captain_spalding said:

Spiny Norman said:

captain_spalding said:

A mate in the FAA told me that when they were doing air-to-ground missile runs with things like Zunis and Mighty Mouse, they’d often roll inverted as it made it easier to see if they hit the target or not.

Not surprised. Cockpits can be difficult to see out of.

Haven’t seen too many, but i think the worst one i have seen is the MiG-17, which i got a sit in.

You sit in this really deep metal tub, with a little bubble over the top of you, and you can see nothing downwards, very little to the sides, not much forwards, and it’s hard to see upwards.

How people took those thing into fights baffles me. How they landed them baffles me!

Yep.
That’s why the F-16 is such a good fighter. The pilot sits high up in the airframe and the canopy stick out a bit so you can see down a bit further with your head up against it. The seat is also angled somewhat like a recliner, I believe the back of the seat leans back at about 30deg and you feet are also up higher than a normal cockpit, so as to reduce the onset of G-induced grey-out. In a guns-only fight they will still beat an F-22 and F-35.

A lot of the older fighters also were designed around missile fights and so you didn’t have to dog fight much. At least that was the theory… which didn’t work very well in the real world.