Quickest..??

[Waynester]

Silly subject time..

If you could set up a drag race, a side by side take off, followed by the quickest time to altitude, say 60,000 ft (reasonable?) which aircraft would be quickest..past aircraft included, so would the Lightning figure at all?

Mig 25 Foxbat, F-15 Eagle..?


I'm not a Clarkson 'Power..power...Power' obsessive, just curious, & this is Ph's after all.




Not Googled as discussion always more interesting...

Edited by Waynester on Thursday 6th October 00:31

[davepoth]

lightning I think is fastest to 60,000ft out of those, considering it was two engines, a pilot, enough fuel to get to 60,000ft, and pretty much nothing else.

[db]

i'd put money on the F16. saw one go vertical from take-off to 50,000ft in a very short space of time. Fairford 1986 i think, just over the minute mark as i recall.

[Mave]

Those high climb rates are only max climb rates though, right? ie an F15 can't get to 50,000' in a minute, it just has a max climb rate of 50,000ft/min. Just like a car doin 0-60 in 6 seconds doesn't mean it can do 0-120 in 12 seconds...

[Simpo Two]

Precisely. And Saturn V has a rather higher ceiling, so it's facts bent to impress.

[SlipStream77]

The OP did state "time to altitude" and not optimum climb rate.

I would have guessed a Foxbat or Eagle would be the most capable, the Lightning is a significantly older design.

In actuality, it seems the Sukhoi P42 would be ahead of all of them, it's a modified Flanker capable of being 12km up from a standing start in under a minute.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/0669141/

The records set by the P42 are listed at the bottom of this page.

http://www.propro.ru/flankers/eng/su-27.htm

Edited for spelling.

Edited by SlipStream77 on Saturday 8th October 22:45

[davepoth]

Frankly that Sukhoi is cheating a bit. The lightning was designed to do one thing, and that was to get to altitude very, very fast indeed. Missiles and guns were an afterthought (especially the gun). The other fighters may be newer but they weren't quite so singleminded in philosophy.

[Simpo Two]

davepoth said:

Frankly that Sukhoi is cheating a bit. The lightning was designed to do one thing, and that was to get to altitude very, very fast indeed. Missiles and guns were an afterthought (especially the gun).

How then was he supposed to fell the Bear?

Rammkommando!

[Simpo Two]

Bedazzled said:

In comparison, an English Electric Lightning (owned by Thunder City in S Africa) set a time-to-altitude record of 104 sec to 9000m in 2005, that's averaging 17,000 feet per min, from a standing start!

I'm surprised the record would be held post-service by civilians rather than RAF pilots with all the back-up.

In the real world, what use is 'initial rate of climb' anyway? Your target is 60,000 feet up; first to get there wins.

[Simpo Two]

Bedazzled said:

If we're talking about intercepting a target, then should we consider the weapon system too? What about an F14 armed with a Phoenix AIM54? The Lightning probably gets to altitude 2-3 minutes faster, but it can't fire until it's within about 5 miles (and not at all if it's cloudy?!

Most certainly; no good getting up there if all you can do is throw bacon rolls at the target. I believe one reason why Harriers were so successful in air-to-air combat in the Falklands was because they had the latest Sidewinders. (And thus, as the joke went, 'when Galtieri wanted to review his air force, they got him a glass-bottomed boat')

[Dr Jekyll]

Simpo Two said:

I'm surprised the record would be held post-service by civilians rather than RAF pilots with all the back-up.

In the real world, what use is 'initial rate of climb' anyway? Your target is 60,000 feet up; first to get there wins.

Presumably when the Lightning was leading edge technology the RAF wanted to keep the exact capabilities secret, and when it was being phased out they still didn't want to publicise it in case everyone said 'if it's that good what do you need Tornado ADV for?'

When Fairey raised the world air speed record from 800 odd MPH to over 1000MPH, that was essentially a civilian exercise, the government wanted nothing to do with it.

[JW911]

Not strictly on thread but I remember reading that the F-14A was too heavy for a cat launch with a full load of AIM-54 so was operationally limited as to how many it could carry.

I suspect that was caused by a combination of cat power, deck length and temperature.

