PC/WI: Argentina fields F-4 and all weather A-4s in '82?
- Thread starter WILDGEESE
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There is a reason that the French provided Super Entenards for the RAF/FAA pilots to engage in dis-similar air-to-air training, radar frequencies and jamming date for the Exocets and Super Entenards and the French and U.S. IC spent the entire war running around and blocking sales of missiles and aircraft to Argentina.
Of course the BIG ticket item was unfettered access to U.S National Technical Means.
The other MASSIVE assist was never needed, namely the USS Iwo Jima. Reagan agreed to "lease" the ship, which was Harrier capable, to the RN if they lost a deck, the lease was going to include a large number of "private military contractors" to help run the ship.
https://news.usni.org/2012/06/27/reagan-readied-us-warship-82-falklands-war-0
Still you are ignoring that most of those attacks were at zero feet (literally) and that meant they had seconds to decide how or what to attack. If they were high enough and had the time to lock up a Maverick, they were also high enough to be engaged by RN 4.5" guns firing proximity fused ammo and during the landings in Fitzroy the FAA and ARA pilots were flying between ships which limited who and what could shoot at them, there were Rapiers, Blowpipe and SAS with Stingers, machine guns and even Sea Cat (largely pointless but scary looking when fired at an attacker) which meant really low was the only way to go. My point is that the opportunities to use Maverick were more limited than what were effectively the "snap shots" with bombs, cannon and rockets which constituted the majority of Argentinian attacks. If they had good weather, good target intelligence and were able to plan it then yes Maverick was usable but not often.
Wimble Toot
Banned
And France wasn't even a NATO ally of Britain or the US at the time.
So that was nice of them.
From the book "One Hundred Days" by Sandy Woodward, he said that from each side of San Carlos ie from shore to shore (not length ways) it took around 2 to 3 seconds to fly over the landing area and try attack a vessel which not only hindered the defending forces but also the attackers.
Can you use a Maverick in that time frame?
Would the "GIB" of the Phantom help with or not with such short a time frame?
Regards filers
Riain
Banned
This aspect doesn't get enough attention, it was tough to do what the FAA did and unsurprising that many bombs didn't explode. Nor is UXB a particularly Argentine thing, I've seen docos etc that some 30% of the bombs the US dropped on Cambodia didn't explode and 10-15% of the MLRS bomblets fired in 1991 didn't go off.
As for attacking the frigates, San Carlos water was surrounded by reasonably high and steep hills, limiting the time for a pilot to enter the engagement zone, pick a target, turn and line it up and then drop. This was a major reason the British chose it!
Like I said before the USAF planned to use Mavericks in Central Europe during WW3 against the Warsaw Pact. Presumably it would have been somewhat viable against the RN in the early 1980's if the attackers were prepared to accept some losses. Say a flight of 4 F4E's pops up against a type 22 / 42 combo. Sure they might shoot down one or perhaps two F4's but I doubt they will get all of them. If the F4E's mission kill one or both of the frigates and clear the way for a follow on attack by other aircraft with gravity bombs then the attacker might accept the losses and carry on.
Edit to add:
I suppose the U.S. could also have supplied advanced cluster munitions and fuel air explosives for use during low level attacks if the attackers really wanted to fly over their targets. I seem to recall the USN tested a fuel air explosive against a ship.
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And ? Given the loss rates I seem to recall the Argentines sustaining I'm thinking they might have accepted similar loss rates if they felt they were making headway ?
The US could probably sustain that I really really doubt Argentina is willing to destroy its force of F4s in exchange for a sinking a couple more warships or more likely just damaging them considering the size of the AGM 65 warhead and the targets it was optimized to kill and the bad weather and the noted flaws in its seeker it probably ends with the Argentina even deeper in the hole once the Brits win the war
Wimble Toot
Banned
Hello chaps, me again....
I'd like you to take a look at this wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II_non-U.S._operators
On it I can see NATO allies of the US (UK, Federal Republic of Germany, Spain, Greece, Turkey)
Important non-NATO allies of the US (Israel, Iran, Japan, Egypt, Australia, Iran, South Korea)
Oil rich countries. Industrialised countries. Strategically important countries with US bases in them. And Greece.
What I can't see is dirt poor, politically unstable, South American military dictatorships. Not even Venezuela, which at least has oil.
Maybe I'm missing something that you guys can see.
This thread should be filed under ASB/Not gonna happen in your wildest dreams.
Hope This Helps.
I'd like you to take a look at this wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II_non-U.S._operators
On it I can see NATO allies of the US (UK, Federal Republic of Germany, Spain, Greece, Turkey)
Important non-NATO allies of the US (Israel, Iran, Japan, Egypt, Australia, Iran, South Korea)
Oil rich countries. Industrialised countries. Strategically important countries with US bases in them. And Greece.
What I can't see is dirt poor, politically unstable, South American military dictatorships. Not even Venezuela, which at least has oil.
Maybe I'm missing something that you guys can see.
This thread should be filed under ASB/Not gonna happen in your wildest dreams.
Hope This Helps.
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I was thinking more along the lines of attacking picket ships, 22 / 42 combos etc. I presume the attackers would have been well aware of the capabilities of sea dart and how many targets it could engage in a given time frame (their own navy had sea dart in service.) So I can see the attackers being prepared to briefly pop up within Sea Dart range, especially if the Sea Harrier CAP was busy dodging AIM7's.
