This may be old news, but I stumbled on this article about mock dogfights between Sea Harriers, F-5's and F-15's. The Sea Harrier looks like a deadly adversary when it's piloted by someone who knows what they are doing.

Sea Harrier over the Falklands

The Mirage is also deadly against the Sea Harrier when piloted by someone who knows what he is doing

...but sure an all aspect nine lima beats all, specially against a Shafrir-armed-delta.

Weren't all 9 Lima kills in the Falklands from the rear quarter anyway?

Mirage certainly wins the best looking aircraft award IMO.

HMP

The Daggers carried Shaffir the Mirages R530 and R550

Well, I am not going to argue with an ex-fighter Jock.

Any thoughts on the relative merits of the Mirage v. Harrier in air combat?

Don't put too much store these articles. IvanK is exactly right. There is no such thing as the ultimate fighter. Every design has it's strengths and weaknesses and the pilot who goes blundering into a dogfight thinking his jet is going to keep him out of trouble is already halfway towards hanging in his chute.

But you read these articles and the point is always "look, the older fighter still kicks butt, we're wasting money on these new expensive jobs." Which is garbage, of course.

In the end, what Richtofen said is still true: "The quality of the crate matters little. It is the quality of the man sitting in the crate that counts."

Deacon

Deacon I was there

Rightly there are many variables in Air Combat and the Man in the seat is one of the most important.

The sea Harrier undoubdetly was used by the RN/RAF pilots consumately against a foe flying very very far from home (The RN relatively close to their carriers by comparison), and with no where near the operational experience the RN/RAF brought to the fight. Though what the Argentines achieved was staggering considering the circumstances.

Against a similary trained opponent operating with the same range restrictions then The Harrier is not as flash as the all the hype that has been attributed it in the Air Combat role. That said it was the only aeroplane the Brits had to do the job. If they had still had F4s and Buccaneers I doubt if the Argentines would have even attempted a Falklands invasion. THE F4K Look down capability would have been a far more daunting threat to the Argentines than the Harrier ever was.

As to Sea Harrier FRS1 versus Mirage III a few points. The Mirage III sustained turn performance is better than the Sea Harrier. The Mirage III instantaneous turn performance is also better than a Non VIFF Harrier.

The defensive VIFF is something to behold. Few if any aeroplanes can track a Harrier through it, though it renders the Harrier a Flare imo Offensive Viffing using small amounts of nozzle movement a process the brits call "Nozziling" can be used to advantage in Lag turn contests but it too extracts an energy penalty for an already taxed energy aeroplane, but if it results in a valid shot so be it.

the Mirage/Dagger with 2 x 1700litre tanks (the most common configuration used by the Argentines) will happily sit at 600KIAS at sea level. The Sea Harrier with a couple of external tanks will be struggling.

The Sea Harrier RCS is absolutely huge in comparison to the Mirage III. Niether aircraft had Look down capability. The R550 is/was a better close in Missile than the AIM9L. The R550 autoscan lock ability was awesome in comparison the AIM9L mechanisation in the Sea Harrier at the time of the conflict. The R530 was an absolute meanace to the firer .The Shaffir was no competition to the AIM9L (or the R550 for that matter)The AIM9L had better legs and better angle capabilty... important since the Harrier was at a real speed disadvantage. The Mirage III is of suffcient performance advantage to be able to dictate the fight.

Given the choice what would I take to the fight ? A Mirage III every time ... but then I am biased and still in love with Marcels French Lady

So I take it you flew the Mirage then? Did you fight in the Falklands? I was a Harrier guy myself, the Marine Corps B rather than the SHAR. I can't really disagree with any of the points you made. Fighting the Harrier is an exercise in fighting to the plane's strengths which are few and far between.

The point of my post above was more that one should take these articles, which are never written by pilots, with a grain of salt. They seldom take into account any of the many variables of air combat (several of which you mentioned above) and usually draw conclusions based on the most suspect of evidence or by the results of exercises without any regard to ROE, range restrictions, unrealistic loadouts and the like. I'm sure you know what I mean...you get restriced to VID only or only get rear aspect heaters and everybody thinks the results are realistic.

I still love the jumpjet, though I think I would personally take a late block Viper to the fight given a choice. Still in my day, I'd give anyone a run for their money in the Harrier and she always brought me home safely.

I'm looking forward to this sim. It looks like it's really going to be something.

Flew Mirage IIIO in South Pacific (RAAF) and took part in the excercise referred to in the article never been to the Falklands

Agreed I am looking forward to the Sim see you in the Betas

I think considering the amount of bombs the Argies got on target ( that either did or did not explode ) the Brits were very lucky not to loose more ships.

I guess another reason for the 1 sided air to air war was the fact the Argies were sinking ships.

1982 I was still a weee lad but I remember the footage on TV of those poor *******s on the Sir Galahad.

The wait for this sim will be painful

HMP

IvanK, nice photos!

On paper, the Harrier looks like a poor choice for air to air combat. It's performance in the Falklands appears to be due more to the quality of the british pilots and the handicaps faced by the Argentinian airforce.


I found an interesting article on the challenges faced by the Argentine pilots in the war.

Argentine Air Power in the Falklands War

Considering all the handicaps they faced, they rang up a pretty good score against the Royal Navy.

No doubt Sherpa. When we flew the B, the tactic was to get the adversary in close and tie them up. It was the only way we could win...if the bandit flew well. If he didn't well, then it didn't much matter what his aircraft COULD do if he didn't do it.

Deacon

When on the Tornado F.3 OCU in the mid nineties there was a gun cam film doing the rounds of all sorts of fighters falling into the 'Fins gunsight..now as we'll all probably agree the Tornado F.3 isn't a dogfighter per say, more of a long range interceptor..but there were F-16s,15s,14,Gr.5's, f-8s and the rest all in the pipper. You could possibly do something similar with a Hawk, or a Jaguar...

"Tornado ....Banks ... as if to turn....vortices...streaming from its tips...but exhibiting negligible turn rate ....."

I remember a conversion with a BAE rep in the late 80s regarding high AOA handling "of the worlds most potent air defence fighter" at the time there was a slight rift between BAE and the RAAF since we had chosen the F18 in prefrence to the Tornado it went something like this:

BAE Rep: :"Do you have SPILS on the F18"
Self:"No"
BAE REP: "So how do you get carefree high AOA handling then ?"
Self: "Buy a jet without any AOA limits"

All the "watch shooting" aside "The Fin" is pretty fast in a straight Line though !

* SPILS - Spin prevention and incidence limiting system (I think)

Apparently the Sea Harrier is being retired. It's already flown it's last mission and will be officially retired next month.

Link to BBC video report