Thanks, as usual, to the 1-300 channel for this retrospective on “440”. Of the 5,195 Phantoms ever built, “440” was the last to roll off the Mitsubishi assembly line on May 20, 1981. That means it was born just a few months after My Lovely and Gracious Bride (MLGB). Is thirty-nine old?
I’d better be really careful with this response. In human terms, I’m coming to think of thirty-nine as only just hitting middle-age, with (Lord willing), at least half of life left. In fighter terms though, yeah, that’s pretty old. Given that the JASDF Phantoms are serving out their twilight years in companion of the F-35, this would be the equivalent of an air force simultaneously operating both the Nieuport 17 (production ended in 1917), alongside a 2nd Generation jet fighter such as the F-86 Sabre AT THE SAME TIME. While simultaneously also operating a couple types of WWII era fighters for good measure.
Although as the Hush Kit blog pointed out in a recent article with Dave “Bio” Baranek, the major fighter evolutions over the past forty years haven’t come so much from revolutions in engine or aerodynamic understanding, so much as they’ve come from the revolution of the microprocessor and massive leaps in capability powered by ever smaller and more powerful PCs. Give a P-47 a podded radar, a helmet-mounted HUD, and hang a couple of AIM-9X missiles under the wings rather than unguided rockets, and you might get some interesting results.
One more old/new mix then. Arrivals for Ocean Sky 2020 exercises, courtesy of thefightercommunity channel.