A Brief History of the Douglas F-6 Missileer

A Brief History of the Douglas F-6 Missileer

March 23rd, 1968 marked the beginning of a new age in aerial combat. At 1137 local time, two US Navy F-4B Phantom II fighters, Streetcar 304 and 305, both of which were providing MiGCAP over North Vietnam for a strike by Navy and Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawks and A-7 Corsair IIs, spotted a flight of four North Vietnamese MiG-17 fighters in a low altitude circle, one of the infamous wagon wheels.

The wagon wheel was an excellent defensive formation. If Streetcar dived down to the low altitude of the MiGs and tried to engage with AIM-9 Sidewinders, another MiG would be on the collective tails of Streetcar as soon as they tried to engage while ground clutter prevented the use of AIM-7 Sparrows. Additionally, the MiGs were more maneuverable at low altitude than were the Phantoms while the wheels themselves were often placed above anti-aircraft artillery units.

However, as with nearly all things aeronautical, the success of the tactic depended on the skill of the pilots and US pilots were more skilled than their Vietnamese opponents at this point in time. Thus, Streetcar could have engaged and broken up the wheel, likely killing one or two of the enemy fighters in the process. But, much to the annoyance of Streetcar’s pilots, the pre-mission briefing had included an order that, in such an instance, Red Crown, ship-based Navy fighter control, was to be alerted and the Phantoms were to engage only in self-defense or if given the go-ahead by Red Crown.

Upon hearing of the wagon wheel, Red Crown immediately informed the Phantoms that they were not to engage, but were to observe the enemy flight and report on anything unusual.

“I was damned upset when they told me to just sit there and watch them. I was convinced that Washington had decided that it was going to decide whether or not we could take a shot against MiGs,” recalled Streetcar 304. “So I’m stewing up there, hating Red Crown, hating the President and McNamara, and hating those damned MiGs that I couldn’t touch. As I’m doing that, I think I had just finished calling McNamara a thrice-damned sonofabitch, when one of the MiGs exploded. I think my RIO summed it up for both of us when he shouted out, ‘What the hell?!’ Just as he finished saying that, a second MiG exploded, followed by a third just a few seconds later. I guess that the last one figured that he had better get out of town, because he started running straight about the time that the second one blew up, but he blew up and crashed after just a few seconds as well.”

Unbeknownst to Streetcar, a pair of F-6 Missileers[1], part of USS Enterprise’s air wing, which had just arrived at Yankee Station, had been flying a CAP some fifty nautical miles away. Though they had the wagon wheel on their own radars, the rules of engagement prevented them from engaging it without the positive ID that the F-4 Phantoms provided. This engagement would be but the first of many for the MiG Sniper.

--------

The Douglas F-6 Missileer started its life as the F6D Missileer in 1960, making its first flight in December of 1963 shortly after redesignation as the YF-6 under the Tri-Service Designation System. The Missileer, quite unusually and controversially for a fighter, was not developed on its own sake, but rather, for the benefit of a missile, the then-designated AAM-N-10 Eagle. This was, quite obviously, the complete opposite of the normal fighter development process and was subject to harsh criticism and more than one attempt to cancel it.

While such criticism seems absurd with modern hindsight, in the context of the times the criticism made perfect sense; indeed, it is far stranger that the program survived than is the harsh criticism surrounding the aircraft. While the Douglas was building the first subsonic interceptor in a decade, and one that was far less maneuverable than its supersonic and subsonic predecessors, McDonnell was starting production of a Mach 2 fighter-interceptor (that would enter service as the F4H/F-4 Phantom II), Vought had prototyped a Mach 3 fighter for the Navy’s smaller carriers (the XF8U-3, though this would not enter service), and the Air Force was building a Mach 3 bomber, the XB-70 Valkyrie, although the Valkyrie was suffering from political controversy over its cost and vulnerability compared to ICBMs. In the black world, the CIA had contracted Lockheed to build the A-12 OXCART, a reconnaissance platform designed to operate at Mach 3.4 and 90,000 feet. Is it any wonder then that the pedestrian Missileer, whose sole advertised virtues were an untested missile and an extremely long loiter time, would be looked at quite askance?

