I caught this show this morning and can't remember all the fighters they listed.

I remember these:

F-22
Harrier
Sopwith Camel
ME-262
Spitfire
MiG-15 and F-86
F-4
F-15
P-51D

Guess I agree with the list. Not sure the ME-262 deserves to be there over the FW-190 and not sure the MiG-15 and F-86 deserve spots either over fighters like the MiG-29 and F-16 but I see why they were chosen.

But what's the one fighter I'm missing on the list?

Dont remember the last one, but thought the show had a to american look on things. Fx the F-22??? I has barely been made, never battleproven and allthough the specs look good, there is no way of knowing if it will be a all-time great fighter. Just because it is the newest american plane, dosn't make it one of the best fighters ever. Even the eurofighter is a much more hardcore dogfighter, but isn't mentiont because it isn't a stealth-plane (and isn't american...)

Last I checked, the MiG, Harrier, ME-262, and Spitfire weren't American either (or very stealthy).

i think the show ISN'T about the BEST fighter of all times, but the GREATEST fighter of all times.

Fighter that made a difference in the air and had the most serious impact on the course of history.

P.S. Mig-15 DOES NOT look like a tractor, that's an opinion!

"Doctor" Aryeh Nusbacher is a pompus idiot who has probably NEVER servered a day in uniform. To say that the F/A-22 rAPTOR IS "OVERPRICED" is a stupid argument. He sipmply hasn't factored in the "human cost", in regards to lost lives whenever humans engage in war. My father was national director of the VA and I am ex-Army. My point is, what price is "too much ", what speed is "too fast", if it makes a potential enemy not initiate a conflict,because you have more firepower. The good doctor needs to calculate how much the Raptor will SAVE in human lives saved in battle, as well as conflicts NOT FOUGHT. When you factor THAT savings into the equation, the Raptor is prtty damn cost-effective. Any fighting man or woman will tell you - it's better to "have it and not NEED it, than to NEED it and not HAVE IT!"

If you look closely at the list you will notice that only 2 of the planes on it ever flew from aircraft carriers. Planes like the Zero, the Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair all could included on a top ten greatest list. Each made a major contribution to aircraft development. Like the FW-190, the Zero caused other countries to try to build planes to beat them. The Hellcat and Corsair were developed specifically to counter the Zero.

The claim for the Mig 15 to be the equal of the F-86 is ridiculous. The F-86 had an 8 to 1 kill ratio against the Mig. Somehow that does not strike me as being equal.

I also think the F-16 belongs on the list. Like the F-15, the Falcon has an outstanding combat record.

In terms of their impact on world events, the Eagle and Falcon have to be rated at the top of the list. Those aircraft caused Russia to spend enormous ammounts of money and resources it could not afford to spend trying to build aircraft that could stand up to them in battle. As such they contributed more than any other fighter on the list to change the world we live in.

I think that those Fighters are completely incorrect, 100% incorrect!

1.Su-47 Berkut
2.Su-37 Terminator
3.Mig-29 OVT (Mig-35)
4.Su-27 Flanker
5.Mig-21 Fishbed
6.P-51D
7.F-22 Raptor
8.Eurofighter Typhoon
9.Spitfire
10.F-15

8 to 1 kill ratio ?... That is questionable informtiln - it depends what is a source of information. If you interview Russian pilots the score will be quite the oposit.

I also saw that show, and the one missing in the first post is the AV-8B and British Harrier, which is an attack aircraft, not a fighter, and should not have made the list. There have been a number of excellent fighters throughout history that deserved the list, but it is called the Top Ten. The F4U and F6F definitely deserved to make the list, as did the A6M Reisen (Zeke or Zero). The list should be limited to aircraft/equipment that has been tested in combat, though, which the F-22 Raptor would have had limited oppurtunities at best. Some other fighters that should have made the list (in my opinion):

P-40 Warhawk family of aircraft: This aricraft, made famous by the American Volunteer Group, AVG, knicknamed the Flying Tigers, led by Claire Chenault, showed what an inferior aircraft could do with the right tactics. By using defensive pursuit, 100 (roughly) P-40 warhawks amassed a nearly 10:1 kill ration against the japnese in the late 30's. Also, this aircraft flew under the flags of nearly 30 nations, with about 12000 being produced during the course of the war.

