JCHeckler, I agree, you’re right, and I was wrong. Ballistic refers to a flight path without lift. This would describe a plane climbing vertically.
And about the T-38 Talon - it might be 40 years old, but it’s still one of the best-looking planes ever to fly.
Thank you for correcting my error. I was trying to recall information i had memorized in elementary school. 
Saw a turbo-prop powered sport bi-plane at an airshow last year that was able to pull into a vertical climb and slow to a point that he was maintaining altitude and position over hte ground without rolling along the longitudinal axis (must have had some sort of mod to the ailerons).
Now, if the pilot is able to regularly “hang it on the prop” (this went on for 15-20 seconds; enough to convince me that he could do it), then I’d submit that he probably had more than enough reserve power (that he wasn’t using) to climb vertically and accelerate.
Concur that the F/A-18 is a weak kneed, short-legged, piece of crap. Fancy systems? True. Power and range? False.
Regarding question 2, you might be interested in this article from the Second World War. The high winds over Japan effectively ended the B-29 strategic bombing campaign (they switched to low-level night bombing with incendiaries).
I once saw a B-29 bombardier claim in a television interview that occasionally he saw the target moving backwards through his bombsight, but I suspect that was a bit of hyperbole.
Cripers, Grok, I do this for fun.
Adequate altitude for stall recovery is advisible since you’re usually deep into slow flight when doing this and you may “oops”. Hover? I’ve made a C150 back up relative to the ground. All you need is a 50 mph headwind to “hover”. Pick a day with a steep wind gradiant - take off with 10-15 mph straight down the runway, climb to an altitude with sufficient windspeed, and party.
Haven’t quite pulled this off in the Warrior, yet.
A friend has one. I know nothing about it other than I would never fly in it (it’s covered in fabric) but he has told me a few times that he hovered in it, and has gone backwards. One time on a trip of 120 miles, he turned around, landed the thing and took his car because it was faster. Road traffic was going faster than he was. The guy’s been flying for 40 years or more and ferries all kinds of stuff.
I saw a movie in childhood about pilots flying Spitfires and losing control in dives and crashing. Any truth to the movie storyline about the plane flying faster than sound (downhill) and “they” discovered that to pull out of the dive at that speed the pilot would have to push the stick forward rather than pull it back because of the “unkown” forces at Mach 1?
If that’s true, then Chuck Yager isn’t the first human to break the sound barrier.
Aw, c’mon - nuthin’ wrong with a ragwing. It’s the ones covered with duct tape you have to worry about…
Been there, done that. “I’m paying how much an hour and risking my neck for a 25 mph groundspeed?”
Sounds more like a stall/spin recovery to me. Definitely one of the brain cramps of flight training - "The earth is rushing up at us way too fast and you want me to point the nose down???" But you only do that very briefly, then pull back (gently!) to get back to level flight. Don’t believe everything you see in the movies, kid.
Anyhow - while it is certainly possible that someone exceeded the sound barrier before Chuck, an important point is that Chuck was the first who lived to tell about it.
I’ve flown backwards in a 150. As Broomstick says, it’s really not that hard. Stall speed in a 150 if I recall correctly is something like 38 kts with the flaps down. Doesn’t take much of a headwind to do that - wind speeds like that are fairly common at higher altitudes, and where I come from (Lethbridge, AB), such winds are very common.
Just about as impressive is doing a short-field landing in a 150 in a more modest wind - With a 15 kt headwind, a 150 can land at bicycle speeds, and stop in about 50 ft. Loads of fun.
If you could get one onto an aircraft carrier going full speed on a calm day you could almost levitate off the deck, because a carrier does something like 30-35 kts when launching aircraft.
A number of years ago there used to be a BACKWARDS air race - there is some part of the U.S. that gets strong regular winds, so the race was to take off and set up to let the wind blow you backwards towards the finish line. The winner would be the person who could keep his airplane closest to stalling speed without losing control. Lots of fun.
I was in the airport at Lethbridge one time, and had just cancelled my flight plan because the wind on the ground was 35-40 kts, and was blowing 70-90 kts at altitude. So we’re standing there having a coffee with the FSS guy, and suddenly we hear a guy call for takeoff clearance in a 172. Needless to say, the guy was an idiot. AND, he was filing for Cranbrook BC, which happens to be on the other side of a major range of the Rocky Mountains. He was planning on flying directly into a 70-90 kt headwind in an airplane that’s lucky to make 120 kts at the best of times. Not only that, but the turbulence over the mountains with that kind of wind was just insane, and we had already listened to a number of PIREPS from guys who were getting their teeth knocked out by the turbulence. One guy in a Mooney said that he could barely keep his aircraft under control it was so bad.
Anyway, the FSS guy had apparently told the pilot that VFR was not recommended, and relayed the pilot reports to him, but this idiot was undeterred. He was going home to Cranbrook, by god, and no one was going to stop him. Since it was technically legal VFR, that’s all the FSS guy could do.