Indeed, it is highly likely that the F-6 Missileer would have been cancelled almost at its inception by departing Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates in December of 1960 had it not been for an internal Navy study that indicated the tremendous capability of the F-6 Missileer. Analyzing the defensive capabilities of Navy carrier battlegroups against projected Soviet air raids a decade hence, it was found that a CAP composed of F4H Phantom IIs made almost no contribution to fleet defense, increasing the survivable raid size by only two bandits over what the battlegroup’s SAMs alone could provide. While launching Phantoms in the midst of the raid to counter the enemy provided a significant increase, by fifteen bandits, this was only as many as an F6D CAP would provide. Most significantly, deck launched Missileers provided a 75% increase in the survivable raid size as compared to only SAMs.[1]

This increase was significant enough for Secretary Gates to forbear canceling the project while he was in office, leaving the decision to his successor, Robert McNamara.

To be continued

[1]In TTL, the F6D is redesignated as F-6 while the OTL F-6, the F4D Skyray, is redesignated as F-7. The F2Y Sea Dart is not redesignated as it was OTL.

[2]Actual study, contained in Carrier Task Force Anti-Air Warfare in the 1970 Era. Only applicable to no-ECM environment, as the F6D/Eagle had already been cancelled by the time they got around to ECM environment, but Eagle armed F6D would have been far more useful than a Sparrow III armed Phantom.

I'm aware that TF30 did not fly until 1964, I'll take care of that when I update this.
 
What about the fighter mafia?

Are we just getting missile heavy fighters with the success of the F-6, or will we see ATL F-16s & F/A-18s as well?

I'll note that the Phoenix is considered notoriously easy to dodge, and the Eagle missile will suffer from the same drawbacks. Not against bombers, perhaps, but against fighters….
 
What about the fighter mafia?

Are we just getting missile heavy fighters with the success of the F-6, or will we see ATL F-16s & F/A-18s as well?

Likely heavy missile fighters such as the Tomcat and the original F-15 proposals (VG wings and such), but I haven't set anything in stone. As I currently have things plotted out, the F-14 Tomcat enters service as a Bombcat, having its genesis as the child of Crusader and Missileer and war experience wishing that the Missileer were more capable in the air to ground realm.

I'll note that the Phoenix is considered notoriously easy to dodge,

By who? I've never seen that view expressed by any Tomcat pilot and the Iranian experience with it certainly seems to indicate otherwise.

and the Eagle missile will suffer from the same drawbacks. Not against bombers, perhaps, but against fighters….

Fighter has to know that you are there, that you've locked on, and that there is a missile inbound, as well as when a good time and manner to start dodging would be. Against a long ranged missile like Eagle, and given the pulse doppler radar, that would require a rather capable RWR which the VPAF did not have and to the best of my knowledge was never developed for the MiG-17 and MiG-19.
 
Likely heavy missile fighters such as the Tomcat and the original F-15 proposals (VG wings and such), but I haven't set anything in stone. As I currently have things plotted out, the F-14 Tomcat enters service as a Bombcat, having its genesis as the child of Crusader and Missileer and war experience wishing that the Missileer were more capable in the air to ground realm.

So like the F-15E. Are you going to combine the F-14 and F-15 into plane for both Air Force and Navy like the Phantom was?

By who? I've never seen that view expressed by any Tomcat pilot and the Iranian experience with it certainly seems to indicate otherwise.

The Soviets, but I'm reasonably sure that was an 80s development in reaction to the performance of the Phoenix against unprepared pilots. If I recall correctly a good fighter (MiG-29?) could use their energy envelope to duke upwards, and the Phoenix is going too fast to compensate.

The basic low speed at 9Gs is better at changing course than high speed and 50Gs argument. Against a long range missile like the Eagle/Phoenix a high energy fighter, like the MiG-29 & Su-27+variants, should be able to dodge if timed right.

That said I'm not sure how well Viet Nam era fighters are going to do… as you have it, badly seems about right.

Fighter has to know that you are there, that you've locked on, and that there is a missile inbound, as well as when a good time and manner to start dodging would be. Against a long ranged missile like Eagle, and given the pulse doppler radar, that would require a rather capable RWR which the VPAF did not have and to the best of my knowledge was never developed for the MiG-17 and MiG-19.

