 1962 model -- that makes the currently flying Hs -- how old? The Bears visiting Barksdale in '92 were almost brand-new aircraft, only a couple of years old each.

Reliability? The US taxpayer has gotten it's money's worth exponential times over with the B-52. And why don't you ask the Iraqi Republican Guard about the 30+ year-old (at the time) 'unreliable' G-models they experienced in 1991? Can't find any RG troops? Oh, that's right, we carpet bombed most of their sorry arses into oblivion with our old, unreliable crates flown halfway around the world . . . the rest surrendered.

Don't make me cite for you the record of on-time, on-target reliability of the B-52 over the years. Oh yes, ever heard of Operation Secret Squirrel? Now, which 'unreliable' platform was chosen for that extremely important mission in 1991 which involved an average of 34 hours in the air, at the time the longest combat mission in history? That's right, baby - the friggin' Mother of All Bombers!



Randy is way better versed than I am on overall US vs. Russian evaluations, being that he's a current AF fighter pilot and has updated information most of us won't see for a long while, if ever . . .

Wade

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Website: http://www.wademeyersart.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Wade.Meyers.Studios

Keep trying, I still don't buy Randy's statement.

"Russian aircraft have never been known for reliability--The philosophy has always been quantity over quality"

Let's stay on task here. I think Boeing built around 750 (744?) B-52s in total. Maybe about 100 B-52H models with production ending in 62' or 68' at the KS plant? (help me here). I think the remaining H models are split between two bases so how many are still active? 50, 75, 95? I'll bet the Soviets/Russians built far fewer TU-95s and TU-160s and I'll also bet that if they really had to put on a show of force, they probably only have twenty or thirty TU-95s operational and maybe less than twenty TU-160s. Not much of a Long Range Bomber force is it? (and it never was)

F-4 vs MiG-21? I think we built over 5,000 F-4 Phantoms right here in St. Louis alone with another 175 or so built as kits or EJs in Japan. How many MiG-21s? I don't know but I doubt it was that many. Would I rather fly into combat with a MiG-21 or a Phantom? It depends on the enemy and what's he's flying. I would rather sit on the couch and let somebody who knows what they are doing like Randy fight off the bad guys. My hat's off to anyone who can do what they do.

But I digress also.

We won the Cold War. In my opinion one of the reasons is that the West went for "quality in the form of complex sophistication AND quantity" as well as the fact that Marx, Engles, and Lenin were idiots. The Soviets built relatively good, reliable planes but not in large numbers. My point is that the Soviets did not build generally unreliable aircraft in large numbers.

I'm sure Randy does have better and more recent "intel" than I do but let's face it, you know the dirty little secret about U.S. military fighter pilots (aviators) right? Anyone who is really worth their salt is flying the F-15 or F-18. That Utah Lawn Dart (F-16) toy is not a real fighter right?

That's just a joke Randy. Please don't drop a JDAM on my house. If you come after me, I should warn you, I have a state of the art air defense system at my home. It's called a remote garage door opener. I've heard that nearly every time somebody living near Luke AFB pushed their remote control, another F-16 driver would have to eject.
LOL

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

Not sure how reliable they are on weapons systems but fas.org shows the following:



regards,

t~

I agree that the Viper is a toy fighter.

I fly the Mighty F-15E Strike Eagle -- designed by God, and built by McDonnell Douglas right there in St Louis!

T~,
If you put the Eastern Bloc and Chinese copies into the count, I'm sure the MiG-21 production numbers would go above the Phantom's but if we just talk about the domestic production numbers, say 5,000 F-4s vs how many MiG-21s? I do not have the numbers handy but even if it was over 5,000, It was not a "Quantity over Quality" situation. Let's look at it two other ways, how many active duty U.S. F-4s vs how many active duty Soviet MiG-21s were there in say, 1971?

Again, my point is, the Soviets could not have "flooded the air" with fighters at any point in the post Korean War era any more than they could have "flooded the air" with strategic bombers. I'm still not sure how well the "Quantity vs Quality" can be applied to Soviet aircraft. Even if we could, as civilians, own and operate a Phantom (there are only a few), the crew required to operate one safely would be nearly impossible from a money point of view. The MiG-21 is a fighter jet that you could operate on a more regular basis and you could do it with a smaller crew.

In the end, here's where I'm going with this debate. Outside of the strategic missile (ICBM) threat, the Soviets never were the adversary that the U.S. Government and military industrial complex would have wanted us to believe. To some degree, we in the West were sold a line of BS and it's a good thing because it helped justify our programs to build better equipment, often in larger numbers. In the end (the threat of Star Wars) they could not keep up and they knew it.

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

Randy in action

http://www.aafo.com/library/mil/gabreski/

Martin

Well, there is something different about Russians, for example they like their alcohol...

Wikipedia, Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25

But from the Yak-52 I know that it has very simple systems and is easy to maintain (tough for some things we hire Romanian mechanics).
Type conversion at Yakkes is done by Gennady Elfimov (Skytrace), trained originally by the DOSAAF, and I see him as an extremely professional person.
I think the technology or the training can be described as bad.

Think the quantity over quality might have been the philosophy but not anymore. The focus seems to be on having advanced avionics systems to be capable of cooperating with Western weapons (for example by upgrading only some of the older Russian aircraft, Aerostar MiG-21). Same goes for western military I guess, the Netherlands had 350 F-104's during the sixties, 213 F-16's during the eighties and now we have only about 130 F-16's MLU. They have ordered just 85 JSF's!

I would not say it has something to do with technology or Russia as a country, I think sometimes it may have to do with financial issues or "social" problems like drinking. But also accidents can happen to anyone. From what I know the collision accident at Fairford years ago had to do with one plane going into the clouds and the other plane not able to see him anymore and also making a mistake...

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http://www.warbird-hangar.com links and gallery &
http://www.yakkes.com Yakkes Foundation, Yak-52

So it turns out that Randy is an F-15 driver. That makes him right on all counts. I stand corrected. Only the smartest pilots fly the F-15

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Albert Stix Jr.
"Work is the curse of the drinking class"

What was the overall fighter forces, 1 type production compared to another doesn't necessarily prove or disprove theories. Does anyone know or have access to the numbers of East / West fighter forces at points in the Cold War.

Tim

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www.tailhookstudio.com

Found this (who knows if its accurate) from http://www.saunalahti.fi/~fta/ruaf-1.htm



US Aircraft

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/overview.htm