F-14 Tomcat vs WWII Zero

In My Humble Opinion
1

As seen in the proposterous movie Final Countdown
I imagine it would be a bit one-sided, however: The Tomcat is AFAIK not a dogfighter - more of an interceptor/missile platform. I can imagine that trying to shoot down something as nimble as a Zero would be like trying to swat a fly with a lump hammer.
Also in the film one of the Zeros is shot down with a Sidewinder. Does a prop plane make a good enough thermal target, or was this just the last straw in the rediculousness of this film?

Any F-14 or Zero pilots out there got an opinion? Anyone tried something like this in a flight sim?

2

The most effective way of shooting down an aircraft is to get him before he knows you’re there. “Shoot him in the back”, as it were. An F-14 with its 20mm “gatling gun” doesn’t need to mix it up with a Zeke; just line up the shot. If they do get into a tangle, the F-14 pilot could just pull a few miles away and come around again. FWIW, the AVG shot down a lot of Zeros in their obsolete P-40s. Their tactic was to make a pass, and then dive away to come around again. They couldn’t maneuver with a Zero, but they could out-fall them. :wink:

My dad was a Naval officer. He told me about the time when Sidewinder missiles were new. They had a Sidewinder set up on the ship. A guy stood in front of the room (could’ve been the flight deck – he didn’t make it clear where this took place) waving a lit cigarette. The AAM’s control surfaces obediently followed the movements. I don’t know, but I suspect that a Sidewinder would be able to lock onto the heat of a piston engine in the absense of a hotter target.

3

The Tocat will win. A Zero had a gun or cannon, and the pilot relied on his vision to find and attack a target. A Tomcat, like all other modern planes, has radar, and various weapons such as infrared and radar guided missiles. So, the Tomcat could lock on and fire before the Zero even knew he’d been detected.

4

Well I think that could be taken as a given :slight_smile: It could probably just shake the Zero to bits by buzzing it while supersonic.

Some more context: In the film they do get into a turning fight (which is of course dumb and so fits right in with the whole film) would a Zero stand any chance at all if the F-14 pilot was brain-dead enough to try this?

I have read an account of a Skyraider (a prop plane and definitely not a fighter) shooting down a Mig(17?) in Vietnam under more or less these circumstances, maybe the Mig pilot was a jerk?

And following Johnny L.A.'s Sidewinder story, I now recall a story of a Phantom taking out a truck with a Sidewinder. So maybe locking onto a prop plane is feasible.

5

SteveG1’s got it.

The F-14 radar can easily track a Zero. An AIM-7 Sparrow missile will shred the Zero when it detonates. The Zero pilot probably won’t see it coming, and even if he does he’ll probably not realize it’s dangerous until it’s waay too late. He’ll never even see the F-14 some 10-20 miles away.

AIM-9 Sidewinder heat seakers are a different matter. I flew F-16s and have a good amount of experience with this particular weapon. The older AIM-9/P model commonly carried in the 70s and early 80s wouldn’t track a recip airplane. The heat source is too weak and too diffuse. Even at min range you’d barely be able to get a tone and like as not it’d break lock during launch and “go stupid” as we said.

The old “cigarette at 10 paces” demo isn’t informative; that represents a very hot point source against a uniform cool background. The Zero’s thermal sig presents a much smaller angular area with fuzzy boundaries.

The later model AIM-9/L & /M (yes, the chronology is out of alphabetical order) would track a recip under good conditions. The F-14 could just drive in to 2 or 3 miles astern and a little below (to ensure a cool blue sky background) and hose one off with about 75% chance of a kill (P[sub]k[/sub]). The Zero pilot could certainly see the F-14 at that range, but since the F-14 could come blasting in an 400+ knots closure (V[sub]c[/sub]), he’d go from invisible to in-range very quickly. As well, at 400+ knots V[sub]c[/sub], the range expands to well beyond 3 miles, so the F-14 would be even harder to see. Absent any radar warning, the Zero’d never know he’s being stalked and the F-14 could use his radar to keep the Zero “in sight” the whole time.

Believe it or not, a dogfight would be problematic. The modern analog is fighting attack helos, trying to kill Apaches or Hinds or Havocs with fast-moving fighters. It isn’t easy.

At the Zero’s comfortable combat speeds, a jet is wallowing like a dog. The F-14 had better low-speed handling that its predecessors, but still, below about 200 it’s a mess. If the F-14 gets off a well-aimed (or lucky) burst with his cannon, the Zero is toothpicks. But if the Zero sees the F-14 coming, he can prevent the tracking shot indefinitely by out-turning the F-14.

A side effect of the Zero’s better turning radius is that every time the F-14 moves in, he’ll end up out in front of the Zero. Not directly in front, but in the foward hemisphere. At which point the F-14’s got to zoom out of the Zero’s gun range before the Zero turn to bear on the F-14. That implies having a lot of V[sub]c[/sub], which makes the overshoot problem worse. You want to go slow to get the shot, but fast to escape the inevitable overshoot after the pass.

At middle altitudes, say 15,000 to 25,000, the F-14 can just zoom about at speed trying to get an unobserved strafe run on the non-manuevering Zero after the Zero loses sight of the F-14. The fact the F-14 can come at the Zero straight down, straight up, head on or from any other quuadrant is not something the Zero pilot will have experience with. And no single pilot can adequately scan the full sphere around him to detect all incoming hostiles. Given enough passes, one will slip in unobserved.