Sorry, I meant later when the Soviets realize what was kicking their planes around in Viet Nam. Obviously the North Vietnamese don't have the tech in the 60s.
 
Re the pheonix; it was a very fast missile, climbing and diving faster than any other AAM. Thus would arrive as a bolt from the blue on its victims not something that you would see and dodge easily. And it had a big warhead, 130lbs I think, so its lethality zone was also very big for an AAM.

I think this is a good idea, but the Missileer was destined to have a very short service life because you could put the weapons/sensor package in a mach 2, maneurvreable airframe by 1970 or so. But that would still give it time to shoot down a lot of Migs in the late 60s. Perhaps the USN could aviod the whole F111B fiasco and go straight to the Tomcat and get it on decks a few years earlier.
 
Re the pheonix; it was a very fast missile, climbing and diving faster than any other AAM. Thus would arrive as a bolt from the blue on its victims not something that you would see and dodge easily. And it had a big warhead, 130lbs I think, so its lethality zone was also very big for an AAM.

Mach 5+ if you blow through all the fuel but is limited to 19Gs (the earlier Eagle should be notably inferior to that).

I was speaking of (and this is from memory, sorry) a Soviet tactic specifically designed to avoid the Phoenix because they were kinda afraid of it. A quick skim through the F-14 Vs. message boards postulates 15-25% effective, which is better than I thought, against F-15s in clear skies. So I could certainly be wrong.
 
The Phoenix is(was) a big missile, but it could be quite maneuverable. In fact, because of its range, it has a big no escape zone(ranges where the missile has plenty of fuel to burn, meaning it can maneuver to counteract any dodging by the target). I don't remember numbers, but I seem to recall the no escape zone was about the same as Sparrow's total range.
 
In the 60s when the eagle ITTL was deployed the SU's aircaft electronics fitouts were pretty rudimentary. The first a flight of mig 17s would know they were being 'eagled' is when the missiles started detonating amongst them, rather than when their RWS told them they were being painted.

I can forsee a similar situation that Israel faced in 1973, when to aviod the SA2's they ended up in the envelope of the SA6 and dodging them out them into the SUU23s. The Missileer could break up the wagon wheels allowing the F4s and F8s to get in and finish them off. Like everything, tactics could be developed to counter the Missileer, but at what cost to the Vietanmese/Soviets? I think at least that they would need better sensors and communications to aviod the surprise attacks.
 
A Brief History of the Douglas F-6 Missileer

March 23rd, 1968 marked the beginning of a new age in aerial combat. At 1137 local time, two US Navy F-4B Phantom II fighters, Streetcar 304 and 305, both of which were providing MiGCAP over North Vietnam for a strike by Navy and Marine Corps A-4 Skyhawks and A-7 Corsair IIs, spotted a flight of four North Vietnamese MiG-17 fighters in a low altitude circle, one of the infamous wagon wheels.

The wagon wheel was an excellent defensive formation. If Streetcar dived down to the low altitude of the MiGs and tried to engage with AIM-9 Sidewinders, another MiG would be on the collective tails of Streetcar as soon as they tried to engage while ground clutter prevented the use of AIM-7 Sparrows. Additionally, the MiGs were more maneuverable at low altitude than were the Phantoms while the wheels themselves were often placed above anti-aircraft artillery units.

However, as with nearly all things aeronautical, the success of the tactic depended on the skill of the pilots and US pilots were more skilled than their Vietnamese opponents at this point in time. Thus, Streetcar could have engaged and broken up the wheel, likely killing one or two of the enemy fighters in the process. But, much to the annoyance of Streetcar’s pilots, the pre-mission briefing had included an order that, in such an instance, Red Crown, ship-based Navy fighter control, was to be alerted and the Phantoms were to engage only in self-defense or if given the go-ahead by Red Crown.

Upon hearing of the wagon wheel, Red Crown immediately informed the Phantoms that they were not to engage, but were to observe the enemy flight and report on anything unusual.