P-39 Airacobra: while the soviet union developed some impressive aircraft later in the war (i.e. the Yak-9, Il-2), the P-39, under the lend-lease act, saved their hides in the early days of the war. Later the P-63 was developed, and improved upon the P-39, and was developed into a very effective interceptor.

Messerschmidt Me-110 Zerstroyer: This was a very versatile aircraft. While not capable to keep up with front line, dedicated fighter aircraft, is was large enough to be effective as a light bomber, and could hold its own in the hands of a capable pilot in a dogfight. Because it had a large fuselage, and already carried a two-man crew, adding a radar was not a huge ordeal, and it became a very effective night-fighter.

P-38 Lightning: HOW could this one have been left off the list. Best known for the mission that killed Japanese Adm Yamamoto, in which they had to fly about four hours to intercept the G4M Betty he was flying in, only the P-38 was capable of doing this. It was heavily armed, easily modified, and with two engines, it could carry a signifigant payload. A civilian named Charles Lindburgh (acting as an aviation consultant to the Army) made ace in this aircraft, although this was kept quite for political reasons. The range of the P-38 allowed it to fly missions in excess of 14 hours, allowing it to escort bombers deep into Japanese territory.

The list could truly go on and on, but these are some of my picks.

[quote]"Doctor" Aryeh Nusbacher is a pompus idiot who has probably NEVER servered a day in uniform.[/quote]
Actually, Sparky, I served with Aryeh (before he completed his PhD - which stands for "Doctorate", since you used quotation marks around his title Doctor I presumed you are unfamiliar with higher education ...)

Oh, P.S. - he's not pompous, but you are certainly adept at the usage of "ad hominum" as well as the "straw man" tactics of shoddy debate.

[quote]... To say that the F/A-22 rAPTOR IS "OVERPRICED" is a stupid argument. He sipmply hasn't factored in the "human cost", in regards to lost lives whenever humans engage in war. ...[/quote]
So, what's your point, Sparky?

[quote]... My father was national director of the VA and I am ex-Army. ...[/quote]
Oh, let me guess - you're ex-Army because of ... "Up or Out"?

[quote]... My point is, what price is "too much ", what speed is "too fast", if it makes a potential enemy not initiate a conflict,because you have more firepower. The good doctor needs to calculate how much the Raptor will SAVE in human lives saved in battle, as well as conflicts NOT FOUGHT. When you factor THAT savings into the equation, the Raptor is prtty damn cost-effective. ...[/quote]
Wow - you really thought you had a point to make, didn't you?

[quote]... Any fighting man or woman will tell you - it's better to "have it and not NEED it, than to NEED it and not HAVE IT!"[/quote]
Sparky - that's a "straw man" argument, and I'd beg to differ: In some circles, REAL fighting men will tell you they don't want too much kit (since they have to hump/yomp with it on their back) ... and, some famous guy once said something to the effect that "the 80% solution, effectively executed in a timely manner, is better than a too late 100% solution" ... but I'm kinda thinkin' y'all slept through that lecture at West Point ... ?

[quote]renaman: You are living proof it's unfortunate there's no entrance exam to signing up and providing commentary seemingly written in colouring crayons ... but hopefully you can find a grownup to explain what I've just said to you.[/quote]

oh come on the best plane would have been the CF-105 Arrow everybody knows it that's why the US destroyed it and stole the people who made it from Canada to make a Space Shuttle.

Despite the crazy hair, Dr.Nusbacher is one of the most knowledgable military analysts in the world-

I agree the raptor's unit price is high, but it has achieved 100-1(or more) kill ratios against USAF F-15s and F-18s. A single squadron could bring down a good percentage of the PLAAF's fleet of flankers.

Dr. Nusbacher is knowlegable and a good historian but i am still creeped out by the operation that changed aryeh to lennette. he would not make a pretty woman. and the f-22 is a very good fighter like a1rao said.

mig 15, pound for pound WAS EQUAL to F-86.

The problem with korea is that Sabres were flown by american pilots who already had WW2 experience behind their belts.

Most mig 15s were flown by green chinese and korean rookies.

