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Super- Tiger what if ?
In the late 1950's there was a fierce competition between several aircraft types on a contract for more than 1000!!! mach 2.0 fighters for German airforce Italy and Nederland. The types that participated were
Mirage III and Trident from France , F-104 and Super-Tiger from USA .
The F-104 won despite being not popular with US airforce , it was found that Lockheed bribed very high ranking germans in ordwr to win the deal. Main issues with the F-104 was the need for very long runways , poor turn rate due to very small wings , ejection seat that eject downwards.
In the service with the German airforce 116 pilots died and 300 crashed and the name widow maker came very fast.
In fact every other plane bar the Trident was much better. The Super -Tiger had the same engine J79 and if we see the Tiger blue angels safety recored of 12 years we can conclued a much better safety record.
Grumman even conducted a special program to show the Super -tiger to carry bombs and missiles of different types.
The plane had a much better flight envelope than the F-104.
We can only asume that had the Super Tiger won it could do with much less lose of Pilots life.
Yair
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