“I was damned upset when they told me to just sit there and watch them. I was convinced that Washington had decided that it was going to decide whether or not we could take a shot against MiGs,” recalled Streetcar 304. “So I’m stewing up there, hating Red Crown, hating the President and McNamara, and hating those damned MiGs that I couldn’t touch. As I’m doing that, I think I had just finished calling McNamara a thrice-damned sonofabitch, one of the MiGs exploded. I think my RIO summed it up for both of us when he shouted out, ‘What the hell?!’ Just as he said that, a second MiG exploded, followed by a third a few seconds later. I guess that the last one figured that he had better skedaddle, because he started diving for the after the second one ate it, but he blew up and crashed after just a few seconds as well.”

Unbeknownst to Streetcar, a pair of F-6 Missileers[1], part of USS Enterprise’s air wing, which had just arrived at Yankee Station, had been flying a CAP some fifty nautical miles away. Though they had the wagon wheel on their own radars, the rules of engagement prevented them from engaging it without the positive ID that the F-4 Phantoms provided. This engagement would be but the first of many for the MiG Sniper.

--------

The Douglas F-6 Missileer started its life as the F6D Missileer in 1960, making its first flight in December of 1963 shortly after redesignation as the YF-6 under the Tri-Service Designation System. The Missileer, quite unusually and controversially for a fighter, was not developed on its own sake, but rather, for the benefit of a missile, the then-designated AAM-N-10 Eagle. This was, quite obviously, the complete opposite of the normal fighter development process and was subject to harsh criticism and more than one attempt to cancel it.

While such criticism seems absurd with modern hindsight, in the context of the times the criticism made perfect sense; indeed, it is far stranger that the program survived than is the harsh criticism surrounding the aircraft. While the Douglas was building the first subsonic interceptor in a decade, and one that was far less maneuverable than its supersonic and subsonic predecessors, McDonnell was starting production of a Mach 2 fighter-interceptor (that would enter service as the F4H/F-4 Phantom II), Vought had prototyped a Mach 3 fighter for the Navy’s smaller carriers (the XF8U-3, though this would not enter service), and the Air Force was building a Mach 3 bomber, the XB-70 Valkyrie, although the Valkyrie was suffering from political controversy over its cost and vulnerability compared to ICBMs. In the black world, the CIA had contracted Lockheed to build the A-12 OXCART, a reconnaissance platform designed to operate at Mach 3.4 and 90,000 feet. Is it any wonder then that the pedestrian Missileer, whose sole advertised virtues were an untested missile and an extremely long loiter time, would be looked at quite askance?

Indeed, it is highly likely that the F-6 Missileer would have been cancelled almost at its inception by departing Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates in December of 1960 had it not been for an internal Navy study that indicated the tremendous capability of the F-6 Missileer. Analyzing the defensive capabilities of Navy carrier battlegroups against projected Soviet air raids a decade hence, it was found that a CAP composed of F4H Phantom IIs made almost no contribution to fleet defense, increasing the survivable raid size by only two bandits over what the battlegroup’s SAMs alone could provide. While launching Phantoms in the midst of the raid to counter the enemy provided a significant increase, by fifteen bandits, this was only as many as an F6D CAP would provide. Most significantly, deck launched Missileers provided a 75% increase in the survivable raid size as compared to only SAMs.[1]

This increase was significant enough for Secretary Gates to forbear canceling the project while he was in office, leaving the decision to his successor, Robert McNamara. Obsessed with cutting costs, he at first attempted to use this as a means to end US Navy procurement of F-4 Phantoms. The Navy counter to this action took approximately five minutes as the Secretary of the Navy simply reclassified the F-4 Phantom as a “multirole fighter-bomber” rather than a fleet interceptor. Later, the F6D Missileer would be successfully used as an excuse for his refusal to procure the F-12 Blackbird fighters that Congress had included in the Defense Department budget, requiring the USAF to either purchase F6D Missileers or do without. The Air Force chose “without.”

When the YF-6 Missileer finally took to the skies on December 5th, 1963, it was nothing more than an empty shell. While the Eagle was a workable missile, as tests from modified A-3 Skywarriors proved, the Westinghouse AN/APQ-81 radar was not yet finished, nor was Pratt and Whitney’s TF30 turbofan engine ready yet. In their place, the prototype and pre-production aircraft were fitted with ballast in the nose and J75 turbojet engines. It was not until 1965 that both systems would be fully ready and another year until all aircraft had been fitted with their proper radars and engines.