When it came to russian aces - their kill scores against F-86 sabres were an equal to their american ace opposites.

http://www.acepilots.com/russian/rus_aces.html

The mig-15 was superior to the Sabre in climb rate and was a bit faster.The Mig-15 also had a more powerful cannon armament.

The Sabre could turn better and had better gun sights. The gun tracking system allowed the .50 caliber armed sabre an advantage when dog fighting.

After ww2, the British stupidly gave the Russians the NENE powerplant, which allowed for the rapid development of the mig-15.

Against NK/chinese pilots, the Americans achieved 10-1 or 15-1 kill ratios. Not much is known about Russian pilots as it was veiled in secrecy. In one encounter, a soviet pilot was shot down and bailed out into the ocean. His wingman came in low and strafed the downed pilot as he was bobbing around the sea-

renaman is absolutely correct he's an idiot. Calling the F86 a "happy accident" and denigrating anything American while elevating the Sopwith camel as a better fighter then the F/A 22. This is a mindless fool that is so obviously out of his league as to make people turn of the channel whenever he spouts off. "The KIng"

I don't know I can see Aryeh in a dress, talking about things he knows nothing about for instants military aviation. Perhaps Aryeh or is is Lenette now is accustomed to wearing a dress over his knickers. "the King"

i don't think you should take phrase 'happy accident' literally. He probably was trying to say that while designers wanted to achieve one objective while constructing the aircraft, they managed to kill two birds with one stone by getting aerodynamics to fit both respected profiles

Please avoid getting insulting or making outlandish statements. This is a peaceful forum for discussion and I would like to keep it that way.
mod_ben

To talk about platforms in the absence of tactics is moronic in the extreme but first let me address some basic issues:

