Whiffing an F-105?

[Weaver]

A tac-recce Thud was actually designed but not bought, so how about making a whiffy one? One way to go would be to keep the nose radar (maybe make it smaller), delete the gun, and have side-facing cameras in the former ammo bay. The bomb bay could then hold a forward oblique camera in a bulged fairing, vertical cameras and an IR linescanner unit.

As an alternative payload, you could have a bomb-bay pallet with a ventral 'keel' fairing housing a pair of SLAR  antennas.

[Geoff]

A tac-recce Thud was actually designed but not bought, so how about making a whiffy one? One way to go would be to keep the nose radar (maybe make it smaller), delete the gun, and have side-facing cameras in the former ammo bay. The bomb bay could then hold a forward oblique camera in a bulged fairing, vertical cameras and an IR linescanner unit.

As an alternative payload, you could have a bomb-bay pallet with a ventral 'keel' fairing housing a pair of SLAR  antennas.

I like this idea - but based on an "F" with a pallatised recce system in the bomb bay.

[zenrat]

Looking at pics of the 105 I can't go past a set of Su 22 Fitter wings - the ones where only the outer half swings.

[PR19_Kit]

Looking at pics of the 105 I can't go past a set of Su 22 Fitter wings - the ones where only the outer half swings.

There's a plan of one just like that elsewhere on the Forum. Darned if I can find it now of course..........

[Dizzyfugu]

This stunt has recently been done, IIRC; cannot remember by whom, but it looked great! 

[kerick]

Are you thinking of my SU-105?





I was inspired by art work here by ChernayaAkula. Here's the thread it came from.

http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,39478.0.html

[eatthis]

thats the 1 and it looks amazing 

[Dizzyfugu]

Yep, that's the one. 

[tahsin]

F-105 after 1955 is just a waste of time, with Phantom on the horizon. In real life, one can surely come up with all sorts justifications to Whif. Say interceptor with Sparrows, though it lacks radar volume. Or maybe 104 style landing gear to get a F-15 style pylon inboard. With triple racks to carry 6 bombs and sidewinders on top of that. Keeping others. So that would give you 12 bombs, 4 Sidewinders, 3 drop tanks and 2 jamming pods. All required to drive all the way to Moscow on the autobahn.

As for markings , the official Turkish Air Force magazine had a misprint in a poem back in the day. Instead of lauding the F-104, they waxed lyrical about the '105.

[zenrat]

Thats excellent Kerick.  It must have wormed its way into my head.

[PR19_Kit]

F-105 after 1955 is just a waste of time, with Phantom on the horizon.

Hm, yes. I suppose that's why the USAF deployed vast numbers of them in SE Asia. 

And it was ChernayaAkula's drawing that I mentioned at the start of this marathon thread. It looks good in the plastic too, but the wings are too short for me.............. 

[Gondor]

F-105 after 1955 is just a waste of time, with Phantom on the horizon. In real life, one can surely come up with all sorts justifications to Whif. Say interceptor with Sparrows, though it lacks radar volume. Or maybe 104 style landing gear to get a F-15 style pylon inboard. With triple racks to carry 6 bombs and sidewinders on top of that. Keeping others. So that would give you 12 bombs, 4 Sidewinders, 3 drop tanks and 2 jamming pods. All required to drive all the way to Moscow on the autobahn.

As for markings , the official Turkish Air Force magazine had a misprint in a poem back in the day. Instead of lauding the F-104, they waxed lyrical about the '105.

But back in 1955 they didn't know that the F-4 was going to be so good.

Gondor

[rickshaw]

F-105 after 1955 is just a waste of time, with Phantom on the horizon. In real life, one can surely come up with all sorts justifications to Whif. Say interceptor with Sparrows, though it lacks radar volume. Or maybe 104 style landing gear to get a F-15 style pylon inboard. With triple racks to carry 6 bombs and sidewinders on top of that. Keeping others. So that would give you 12 bombs, 4 Sidewinders, 3 drop tanks and 2 jamming pods. All required to drive all the way to Moscow on the autobahn.

As for markings , the official Turkish Air Force magazine had a misprint in a poem back in the day. Instead of lauding the F-104, they waxed lyrical about the '105.

But back in 1955 they didn't know that the F-4 was going to be so good.

And it was, *GASP* a Navy plane! 

[Weaver]

F-105 after 1955 is just a waste of time, with Phantom on the horizon. In real life, one can surely come up with all sorts justifications to Whif. Say interceptor with Sparrows, though it lacks radar volume. Or maybe 104 style landing gear to get a F-15 style pylon inboard. With triple racks to carry 6 bombs and sidewinders on top of that. Keeping others. So that would give you 12 bombs, 4 Sidewinders, 3 drop tanks and 2 jamming pods. All required to drive all the way to Moscow on the autobahn.

As for markings , the official Turkish Air Force magazine had a misprint in a poem back in the day. Instead of lauding the F-104, they waxed lyrical about the '105.

But back in 1955 they didn't know that the F-4 was going to be so good.

And it was, *GASP* a Navy plane! 

And there's the rub: it wouldn't have mattered if they HAD known how good the F-4 was going to be, the USAF still has a HUGE institutional resistance to buying Navy and they'd likely have resisted the F-4 too. They only bought it because McNamara basically ordered them to.

For a USAF ADC interceptor version, you could get more radar volume by deleting the gun and it's magazine, which sits right behind the radar, moving the radar back and fitting a bigger radome. With the benefit of post-Vietnam 20/20 hindsight we might regard that as a retrograde step, but at the time it was all the rage. Also, the Air Force didn't adopt the Sparrow III until they got it as a package deal with the Phantoms, so any F-105 interceptor would probably have been armed with Falcons and Genies. It's hard ot see why they would choose this option instead of just extended F-106 production though.

If the USAF didn't buy the Phantom, it would probably have continued with F-105 and F-106 production and gone into Vietnam thus equipped. Once it became clear that dogfighted was very much the order of the day, they might then have modified the existing F-105 as a air-superiority fighter (i.e. TAC not ADC) by filling the bomb bay with fuel, adding fuselage corner pylons for two Sparrows (there is room) and flying with four AIM-4D Falcons on the outboard pylons. Once they  realised how useless Falcon was for this mission, they might have replaced it with Sidewinder, but with no F-4s in the Air Force to make this the 'obvious' solution, they might also have opted to further improve the Falcon for the dogfight role (it's principle deficiencies were long warm-up time and complex 'switchology', both of which could have been fixed).

In the longer term, a 'proper' Thud dogfighter would need a bigger wing, as well as fixes for all the niggling design details that reduced it's survivability. Again, it's hard to see why you wouldn't rather adapt the F-106 for this role though, with fuel and a gun in the missile bay and better missiles on new wing/fuselage pylons.

[jcf]

OK, this makes me think tri-jet F-105 with Yak-25/6/7/8 style wing mounted engines, and an extended span, of course.