------

The Westinghouse AN/APQ-81 was the heart of the Missileer. The first production pulse Doppler radar system in the world, it was not subject to the traditional woes of ground and sea clutter, allowing the Missileer to stay at fuel-efficient altitudes while still knocking down sea-skimming targets, a far better proposition than the previous expedient of having the F-4 Phantoms drop to the target’s altitude or even lower in order to set up a Sparrow intercept. With a range of 160 nautical miles and the ability to simultaneously track up to eight different targets, it was considered to be the world’s most advanced radar, perhaps a decade ahead of its time.

Of course, high advancement does not come without cost, and radars were not the most reliable of electronics at this time to start with. Radar failures were a constant source of frustration for Missileer crews, with a Mean Time Between Failure of 45 minutes at one point. When a CAP mission was expected to last six hours, this was unacceptable. US naval planning at this point kept only two or three Missileers on CAP due to the frequency of radar failure, instead planning to use them for deck-launched intercepts. By 1970, however, the radar’s MTBF had improved to acceptable levels.

The father of the Missileer, the Eagle missile, was the most successful element of the Missileer system, and the only complaints leveled against the missile’s performance came from behind the Iron Curtain. At a grand total of 686 pounds, the missile was second in size amongst air to air missiles only to the Air Force’s AIM-47 Falcon, though it would later be eclipsed by its successor, the AIM-54 Phoenix, and the Soviet equivalent, the AA-9 Amos. In performance, however, it was second to none. Unlike its Air Force cousin, which used semi-active radar homing from launch until intercept, the Eagle only switched from semi-active radar homing to active radar homing for the terminal intercept. The 95-pound warhead was half again as large as the Sparrow III’s own warhead, allowing it to miss by even several yards but still destroy the target.

The range of the Eagle was, of course, its crowning achievement and raison d’etere. Powered by a liquid rocket motor and possessing a stated range of “in excess of one hundred nautical miles”, the Eagle made documented intercepts as far away as 78 nautical miles with the main restriction being battery life.

While designed to intercept Soviet bombers, the Eagle had a fairly successful time against fighters as well, despite a known and acknowledged issue with its maneuverability. The reason for this lies in the oft-quoted maxim that 90% of downed enemy pilots never even knew that they were under attack. Even if an aircraft is theoretically capable of outmaneuvering an enemy attack, if it is not aware that the attack is in progress, or if it becomes aware of the attack only too late, barring an error in the execution of the attack, it will succeed.

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With their explosive entry into the Vietnam War, Missileers began to acquire a great deal more respect than they had prior. Slow and unmaneuverable, the Missileer was often regarded as not even being worthy of the fighter designation by Phantom and Crusader crews. After all, it was everything that they were not and the Phantom and the Crusader followed in the lineage of previous fighters, the Crusader holding the additional honor of being the last gunfighter, though it now also carried AIM-9 Sidewinders when it hunted MiGs.

Due to justifiable Navy paranoia over the possibility of the Soviet Union gaining highly important technical knowledge from the wreck of an F-6 Missileer, they were forbidden to go feet dry over North Vietnam during their initial deployments. Even when this restriction was later relaxed, strict no-fly zones were enforced near known SA-2 missile sites. However, their ability to “reach out and touch somebody” meant that this restriction did not pose much of a hindrance.

As their participation in the war continued, the Missileer crews noticed a baffling development: They were actually being envied by other fighter crews. The Eagle missile had had a decade of gestation by the time that it entered fleet service, allowing plenty of time for bugs and kinks to be worked out. Furthermore, the Eagle was fired from a benign launch environment well within its launch parameters, unlike the Sparrow and Sidewinder which had to deal with launch from hard maneuvering aircraft against targets that were trying their hardest not to die, and often on the edge of their intercept envelope.

As a result of this, and the ability of the Missileer to simultaneously engage up to six targets at a time, the Missileer quickly racked up an impressive number of kills, with three crews making ace by the end of 1968. Initially, the Eagles were only used as MiGCAP for coastal targets or as a supplementary CAP to cover multiple strikes, finding a special use in breaking up MiG wagon wheels, often well before a strike arrived, to the consternation of the Vietnamese People’s Air Force.