Edit to add: I suspect on paper the RN might have been able to detect and engage with SAM's at least some of the air craft that fired Exocets.
Regards
Blue cat
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I was thinking in terms of mission killing, maybe trying to target Sam launchers, radars etc on the ships. Basically clear the way for other aircraft with gravity bombs.
Given the weather in the south Atlantic I suspect water line hits might also do non trivial damage as well to frigate sized ships.
Sure... I agree the likelihood of Argentina getting F4's was very low.
There's three main differences between the situation on a WW3 Central European battlefield that Maverick was originally intended for, and the situation in the South Atlantic. The first is that, on the Central European front, the airspace was expected to be mainly held by NATO, meaning that aircraft could use it relatively unthreatened by air attack. Sea Harriers would always be a threat in the waters around the Falklands, as the Argentinians didn't have enough tankers to allow fighters to spend long stretches over the islands. The second is similar; the presence of friendly assets to suppress enemy air defences in Europe (either Wild Weasel SEAD missions, ECM aircraft providing jamming support, or ground units destroying SAMs and SPAAGs) meant that the threat environment in which Maverick was to be deployed was relatively permissive. This would not be the case in the South Atlantic. Also worth noting is the comparatively limited nature of Soviet tactical air defence (in terms of range and altitude envelope) compared to Sea Dart or even Sea Slug - Maverick could in theory target a tank from outside the range of missiles like the SA-8 or SA-9 (and possibly SA-6), not so much for Sea Dart or Sea Slug. Finally, the USAF had a lot of A-10s to replace casualties with, meaning they could be much more loss-averse than the Argentinian Air Force or Navy. Even if we hand-wave the last issue, and the poor nature of the seekers of the early Mavericks for maritime usage, the former issues remain difficult to solve.
Sure but the RN had a limited number of Sea Dart equipped ships. I'm also doubtuful a single type 42 could engage multiple targets quickly enough to prevent at least some of a flight of F4's from locking on and firing Mavericks. I'd also be surprised if the Pk of sea dart was more than say .5 in practice ?
How successful was sea slug ?
As I mentioned before the Iranians reportedly used Mavericks in a maritime role.
If the Argentines had some success against 22/42 combos with Maverick equipped F4's and opened the door for follow on attacks with other air craft who knows what might have happened.
Edit to add:
It's also not entirely clear to me that firing a single Maverick in a low level attack would have been out of the question for a two seater air craft, but yes I can agree the firing more than one would probably have required a "Pop up" maneuver
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Have you ever heard of the domino theory and how, during the Cold War, the USA sought to destroy any communist regime and uprising anywhere outside the Soviet nuclear umbrella?
You mean like how the USA had already sold Argentina Skyhawks, the Italians artillery, the French Roland Sams as well as the Super Etandard/Exocet combo, the Dutch a British-built carrier, the Germans submarines and the British themselves Blowpipe Sams, Canberra bombers and even Type 42 destroyers?
Probably. There are 200 countries in the world. I don't have the data from the late 1970s, when the aircraft would have to have been procured to be operational by 1982, but let's talk about the present. If you ranked all 200 countries by nominal GDP, around which position do you think you'll find Argentina? 30-40? 50? 100? 150? What does your gut tell you?
The British brought seven Sea Dart ships to the Falklands, plus two Sea Slug and three Sea Wolf ships (and 13 Sea Cat ships).
Sea Dart could engage multiple targets quickly enough - on the 30th May, Exeter engaged a flight of low-flying A-4Cs, downing two and forcing them to withdraw (notably, these aircraft were flying below the minimum altitude for Sea Dart). Maverick has a range of ~22 km, Sea Dart has a range of 74 km. An F-4 flight with Mavericks would be receiving fire from well before they were in range; avoiding this would mean ceding the advantage of the missiles.
A total of 26 Sea Dart missiles were fired during the Falklands, for 7-9 kills, though this counts a number of missiles fired at false echoes.
Sea Slug wasn't particularly, as you might expect from a first-generation SAM, but it would be another thing for Argentinian pilots to worry about. It scored no kills in the Falklands, but the Argentinians never spent much time in its engagement envelope - F-4s with Maverick might well have to enter it.
The Iranian success is also more attributable to its use against small craft - gunboats and patrol boats - that could be destroyed or disabled with a single hit. Maverick didn't really have the capability to hit subsystems on a target, as it was designed for use against targets that could be destroyed in one hit. This, combined with its small warhead, limits its utility against surface ships.
The Argentinians had success against the 22/42 combo with bombers, but were unable to effectively follow it up; there's no reason to assume this would change with Maverick in use.
Riain
Banned
The Kiwi used a variant of the Maverick as anti-ship weapons on their A4s and SH2Gs from the late 80s; with the TV seeker of the B with the 300lb blast/frag warhead of later models. Apparently against ships the narrow seeker view allowed a decent range of ~10 miles, which isn't too bad against guns and point defence SAMs, area defence SAM aren't very common in global terms.
Okay but you seem to be assuming the F4's fly their approach within the envelope of sea dart. I'm envisioning a low level approach (out of the enganrement envelope) with a quick pop up.
I'm not sure that maverick couldn't target specific parts of a large warship. It could be employed against moving tanks after all.
If the F4's take down or damage the 42/22 combos then the air craft that historicaly did this can hit other targets.
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