1. The F-22 is not a fighter. Because it doesn't have to be. It is a long range, stealthy, sniping and MFFC coordinator platform with superior secondary interdiction capabilities thrown in. Beyond this, the tactics by which it is GSTF employed will be dictated largely by region as much as opponent and as a Raptor has yet to enter it's first active combat TO, so too is it pointless qualifying it based on exercises whose operational conditions are most assuredly constrained as much as a slanted to a fixed set of engagement rules.
2. The Harrier.
An airframe without a radar or a radar missile for much of it's life but with a wingloading in in excess of 100lbs/sqft. Along with a poor inlet/fan combination (no supersonic shock protection) and a gerbil driven core, the resulting 'floats like a bumblebee' system could not fight well above about 17,000ft or in-weather for most of it's career. Period. This means that it is inept in the one arena where (by the 60s and despite all the hype about missile shortcomings) 'fighter performance' requirements were baselined to 20,000ft and Mach 1 or beyond.
3. The Sopwith Camel
Like all WWI aircraft with the possible exception of the Se5a it was engineered for exactly the wrong kind of warfare. As an angles platform in an era where an energy airframe would have been dominant, it did not differentiate pilot skill so much as require a dogfight condition from which outcomes were largely random. Add to this a real (F-104 like) lack of tolerance for fools and innocents and you have a guaranteed _non war winner_, no matter what individual aces did to increase their personal tallies.
4. Me-262.
Decent platform but one whose development was lazed along until it was too late. The Jumo-004s installation's extreme lack of tolerance for uncoordinated turns and 'unknown' transonic behaviors made it difficult to use in anything but long, straight, gun and rocket runs for which there were several fighters available that could catch it. Along with equally poor transient throttle performance in the pattern and low TAC endurance plus typically horrific trim and balance issues in the rudder and elevators (resulting in most jets delivered being unacceptable without massive reworking of effected flight controls), this made the jet utterly inept in the traditional fighter vs. fighter mission and questionable as a bomber killer. Truth be told, even as early as 1943, the only weapons system which could have effectively saved the Germans were the burgeoning surface to air missile projects and then only because they effectively took the bus platform out of the loop to maximize the number of intercepts that actually /reached/ terminal engagement. I would choose a developed Ta-152 or FW-190D12/15 over the 262 as having more maneageable performance and particularly high altitude superiorities over the Allied equivalent piston platforms.
5. The Spitfire.
Nice thoroughbred to have around during BOB but the saying that the Hurricane downed 2 of every 3 is still telling. As is the certainty that a simple _lack of fuel_ (a rear fuselage tank and expanded wing carriage would not become standard until the Mk.18 of 1945-46) meant that it would never serve as anything but a glorified PDI throughout the war. It is worthy of note that, as an ideal angles platform, it always had slow roll and especially loaded roll reversal capabilities while the the BOB airframe lacked fuel injection as well as a competent high altitude turbo to get it over the Me-109s which never really lost the hun-in-sun advantage. Even the later Mk.IX whose Series 60 engine conveyed some energy performance in the plust-20K realm could be taken _in the heart of it's envelope_ by nothing more than a P-47 with an operating methanol water system and paddle prop. With ease and from a neutral start. Had Supermarine blown up the airframe by about 1.5 and fitted it with wide track gear and the Griffon engine from the start (i.e. Spiteful) instead of going with the Hawker product, they might have had something. As is, the Spitfire is more about tradition than capability and frankly _that tradition lost out_ in all the key periods when it was faced by a decisively matched opponent.
6. MiG-15 and F-86.
Tactics matter when both airframes are operating near the limits of variant performance and tactics have basically been static and deficient based on a 'leader-wingman' pairing since WWI. This was never more true than with the skies over Korea where starting out at 45-50K meant that all fights ramped down and all opponents ended up broken apart. That said, the MiG-15, like all Soviet Gen-1 jets, had terrible transonic reversal and flutter problems with it's control surfaces while even the F-86A was never anything less than a tank on rails in it's smooth acceptance of Mach number. Add the radar gunsight and superior fighter:fighter weaponry (yes, even accounting for stressed skinning, the .50 is better than the 23/37mm combo) and there was never any real comparison. The big deal is fighting the MiGs in China where you can hit them at their airbases with a bit of throttle margin instead of maxed out 'looking up' over MiG Alley. Of course that's the part of the war we refuse to talk about.
7. F-4
My favorite pick for best fighter of all time, though I am decidedly biased. This was the first platform where the study of EM performance diagrams started to put us definitively out ahead of pure angles (yank 'n' bank to best corner for altitude) warfare and it also came with serious advantages in gas, multi-count missile shots and secondary A2G and EW so that you didn't sacrifice penetration performance or total raid size for 'pure fighter' isolated force elements. Another jet that did not perform well above 20K, it at least had the gas, the radar lookup and the weapons systems to make the most of supersprint tactics when called on to do so. Throughout the 70s and most of the 80s, it is equally worth noting that it was the F-4D/E which were the core of our 'smart bomb' delivery force, not the Teen jets and certainly not the F-111. Add in two crew coordination capabilities as the first acknowledgement that jet speeds had taken the fight completely beyond the (task saturation) ability of a single warrior to integrate the big picture and you have a classic for the ages. There is no better compliment than to admit that an F-4E with AMRAAM will beat an F-15 with Sparrow.
8. F-15.
Take away all the multirole capabilities (as pylon count) which means you can never fly more than one mission. Throw in the wrong choice for a single-knight warfare cockpit system, and massively bloat the airframe visual and radar signature to take it into Foxbat Country (where Hawk and Patriot have always ridden herd on the poor Foxbat I might add) and you have the F-4 remade, badly. Low wingloading and high specific thrust in VMax are all that really set this aircraft apart from the crowd in that it played more or less the same fight at 25K as it did at 15 which is something that no other jet can advertise. Today we would call it an abysmal failure of aeronautical role specific design but history has judged it's performance in the light of it's Eastern (MiG-23/25) predecessors as indeed every 'leap frog' alternation between East and West has done since the Cold War began.
9. P-51D.
A sadly overrated airframe that won by virtue of a single set of capabilities which, officially, had nothing to do with it's combat performance. The laminar flow inner panels, combined with the advanced turbo system and the large rear fuselage tank (which effectively made the 'Stang unfightable until empty) simply let it go places to find fights which no other platform, possibly excepting the Lightning and Corsair could have matched. The P-47 was infinitely better at altitude with major edges in speed and roll as well as loaded turn and climb/dive accelerations. The later P-38s could outroll the aircraft at any altitude and outaccelerate any other airframe before the jets in a level or climbing condition while possessed of a superior edge in firepower. The F4U was crippled by manual engine and trim controls as well as 'Navyness' but was at least as competent in radius with two tanks and could carry more ordnance in the A2G mission with a superior degree of survivability to any other airframe of the war. Yet the Mustang is unfortunately acknowledged as another sleek sportscar of a fighter with minimal claim to fame beyond the fact that 'it was there' in a cheap and easy to produce as much as wide-ranging manner.
10. A6M Zero.
(I think this is the missing one, I don't remember for sure). An aircraft which could have won the war in the first six months but was forever after doomed to playing a numbers game in which, it's known vulnerabilities (lack of speed, poor gun platform above 300mph, poor maneuvering platform above 350, overwhelming weakness to incendiary fire) were actually secondary to one principal flaw: Failure to Multirole. Had the Zero been a viable replacement for the Val alone, it could have turned the tide at either Coral Sea or Midway as a swing platform in allowing the aircraft stiffen the FORCAP missions without blinking an eye and a failure to accomodate this as a function of airwing counts is what principally destroyed the Japanese CVA force. The U.S. had similar vulnerabilities if not worse (due to a plethora of on-entry obsolescent designs) but they also had carriers with 90 aircraft airwings and the 120 aircraft Essex class on the way. Added to the various smaller platforms which served both directly and as ready attrition reserves, and you have a dominant capability to project force without sacrificing fleet defense mission. Wars are won by sortie count and in this, the Zero could never compete as all the Grumman aircraft and later the Vought F4U did in defining the offensive multirole platform metric which increasingly favored fighter-heavy deckloads as the war wound on.