On January 16th, 1970, Operation Woad began. Long proposed by Missileer crews, Operation Woad was intended to shut down the Vietnamese People’s Air Force. As day broke, a dozen F-6 Missileers reached their loiter positions off the North Vietnamese coast, scanning their radars over the Vietnamese countryside. The area around every VPAF airfield had been declared a free fire zone. Any aircraft observed taking off or loitering around the airfields or previously known MiG loiter positions or patterns was fair game, the dream of fighter pilots.

The opening shot of Operation Woad was extraordinarily anti-climactic. Nickel 105 observed a MiG-21 taking off from Phuc Yen outside of Hanoi. Establishing lock-on, Nickel 105 selected the first Eagle on the rails, confirmed that he had a solid lock-on, squeezed the trigger, and proceeded to watch helplessly as the missile carved a perfect unpowered ballistic arc into the ocean. The second missile launched perfectly fine, tracked perfectly on target, and then proceeded to do nothing, either due to failure of the active seeker or to a fuse failure. Now alerted to the presence of Missileers, the MiG popped afterburners, corkscrew climbed to 50,000 feet, dodging another Eagle in the process, and dashed towards the pair of offending Missileers at twice the speed of sound. The worst fears of the Missileers had been realized: An alert enemy fighter was after them. A fourth Eagle, snapped off by Nickel 106 again failed to bring down the by now quite annoyed fighter, who was now, as the saying went, the fox in the henhouse. As both Missileers dived for the deck in an attempt to get into the thicker air and so reduce the capability of the two AA-2 Atoll missiles carried by the MiG, the fighter swung behind Nickel 105, fired both missiles, and barreled off towards its home base. Pulling up, Nickel 106 fired a second missile at the now retreating MiG-21, successfully connecting thanks to the MiG’s poor visibility and lack of radar warning receiver. Nickel 105, however, was hit in the starboard engine and crashed into the water, with no survivors.

To be continued

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[1]In TTL, the F6D is redesignated as F-6 while the OTL F-6, the F4D Skyray, is redesignated as F-7. The F2Y Sea Dart is not redesignated as it was OTL.

[2]Actual study, contained in Carrier Task Force Anti-Air Warfare in the 1970 Era. Only applicable to no-ECM environment, as the F6D/Eagle had already been cancelled by the time they got around to ECM environment, but Eagle armed F6D would have been far more useful than a Sparrow III armed Phantom.

[3]Designation-systems.net gives the aerodynamic range as 160 nautical miles and battery life is said to be the main restriction on the useful range of the AIM-54 Phoenix.
 
This increase was significant enough for Secretary Gates to forbear canceling the project while he was in office, leaving the decision to his successor, Robert McNamara. Obsessed with cutting costs, he at first attempted to use this as a means to end US Navy procurement of F-4 Phantoms. The Navy counter to this action took approximately five minutes as the Secretary of the Navy simply reclassified the F-4 Phantom as a “multirole fighter-bomber” rather than a fleet interceptor. Later, the F6D Missileer would be successfully used as an excuse for his refusal to procure the F-12 Blackbird fighters that Congress had included in the Defense Department budget, requiring the USAF to either purchase F6D Missileers or do without. The Air Force chose “without.”

Incidentally you don't need to repost the stuff you've already done every time you continue the timeline.

As I recall McNamara was the driving force behind the Navy and the Air Force sharing the Phantom (the USAF didn't want it), I'm not sure why he'd try and force the Navy to stop buying them. Or is just trying to get them to buy less?

(I do however love the Navy reclassifying it bit :))

Are we going to see the F-14 Tomcat come in multiple variants? If there is no F-111 (which I see as possible, with the butterflies) that means the Air Force needs the a F-15E Strike Eagle equivalent right away, instead of later, so I could see the ATL F-14 coming in single seat air superiority and twin seat multirole models for the Air Force, and a twin-seat multirole for the Navy.

A multirole Tomcat means the Navy doesn't get the F/A-18 and almost certainly (to balance the Air Force being forced to use the ATL F-14 instead of the F-15) gets instead the ATL F-16.

At least that's my take.


