Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site rabbit.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!alice!rabbit!wolit From: wolit@rabbit.UUCP (Jan Wolitzky) Newsgroups: net.aviation Subject: Re: Sidewinder vs. 172 Message-ID: <3304@rabbit.UUCP> Date: Wed, 28-Nov-84 09:53:02 EST Article-I.D.: rabbit.3304 Posted: Wed Nov 28 09:53:02 1984 Date-Received: Thu, 29-Nov-84 03:17:53 EST Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill Lines: 27 If IR-guided missiles were all you had to worry about, I'd guess you'd be pretty safe. Just to be sure, why not bring along a couple of highway flares, and drop them out the window occasionally, to spoof any that do lock onto your exhaust pipe. Unfortunately, you'd also have to contend with 20mm cannon fire, which is harder to trick... For what it's worth, the awful film "The Final Countdown" a few years ago showed an F-14 downing a WWII-vintage Misubishi Zero with a Sidewinder. It was incredible fiction, of course, but the producers got so much cooperation from the US Navy -- it was the most unsubtle recruiting propaganda I've ever seen -- that they probably checked to make sure it was technically accurate. Incidentally, there is also a *NORTH* American country that has plans to use the P-51. (No pun intended -- the plane was originally manufactured by North American Aviation.) Piper Aircraft Co. is trying to sell the idea of a turboprop-powered P-51 to the USAF as a close-support plane. They call it the "Enforcer," but I don't think anyone is taking the idea too seriously -- for one thing, P-51 airframes are incredibly rare, and I would imagine that setting up the tooling to manufacture new one would be too expensive to be competitive with currently-manufactured foreign planes of this type. -- Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ; (201) 582-2998