ARGUMENT:
You will note here that I am largely critical of every choice shown, mostly because I apply a lot narrower definition of 'fighter' (the one which the DOD in fact uses) and I also tend to look at trends to see which fighter drove what countermeasure as well as what the _actual_ dominance was vs. the class of machine being faced at the time rather than some optimized conditional matrix that would put say MiG-23MF against F-4E in a 'fair fight'.

In this, I can only again repeat: WWI was a battle of novices who first and foremost put insufficient weight on the value of combat personnel recovery (as a function of the parachute) and descended from there in making every conceivable wrong choice regarding the specific performance emphasis of angles warfare their aircraft vs. the achievable energy capabilities available with the period technologies. As such, the only aircraft which stand out from this period are the Fokker Eindecker and the DVIII, both for what they attempted to start out with but were subsequently ignored and/or managed to arrive at, but only too late to achieve any real result in the conflict. The Great War is then a wash of egos and imperialist dreams drowning in the blood of a ground war indecisively enabled or aided by air combat of any kind.

OTOH, WWII showed massive improvements in the tactical if not strategic understanding of the applications of air warfare theory and is defined by basically three periods. The early war period of limited offensive interdiction, the mid war period of extended range and often naval influenced battles and the late war period which was a time of impressive transitional technologies but nearly deflated threat OOB potentials.

As such, the best fighter of the early war period would have to be the Me-109. For all it's weakness' the Augsberg Eagle brought to the fight an established design, already influenced by two generations (A/B and C/D) of Spanish fighting and with key advantages in it's armament, engine and wing surfaces (though the latter would remain poorly exploited throughout the war). Properly flown (which is to say within their Q limits), a Schwarm or Ketten of 109E4s could defeat any other airframe of the period, including the Japanese 'superfighter', at virtually any level and that is saying something. Much of the Spitfire design is a direct response to both shortcomings and strengths of the 109 and it must be noted that -for it's role- as an extremely limited air superiority platform, the Me-109F2 was still probably the best fighter aircraft in the world, a year after BoB in summer 1941 (Brown _Duels In The Sky_).