Anyway, I'm enjoying the timeline.
 
Not the world's greatest update, but it'll have to do for now



Although the loss devastated the F-6 community, who had not yet suffered a combat loss and, thanks to their rather sedate missions, suffered relatively few peacetime losses, it did not force the premature end of Operation Woad. In order to guard against repeat incidents, each of the Missileers would now carry only four Eagles, carrying AIM-7E-2 Sparrows on the other two pylons for self-defense. Additionally, when available, they would have a protective air cover of Phantoms or Crusaders, or, on at least two instances, SAM armed naval ships.

An additional slight change was made to the nature of Operation Woad. While there were no more losses due to enemy fighters, the purpose of the operation was to shut down the VPAF, not merely shoot down its aircraft, and the Air Force was desirous to get into the action, at least partly due to the fact that the US Navy was racking up an impressive number of kills. Therefore, starting February 1st, 1970, Boeing F-111s operating from bases in Thailand began randomly timed low level airfield suppression strikes.[4] Flying in at extremely low level, only a few hundred feet above the Earth, these strikes were too low for SAMs or early warning radar to pick up and were highly successful, with only two aircraft lost on these missions.

Operation Woad ended three months later, regarded as one of the most successful battles of Vietnam. In exchange for the combat loss of one Missileer and two Aardvarks, fourteen MiG-21s, four MiG-19s, and twelve MiG-17s had been shot down, with several more destroyed on the ground. More importantly, training for both MiG pilots and ground control intercept directors was curtailed with several units moving to the no-bombing buffer zone between China and Vietnam or even into China proper.

More importantly, Operation Woad also gave much needed impetus to the Navy’s VFX project which would later result in the famed F-14 Tomcat. In a certain sense, the last kill of Operation Woad was not a Vietnamese MiG, but rather an aircraft that had yet to ever take flight: The USAF F-15 Eagle.


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[4]A bit earlier than historical, but the assumption was made that the lack of a TFX program (making this only an F-105 replacement) would allow for a slightly earlier introduction. Butterflies and Boeing having a historically better aircraft proposal (simply wasn’t as multirole as the General Dynamics proposal) conspire to make this a Boeing rather than GD aircraft.
 
The Phoenix is(was) a big missile, but it could be quite maneuverable. In fact, because of its range, it has a big no escape zone(ranges where the missile has plenty of fuel to burn, meaning it can maneuver to counteract any dodging by the target). I don't remember numbers, but I seem to recall the no escape zone was about the same as Sparrow's total range.
Given that the versions of the AIM-7 in service at the time were notionally BVR capable that seems rather unlikely.
 
Though the Air Force had started its fighter development before the Navy had, a group known as the “Fighter Mafia” had resulted in grave changes being made to the program. Originally, the design requirement had been for an aircraft of 60,000-80,000 pounds with variable geometry wings. Influenced, however, by the poor performance of the F-4 Phantom II in aerial combat over Vietnam and the comparatively high maneuverability of enemy MiGs, the Fighter Mafia advocated a much smaller aircraft, resulting in the 40,000-50,000 pound F-15, though they were not entirely pleased even with this result.

However, the success of Operation Woad in inflicting large numbers of enemy casualties threw tremendous doubt upon the worthiness of this change. The F-15 would be limited to the same AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder as was the F-4 Phantom II, with the attendant same lack of performance. Meanwhile, the United States Navy was moving forward with the F-14 Tomcat and AIM-54 Phoenix programs which followed the clear success of the F-6 Missileer and the Eagle and it was believed that the Soviet Union was doing the same, perhaps with the MiG-25 which was providing much of the impetus for the F-15 program in the first place.

The F-14 itself found its genesis as an F-8 Crusader for the new age of fighting. Designed as the last of the gunfighters, the F-8 Crusader proved to be surprisingly effective in Vietnam, due in part to its maneuverability but also largely due to the extensive training in air combat maneuvering that Crusader pilots received. Taking the Crusader and adding all the advantages that the Phantom had, such as AIM-7 Sparrow capability, resulted in the basic form of the Tomcat. Several persons, both in Grumman and in the Navy, then noted that the large size of the Tomcat recommended itself as a replacement for the F-6 Missileer. The Navy had never really been happy with the F-6 Missileer, as it was often considered nothing more than an airborne SAM battery. While it was beginning to show the value of its long ranged radar and missiles over Vietnam, its extremely poor maneuverability and speed resulted in severe restrictions on its employment. It could not, for instance, be placed near surface to air missile batteries or AAA due to its inability to evade them.

