Ever seen this movie?
To absolutely get the whole entire meaning of the movie you have to watch it from beginning to end. Two scenes at the beginning and end make this movie. Ok, the A6M Zeros vs the F-14 Tomcats is good too.
To absolutely get the whole entire meaning of the movie you have to watch it from beginning to end. Two scenes at the beginning and end make this movie. Ok, the A6M Zeros vs the F-14 Tomcats is good too.
I have seen it several times and frankly I think Zero against Tomcat might lean more to the Zero. Tomcat is fast but no matter what Top Gun said, it is not a dogfighter. It was a stand off missile platform to intercept Russian Bombers. The Zero would turn on a dime and get inside and put lead into the F14 every time it passed.
I think the F-14 would outrun the boooolitz from the Zero easily.
Straight flight, yes. The Zero turns and gets inside on him and it becomes a knife fight were whomever does the most damage wins. That said one good burst the the F14's Gatling and the Zero is history. They were built very lite which was the reason the F6F could beat them. The Zero still turned better but not by that much and the F6 could take a lot more damage.
If a Tomcat got into a dogfight, maybe, but the Tomcat would splash the Zeke before its pilot even knew he was targeted. The Tomcat was also much more heavily armed, not to mention more heavily armored.
Armed and armored, yes in a way. Fact is the early Sidewinders were not reliable in combat. Many Vietnam era pilots called them useless, and the Vulcan is bada$$, but the Tomcat pilot has to bring it on target first. Sorry guys but there are more than a few cases of a prop pilot downing a jet. One was one of our A1 pilots in Nam downed a Mig. If it turns into a dogfight, the F14 is at a disadvantage. The only sure way he wins is by taking out the Zero on the first pass before the Zero knows he is there. This is one of the reasons stand off interceptors like the F14, Mig25, etc have lost favor to more nimble fighters except for the F35 which is pretty much a bomb truck much like the early F4 Phantom.
Watched the preview of Midway. Yeah probably will see it when it ends up Amazon prime for free in about 6 months. The cast looks like its aimed at teenage girls. This could easily be this generations Pearl Harbor.
I'm pretty sure the Vietnam-era Sidewinders pre-date the Tomcat's service, so I'm not sure why you're bringing them up. The Tomcat wasn't designed to be a dogfighter, so that's certainly not its forte, but it can withstand a lot more punishment than the Zeke, it can hit from farther out, it can hit harder, and it is much, much faster. It also had computer-assisted targeting, which meant that even with just the gun it would be more likely to hit the Zeke than vice-versa.
Hell, if a Slow But Deadly can beat a Zeke in a dogfight, a Tomcat shouldn't have any trouble with one...
Yes but it was not until the 80s that most combat pilots said the Sidewinder became reliable, which is the time frame of the 1980 movie. The real advantage the Tomcat has against the Zero in a close in fight is speed. He can make high speed passes and turn far away from the Zero. Problem is that puts them going head to head each time because the Zero can turn to face the F14 easily. One lucky 20mm shell from the Zero would destroy a F14's engines and being able to see the Tomcats tracers the Zero could dodge. If the Zero is hit he is toast but head to head, so is the Tomcat. Speed and gee wiz toys are not always the answer. Heck many modern fighter pilots hate the thought of going up against a helicopter gunship for the same reasons.
Helichoppers gots AMRAAMS. Suckers can do 60 G turns.