Though in fact an artifact of transition in late 1941, midwar, I would equally choose the FW-190A as the next step up which would drive subsequent efforts by Allied technologists to match it. In the Wurger, you had an aircraft which represented the proper response (all energy) to the Spitfire of the time in a remarkably well packaged radial design (half the weight of the P-47 and close to the spec of the Zero) as a never before tried success story by German industry. It included such innovations as a very heavy cannon armament (more than anything the source of the 'Focke Wulf Scourge' among Spitfire pilots who were taking a lot of first-burst kills without account or explanation from survivors) and what amounts to the first 'all electric' aircraft systems design that largely simplified the basic layout of the aircraft design while taking pilot housekeeping out of the combat loop, especialy critical in the rough and tumble combat of The East. A close period competitor is the Hellcat but for absolute performance, the F6F could not win, dominantly, in Europe of 1942-43 while the FW-190 could (theoretically) beat the Hellcat in the Pacific, almost a year after it's own initial service debut. Range, ever a German shortcoming, remained a problem and altitude performance would eventually cripple the airframe but the Focke Wulf proved itself infinitely more adaptable to a variety of roles from Zerstorer to Schlact that the 109 could never have managed alone and indeed proved the Umbau/Rustsatzen principle of variable armament/performance package optimization of basic variants which we now consider derigeur as model and block variants.

Continuing development through multiple engine series continued to keep the airframe competitive below 20,000ft throughout the war and only the RLM failure to close down Willy Messerschmitt's monoply on the DB-605 prevented an FW-190C from becoming the long-nose Focke Wulf which faced the P-51 in early rather than late 1944.

Latewar, matters are a tie. The Corsair vastly exceeded the F6F in all critical areas of performance and indeed was the only Allied naval fighter which could meet the latewar Hayate and George on a speed advantaged BnZ terms. Yet it was the P-47M which was the sole airframe fit to chase down 262s at high level where it's performance remained unmatched by any other piston fighter of the war except perhaps that of the troubled Ta-152. The similar N finally beat the Jugs range problems with a redesigned wet wing and massive external tankage. And the TBolt was also hands down the superior CAS/BAI platform of ETO. This serving to fulfill the types enduring reputation as a 'wanna make ace, fly Ponies, wanna make base, fly Jugs' war winner for the discriminating fighter pilot who saw less and less of the Luftwaffe after August 1944 and more and more flak.

Something which is important to consider when you realize the descent from optimum performance in the Luftwaffe RVD effort really began in about 2 months BEFORE Schweinfurt in October 1943 while the U.S. deliberately chose to bog itself in the Italian penisula for another 10 months rather than speed along the Continental Invasion that Stalin had asked for that year. Had we been flying CAS in France during the height of the Kursk and Kharkov offensive, the P-51B/C/D would not even have been available for air superiority but the P-47C/D would have still have had a 20-30mph speed advantage over the German equivalents.

In the immediate post-war period, the choices are both easier and more obscure. The MiG-15 was a bricklayer's jet that could barely handle the B-36 threat it was designed to face and was no match, high or low, fast or slow, with particularly the later 6-3 and J47 upgrade Sabers. The jet which was (and actually met the F-86, albeit under rather disadvantaged conditions over Pakistan) was the Hawker Hunter.

Well harmonized and a delight to fly, it's thick wing should have kept it from consideration in comparison with the higher CM advantaged Saber but the superior thrust of the Avon (nearly double that of the original J47), the 4 30mm cannons and the number of wing hardpoints available for future stores all added up to in fact make this jet a superior energy AND angles ship, when properly employed. With better range and multirole flex as a side benefit which the Saber did not and never would match (with 2 1,000lb bombs and no wing tanks, the combat radius of the F-86 dropped to about 75nm).

Opposite this airframe, the MiG-17 and MiG-19 are more appropriately set as generational if not timeline equivalents in the later 50s while the U.S. F-100 lags sadly far behind as a genuinely supersonic platform without the area rule, fuel or radar necessary to exploit it. The MiG-17 gave the MiG-15 the burner reenergization and fineness ratio tuning it needed to fight at altitude and while the early Farmer was a bit of a pig in a poke, the later MiG-19 models doubled that thrust again to carry the Soviet's first multishot missile weapons system which would later evolve from the admittedly primitive Alkali to the superior Atoll and Sidewinder.

Indeed, my next pick takes us into the 1960s where the natural pairoff are the MiG-21 and Mirage III. Both jets inherently superior to anything that came before with double sonic performance and the first attempt at radar intercept packages all wrapped up in a tight package that remelded the concepts of 'night all weather' sophistication with dayfighter envelope (and cost) values. There were other jets (the Ford, the 104 and the Draken among them) which came close but none were a real match for the overall handling qualities and sheer innovation that these two brought _to combat_ in a basically simple design.