So anyway, we watch this guy levitate off the ground and start heading out, and we shake our heads and go back to our coffee. Now I’m thinking, what kind of groundspeed did this guy file for? How many fuel stops was he going to have to make, each one closer to the mountains in hellacious winds?
About half an hour later, this guy radios Lethbridge requesting wind reports for different altitudes, because his GPS was showing a ground speed of only 15 kts, and he couldn’t figure it out. The FSS guy told him that that was about the best he was going to do. So the guy just keeps on flying. Now I’m thinking that with the groundspeed he’s got he wouldn’t make it 60 miles in that 172. And if he managed to get to the mountains he’d kill himself.
Anyway, we never heard from him again, and left soon after. My guess is that he turned around at some point, and would have had a hell of a ride back doing maybe 200 kts in that 172. I’m surprised he didn’t kill himself.
More correctly, I think, a plane climbing vertically without engine power, in free fall, and decelerating as it rises. A ballistic missile is not ballistic during the boost phase. It “goes ballistic” upon engine-cutoff.
Question: does this term apply to the NASA zero-gee training flights, which I understand follow a very precise (and powered) flight profile to provide a minute or 2 of free fall to the occupants? Is this a ballistic flight, or something else? From an occupant’s point of view, it seems to be…
Wow, we’ve touched on a lot here.
Regarding vertical acceleration - I do believe that the thrust of the engines is rated at sea level, standard temp and pressure. So as you get higher, thrust decreases, therefore you can’t maintain the vertical acceleration for long.
I have heard that the F4U Corsair, for one, could break Mach 1 in a dive if a very specific set of conditions were met - beginning altitude, airspeed, dive angle, power setting, etc. Yeager was the first to fly faster than Mach 1 in LEVEL flight.
“Hanging on the prop” is a REALLY cool trick to watch!
At the Cleveland Air Show two years ago (Labor Day), on a day that was so rainy, windy and bad the Blue Angels, and just about everything else, didn’t fly, a pilot in a biplane that is designed for stunt flying, achieved negative ground speed. Interestingly enough, the small (private) planes flew that day, the big (military) planes (except for a bomber from Northern Scotland, who said it was just like flying back home) stayed planted on the ground.
According to the Discovery: Wings channel, you can add the SU-37 to the list of aircraft that can increase speed vertically.
I understand that the English Electric Lightning was also capable of vertical climbing, and in fact I once saw a plane do this at an airshow. This aircraft dates from the mid-60s !!
As to “flying backwards”, I saw (on TV) an old archive film of Swordfish (I think, but definately bi-plane) on an daicraft carrier (1st WW period). With the headwind and the carrier speed, the plane rolled forward and as the pilot pulled back on the stick it left the deck and the carrier started to leave it behind…
I disagree. While there are planes with greater performance limits in most if not all specific categories (top speed, max range, weapon load, stand-off intercept range), there are no others currently in service (we’ll see about the new JSF) that can match its unique blend of attributes, and plus it has a few tricks up its sleeve that nobody else does – like the ability to maintain controlled flight at ludicrously high AoA because of the forward wing strakes.
When the Hornet was first introduced it was criticized for having been the loser in a fly-off design competition with the prototype that became the F-16. But in head-to-head ACM trials (at Yuma, I think) with the F-16 after development for the navy, the F-18 came out about even with its lighter, quicker competitor. Considering that the Hornet has considerably more advanced avionics, capacity for BVR missiles (which I don’t think are used on the F-16), and more advanced ground attack systems, it is clearly the more capable plane.
Original shortfalls in range and cruise performance were fixed early in the program, and the hornet has since been a capable long-range attack plane.
Plus I happen to think it’s cool looking 
There’s also the fact that it costs MUCH less to produce and maintain than the F-14 or F-15.
Same with the Space Shuttle, I assume?
You hear something like that every now and then about aircraft from WW2 (although I’ve not heard it about the Corsair before… they were not exactly the sleekest aircraft of the war). While I don’t believe thats ever been proven, the flipside is that if that were possible the aircraft would almost certainly be uncontrollable as the control surfaces would be useless. I think the ME262 reportedly had it happen as well, and I’d be more inclined to believe that it would before any prop plane.
Of course your neglecting to mention the Space Shuttle acts as a rocket during takeoff… not an aircraft. Its also not only its own “power” making it go skyward. You could strap some boosters on a Cessna 172 and make it accelerate straight up, too.
I’ve seen film of the (I think) Su-29 flying backwards without a severe headwind. They go almost vertical, angle the nose back beyond vertical, and almost hover but moving backwards. I think it’s the only plane that can do that particular trick.
Is that the ‘cobra’ manoeuvre that Russian MiG-29 pilots always used to pull at the Paris Airshow?
