In the early days of aviation, fighter jets were developed by trial and error. Well, it was quite a rudimentary kind of approach those days, but at least it set a way forward for the future. Although much of computer-aided design goes a long way to perfect designs nowadays before a single bolt is fastened, the period between the old thrash-around method and the modern, computer-driven approach produced some of the finest flying machines, with a fair smattering of duds.
Contrarily, fighter jets have had extremely marked growth over the past century, really testing the potential of engineering and technology. Examples include the F-35 and the F-22 from the United States and the Mirage from France, together with the Eurofighter Typhoon. This forms part of a list of the best aerospace innovations ever made. These aircraft have been unlike any other in securing our skies. It has been an uphill and downhill ride alike.
The two superpowers, along with others on either side of the Iron Curtain, poured money into developing new fighter jets, creating a whole host of really expensive failures. There were many such planes, often flying for years before their flaws were noticed. While looking at the best that has ever been regarding fighter jets is fascinating, maybe even more interesting are the failures that nevertheless were able to fly out of a hangar.
One of them, the HF-24 Marut, is on display at the Deutsches Museum Flugwerft Schleissheim, near Munich. That, and others like this, such as the Yakovlev Yak-141 and the Atlas Cheetah, embody a sense of feverish experimentation and development. The Yak-141, seen at the 1992 Farnborough Airshow, shows the vaulting ambition and too frequent faults of its generation.
The Korean War was to be the defining moment for air-to-air combat, becoming the first sterling example of full-scale combat between jet aircraft in “MiG Alley.” Countless would-be dogfights above the area where the Yalu River flows into the Yellow Sea between UN fighter pilots and their opponents from North Korea, China, and the Soviet Union, although this has always been denied. At the heart of these battles were two aircraft: the Soviet-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 and the North American F-86 Sabre.
Probably the best-known Korean War ace was Russian Nikolay Sutyagin, with 21 kills to his name, nine of which were flown by F-86s. Other famous Soviet aces included Yevgeni G. Pepelyayev and Lev Kirilovich Shchukin. Somewhat better known today are UN aces like Capt. Joseph C. McConnell, who tallied 16 MiG kills and became the highest-scoring ace; his exploits were later immortalized in the film “The McConnell Story.”
That legacy still inspires today: many war-fighting games, like “MiG Alley,” portray some of the most complex dogfights of the Korean War. Games that keep alive in memory the pilots’ bravery and flying skills that laid the groundwork for future aerial warfare.
The history of fighter aircraft has been one of great successes, some of them failures. Today’s flying jets are just about at the pinnacle of technological development; there are lessons, however, to be learned from the past, one that has given us today’s open skies.