The MiG-21F was admittedly the weakest of the line but came with the best all round vision and integral guns which in many ways made it ideal for the ME and SWA (CAVU) fights it would first meet the Dassault jet in. Similarly, the latter's Mirage IIIC was far from being the optimized weapons and fuel driven platform that the later IIIE and variants would become but it's sheer delightful handling was unmatched and so long as you obeyed the hard rules set by the gutless ATAR (one turn only and never for more than 40-50`), it was largely unbeatable thanks to a very low drag quotient and traditional delta instaneous lift.

The next comparitive series has to be dominated by the F-4. Properly flown, it had no match but for much later models (MF and Bis) of the MiG-21 and like the FW-190, it's basic qualities of adaptability, hard hitting firepower and sheer combat persistence as a function of burner time with over 19,000lbs of fuel available allowed it a mission flex that would recognized and expanded upon through several continuing detail upgrades to the basic design. For myself, the initial lack of a gun is less important than the lack of credible optronic or radar based ID system (both of which would later be supplied) to help cue the fight, front quarter, before going to a turning fight with the Navy AIM-Sidewinder. Despite the hype, gun combat at speeds in excess of 800fps is generally a matter of luck and positioning behind someone stupid enough to slow down your shot. Missiles were and will remain the dominant weapons system until lasers step to the fore.

Though never really allowed to compete with the F-X wonderjet as a Foxbat killer (AIM-97 would have done the trick, handily) the Phantom platform typified the ideal of the multirole in a single airframe as well as dedicated (recce and SEAD) variants that bought back sorties from an overspecialized Airforce/Navy nuclear warfighter posture and gave us the ability to go deep _with a fighter platform_, as a self escorting, common-bar, performance level. Something which had never really, doctrinally, been considered before in the design of various 'escort vs. intercept' optimized fighter classes. This as much as anything allowed the mighty rhino to be where it needed to, in the roles that the mission demanded, when necessary and so staved off defeat in SEA for a good 3 more years than would otherwise have been the case in 1966 Rolling Thunder days.
It should be further be noted that while the MiG-23 and MiG-25 are remarkable absolute performance jets, they remain in the _total weapons system_ performance class of the F-4 which is to say handicapped by sensors and computing from being truly (aspect and rangegate/clutter) able to exploit their physical dominance by putting multiple ordnance missions ontarget. Perhaps the best accolade: a well handled late model F-4S will beat an early model F-14, hands down, from visual to transmerge and even (vectored on) some BVR.

The 80s and beyond are an incredibly hard timeframe to characterize, simply because the generational overlap becomes extreme and the attempt to justify improvements 'by halves' of rebaselined generational labels is somewhat overwhelming.

The F-16 was an incredibly poor series of 'sportscars for the fighter pilot' design choices based on wildly overenumerated if not valued visual ACM fight conditions of SEA, similar in many ways to the F-104 but saved by advanced technology from that systems complete failure as a weapons platform, the F-16, along with the A-10, would have nonetheless have certainly cost us a conventional war in mucky, missile-saturated, Europe and exercised a negative influence of further fighter development due to nothing more than the desire to 'miniaturize everything' in recognition of it's inherent shortcomings as a fighter platform. Seek Talk, AMRAAM, LANTIRN, ASPJ, Maverick-D, all owe their developmental specifications if not impulse to the need to work on this diminuitive and largely helpless (in the A-model) aircraft.
Indeed, the refusal to apply the same performance norms to existing scales of capability in an F-15 AAM specifically doomed any attempt to control European skies from CNA or Bitburg doomed to failure. The Eagle itself remains an airframe compromised by a known fraudulent cross-interpretation of the MiG-25 performance envelope with that of the Tu-123 Jastreb drone (which was, in any case, a strictly _recce_ based system) and was not itself a combat ready platform before the F-15C model of 1984 finally redressed some serious structural, fuel and electronics issues with the radar and ICMS amongst many other (hangar queen) reliability and availabili