[Dr Jekyll]

JW911 said:

Not strictly on thread but I remember reading that the F-14A was too heavy for a cat launch with a full load of AIM-54 so was operationally limited as to how many it could carry.

I suspect that was caused by a combination of cat power, deck length and temperature.

Or being underpowered in the first place.

Where power matters in carrier operations isn't the catapult launch, it's in throwing away a landing and taking off again after the wheels have touched because the pilot missed the wire (or spotted 2 sailors jaywalking across the deck).

That was one reason the navalised Jaguar was abandoned. (The other reason was that only the French had a requirement for it and it was only half French.)

[Simpo Two]

Dr Jekyll said:

Presumably when the Lightning was leading edge technology the RAF wanted to keep the exact capabilities secret, and when it was being phased out they still didn't want to publicise it in case everyone said 'if it's that good what do you need Tornado ADV for?'

Good point, you wouldn't want to be setting the Russians a target. But there must have been a true figure worked out for operational purposes that could now be released.

[IforB]

Chatting to a friend of mine who sits at the front of a pointy twin engined RAF flying machine, he mentioned that the Typhoon is the first front line fighter he knows of that can actually outperform the Lightning in time to altitude tests.

I very much doubt that there are any real and released performance figures for this sort of thing for current machines to be honest.

[Mr Dave]

Bedazzled said:

"The Streak Eagle reaches 15,000m in 77sec, which is 10 sec faster than a Saturn V to the same altitude". That's about 38,000 feet/min, some way off the 50,000 feet/min claimed on Wiki for the standard F15/F16.
.

Dont forget the F-15c has the newer engines compared to the streak eagle, the C's thrust to weight is higher than the streak eagle as a result.

The P42 had a really high thrust to weight compared to both of those but I think the Typhoon just about matches it and the F-22 out does it.

I dont think thruist to weight is the whole story and with that in mind I think the F-22 would take some beating, its a very aerodynamically advanced aircraft.

[rhinochopig]

IforB said:

Chatting to a friend of mine who sits at the front of a pointy twin engined RAF flying machine, he mentioned that the Typhoon is the first front line fighter he knows of that can actually outperform the Lightning in time to altitude tests.

I very much doubt that there are any real and released performance figures for this sort of thing for current machines to be honest.

I used to work with ex-RAF engineer at R-R and he was adamant that the lightning never managed a top speed run as it ran 'out' of fuel before it stopped accelerating.

[Mr Dave]

Found this online and cant confirm the details.

"Streak Eagle

the empty weight on record attempt for 30,000 meter flight
was about 25,200 LBS.

fuel carried on attempt was about 7,300 LBS

static sea level thrust was about 47,660 LBS even though
the aircraft was not exactly at sea level....

thrust to weight ratio at engine startup was about 1.46-to-1 "

And...

"I have read that a production F-22A weighs just under 33,000 LBS
empty and has up to 78,000 LBS of static sea level thrust"

[Tango13]

In terms of sheer thrust the X-15 really ruled the roost, Milton O Thompson describes how "The Bull" could accelerate at a sustained 4G, hard enough that the pilot could feel the tendons holding his heart in place stretch and make it difficult to breathe.

Another way to look at is that they gained 100 mph in velocity every second, whilst at the far side of 3000mph in a 45dg climb

I can't remember the exact numbers but 240 nautical miles 350,000ft+ of alttitude and back home for tea and medals in about 6mins was about the norm!

[Total loss]

Tango13 said:

In terms of sheer thrust the X-15 really ruled the roost, Milton O Thompson describes how "The Bull" could accelerate at a sustained 4G, hard enough that the pilot could feel the tendons holding his heart in place stretch and make it difficult to breathe.

Another way to look at is that they gained 100 mph in velocity every second, whilst at the far side of 3000mph in a 45dg climb

I can't remember the exact numbers but 240 nautical miles 350,000ft+ of alttitude and back home for tea and medals in about 6mins was about the norm!

But how long did it take to get to launch height of what ever it was slung beneath the B-52, 1/2hr ? So its 0-60,000 ft would be considerably slower than all the others discussed. Still one of the most awesome machines ever built though