As a result, the F-14 was modified from its initial design to the image that is so well known today. The original missile armament of four Sparrows and four Sidewinders was changed to the famous six Phoenix missiles, though such a full armament was not usually carried in practice due to limitations on bring back weight and severe reductions in maneuverability. The Phoenix itself was an enlargened Eagle, designed to have more of a capability against low altitude cruise missiles and maneuvering fighters. As Hughes’ ads in Proceedings labeled it, “Meet Air Superiority Eagle.”

Though the F-14 Tomcat would soon takeover the fleet defense role from the F-6 Missileer, this would not prove the end of the Missileer’s service.
 
Very Cool idea wonder what affect of the effectiveness of the Flying SAM battery will be elsewhere, especially the IAF and the USSR.
 
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Though the vastly superior F-14 Tomcat began replacing the F-6 Missileer soon after its introduction in 1974, the Missileer would continue to see service until the end of the Cold War. As superior as the F-14 Tomcat was, a lack of sufficient hangar clearance for maintenance work prevented the deployment of the F-14 Tomcat on the three Midway class aircraft carriers. As a result, they continued to operate the F-4 Phantom II and F-6 Missileer. These Missileers were upgraded to the F-6D standard, replacing their AN/APQ-81 radar with the new AWG-9 that debuted with the F-14 Tomcat and also granting them the ability to carry and fire the AIM-54 Phoenix instead of the earlier Eagle.

Because of the less than optimal nature of the F-4 Phantom II/F-6 Missileer combination, the Navy introduced the VFAX competition. The F-4 Phantom II was limited only to the Sparrow and Sidewinder missiles while the F-6 Missileer was extremely vulnerable if matters came to close combat, severely restricted the speed and penetration altitude of an escorted strike package, and was itself unable to provide any air to ground capability, though many units jury rigged Zuni rockets onto the airframe in place of Phoenix missiles.

The VFAX competition initially sought to replace the A-4 Skyhawk, A-7 Corsair II, F-4 Phantom II, and F-6 Missileer with a single multirole aircraft. Later, as it was realized that carrying a radar of the necessary size would be incompatible with the other goals, this was dropped, giving the F-6 Missileer a continued stay in the Navy.

Eventually entering Navy service in 1983 as the F/A-12 Hornet, the McDonnell Douglas Model 263 aircraft was a single seat (later with twin seat trainer and Marine Corps interdiction models) twin-engine aircraft of thirty thousand pounds gross weight. Built with forward canards, this aircraft quickly gained a reputation as the most maneuverable aircraft in the United States’ inventory, especially at lower altitudes. Although it was initially only fitted with the Sparrow and Sidewinder and an internal M61 Vulcan for air to air combat, in 1986 the Navy began deployment of the specialized AIM-54 Dogfight Phoenix. Major changes to the missile included compatibility with the Hornet’s AN/APG-65 radar, slightly higher speed, and greatly increased maneuverability at the expense of range, though the Hornet didn’t have enough range to use the missile to its full extent anyhow. Typically, this meant that the dogfight Phoenix was launched at a short enough range that it went fully active immediately off the rails.

While the Hornet did not possess the same loiter capability or even missile capacity as the Missileer, capable of fitting no more than two Phoenix, it did mark the beginning of the end for the Missileer in American service. While the Missileer did deploy to the Persian Gulf for Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, aboard the USS Midway it was restricted to flying combat air patrol over the American fleet and did not see combat. April 11, 1992 saw the dual decommissioning of both the USS Midway and the F-6 Missileer, ending a quarter century of proud service in the United States Navy.



Next (and last) update: F-6 Missileer in foreign service. Following that wrapup, if there is interest, similar threads for the Tomcat and Hornet in the Missileer timeline. The attached picture is a picture of the F/A-12 Hornet from this timeline, stolen from www.secretprojects.co.uk

MDD-VFAX.JPG
 
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