If the Zero makes for the deck, then the F-14’s also got the other big problem with killing attack helos; they love to hide in the valleys and will try to scrape the fast-mover off on a convenient ridgeline. They can get a LOT closer to the terrain than you can and still survive. The rocks are the Zero’s best defensive weapon.

But whether a real Zero pilot would figure this out quick enough to make a difference is an open question.

6

I heard a WW2 fighter pilot say the same thing on some History Channel show, and ever since, I’ve wondered: Why weren’t fighter aircraft of that era equipped with rearview mirrors? (Were they? I haven’t noticed.) I mean, it’s not some exotic yet-to-be-invented technology, y’know?

7

They were.

8

They had them. But in a mix-up, the pilot is usually too busy to look.

Besides, you have a rear-view mirror in your car. How many times has a cop surprised you with his lights? :smiley: If you approach from out-of-view, you are in-view just long enough to shoot.

9

Aha. Makes sense.

10

Plus which, depending on where the mirror was mounted (see here for the location on a Spitfire), it would cover only a small portion of the rear hemisphere. So if the attacker were approaching from either quarter, above, or below, it would be invisible. Granted that the mirror would provide some warning of someone attempting a zero-delection shot, it just wasn’t that useful.

11

LSLGuy raises the best point, I think. The skill of the Zero pilot is the determining factor in how long he gets to live. I doubt that a Zero could shoot down an F-14, but if the pilot of the Zero’s good (likely at the beginning of WW II, not so likely near the end), he could stay alive.

Probably the closest real world example of something similar to this that I know is the Air National Guard group from either the Dakotas or Montana who beat every other air wing in the US in simulated combat while flying F-4 Phantoms against their opponents (the regular Air Force guys were flying F-15s and F-16s). Not bad for guys flying planes which were built during the Vietnam era.

12

Slightly off topic…
While I was aboard the U.S.S Nimitz, they showed that film on our in-ship cable TV every time we departed and every time we arrived.

In addition, there is a standard procedure called “underway replenishment” where a supply ship sends cases of stuff to a warship over cables strung between the ships while they are both under way – the Naval equivalent of in-flight refueling. At the end of underway replenishment, the traditional means of termination is to perform an “emergency breakaway” drill. When this is announced on the PA system, they play a theme song for the ship. Our theme song was… the theme song from Final Countdown.

The film was kind of cool to watch since it really was filmed on our ship. We could recognize various parts “Hey, there’s the forward mess decks. They changed the tile since then.”, “Check it out… those guys really are hanging out in the library” and other such observations.

13

Would the rather light machine guns most models of Zeros sported even penetrate the outer surface of the Tomcat?

14

I think they would. Although the wing box of the F-14 is made of titanium (unless I’m confusing it with the F-111), the basic structure is aluminum.

15

I’m gonna take a stab at defending this admittedly silly movie. :slight_smile: The Tomcat pilots were ordered to mix it up with the Zeroes, but told not to fire. They were only to keep the Zeroes from strafing some people in the water and drive them off if possible. The order to splash the Zeroes came after the Captain of the Nimitz learned that the course the Zeroes had been on would eventually bring them within sight of the aircraft carrier.

So up until one of the Zeroes actually lined up a shot on a Tomcat, the jet pilots were enjoying the one-sided show of muscle. I thought their overconfidence was a nice touch.

Ya gotta admit it this movie has some of the best aerial photography ever done in a movie. No CGI, no models… Just the real deal (and one cheesy-ass blue laserlight swirly tunnel effect…)

EZ

16

Wouldn’t just doing a supersonic pass close to a zero damage it?

17

The biggest problem with a rear-view mirror is that it has a very small field of view, and the the thing you are looking for is very, very tiny.

I’ve read a number of biographies and autobiographies of WWII fighter aces, and they all had one thing in common - excellent vision. Generally better than their peers. “Pappy” Boyington, for instance, was a legend for his ability to see the enemy long before anyone else did. Chuck Yeager also had that kind of vision. At the distance you need to spot the enemy, they are little more than a pinprick of a dot in the sky. Seeing that in a rear-view mirror through a perspex canopy is just not very likely. The mirror might help you once you are engaged, and it would also help prevent an enemy from sneaking up on you and blasting you out of the sky at very close range - something that happened fairly often. But in terms of spotting a jet closing from a great distance at high speed, it would be next to useless.

18

Hey, it could have been worse, they could have played the song by Europe (of course, that might have put them in violation a Geneva Conventions laws).

19

Zero armament varied a little bit, but I believe it was generally two 20mm cannon and two 7.7mm machine guns. The 20 mm would be able to get under a Tomcat’s skin. But, as noted above, the Zero driver would probably best put his efforts towards staying alive.

20

A 7.7mm machine gun is a fairly large weapon anyway.

Look at it this way; imagine standing on a runway next to an F-14. You pull out a .308 Winchester and start shooting at it. Do you think the bullets would just bounce off? Not likely.

Now imagine instead of a .306, you have a machine gun of about the same calibre - like a NATO 7.62 gun. Fire a long burst at the F-14. You’d mess it up pretty good, doncha think?