Article 11218 of rec.aviation.military:
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From: jfb@usgp1.ih.att.com (Joe Baugher)
Subject: New Fighter Series--McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle (1 of 26)
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Summary: Initial development history
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Date: Sun, 22 Jan 1995 02:29:08 GMT
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The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle is one of the world's most formidable 
interceptor fighters.  Although largely designed in the late 1960s and 
early 1970s, it still remains the primary air-superiority fighter 
serving with the USAF, and will remain so for the rest of this 
century.  In service with the United States, Israeli, and Saudi 
Arabian air forces, the Eagle has scored an impressive number of 
air-to-air kills, perhaps approaching 100, with NO air-to-air losses.  

The McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle has its origin back in the mid-1960s, 
when the US aircraft industry was invited to study US Air Force 
requirements for an advanced tactical fighter that would replace the 
F-4 Phantom as the primary fighter aircraft in service with the USAF.  
Such an aircraft needed to be capable of establishing air superiority 
against any projected threats in the post-1975 period.  Without 
compromising the primary air-to-air combat role, the aircraft was to 
be capable of performing a secondary air-to-ground mission.  

Throughout much of the Vietnam War, the primary fighter in service 
with the USAF was the McDonnell F-4 Phantom, a large, twin-engined, 
two-seat aircraft.  The Phantom had originally been designed back in 
the 1950s to Navy requirements for a two-seat multi-role fighter, 
intended to destroy enemy aircraft at beyond-visual-range (BVR), using 
a powerful fire control radar to detect threats and to direct Sparrow 
semi-active radar guided missiles against them.  No cannon was 
provided, since the received wisdom of the late 1950s was that the 
internal gun was an obsolete holdover from the pre-missile age.  
However, the North Vietnamese air force was equipped with MiG-17s and 
MiG-21s, small, relatively unsophisticated aircraft designed for 
close-in dogfighting.  In 1965-68, the kill-ratio in air battles 
against the North Vietnamese Air Force was only 1.5 to one, much 
poorer results that those obtained in Korea by the F-86 Sabre against 
the MiG-15.  One of the reasons for this rather poor record was the 
rather restrictive rules of engagement over North Vietnam, which 
required a close-in positive identification of the enemy before 
missiles could be fired, negating the advantage of the Phantom's 
powerful radar and long-range Sparrow missiles.  In a close-in knife 
fight against MiG-17s and MiG-21s, the Phantom was considerably less 
maneuverable and was at a relative disadvantage in these types of 
encounters.  Another reason was the fact that most USAF pilots had 
never been trained for air-to-air combat, and did not know how to 
exploit the strengths of their own aircraft against the weaknesses of 
the enemy's planes.  

As a result of the experience over North Vietnam, the Air Force 
concluded that they had better pay more attention to the possibility 
of close-in air-to-air fighting in the design of their future fighter 
aircraft, and not simply rely on superior radars and long-range 
missiles to ensure victory.  At first, the Air Force was rather 
uncertain of just what kind of aircraft they wanted to replace the 
Phantom, and their initial requests for proposals were rather vague 
and tentative, relying more on the industry telling them what they 
should be buying rather than issuing any specific requirements.  

On October 6, 1965, the Air Force issued Qualitative Operational 
Requirement (QOR) 65-14F, which defined what later came to be known as 
the F-X (Fighter-Experimental) project.  A Request For Proposals (RFP) 
was issued to the industry on December 8, 1965.  The Air Force 
initially pictured the F-X as being a close-support multirole aircraft 
powered by a pair of advanced turbofan engines and equipped with 
variable-geometry wings.  Boeing, Lockheed, North American, Grumman, 
and McDonnell all wanted a piece of the action and got to work on 
initial concept studies.  

After looking over the initial concept studies, in March of 1966 the 
USAF issued Concept Formulation Study (CFS) contracts for these 
requirements to three manufacturers--Boeing, Lockheed, and North 
American.  Although Grumman and McDonnell had not been awarded any Air 
Force contracts, they nevertheless continued to fund their own studies 
on the same requirements.  

However, none of the submitted designs were considered any further by 
the Air Force, mainly because the aerodynamic configurations and the 
bypass ration of the turbofans were considered inadequate.  Nothing 
was ordered by the Air Force, and work on the F-X proceed at only a 
slow pace from mid-1966 to the autumn of 1967.  On April 28, 1967, 
McDonnell merged with the Douglas Aircraft Corporation, becoming 
McDonnell Douglas.  However, all of the work on the company's F-X 
proposal continued to be carried out at the St Louis facility.  

In July of 1967, the Soviet Union unveiled a new generation of combat 
aircraft at an airfield at Domodedovo near Moscow.  Among these was 
the Mikoyan MiG-25 Foxbat, a twin-engined, twin-tailed fighter capable 
of a Mach 2.8 performance.  The capabilities of the Foxbat 
sufficiently alarmed Air Force officials that work on the F-X was 
assigned a higher priority, and in August of 1967, a second Request 
for Proposals for a CFS of the F-X was issued.  This time, the Air 
Force had a clearer idea of what they wanted.  The general emphasis 
this time was to be on a fighter rather than on ground support.  The 
conception of the FX as being a 60,000-pound variable-geometry 
multirole aircraft was abandoned in favor of a 40,000-pound fixed-wing 
dedicated fighter.  

Grumman, Lockheed, North American Rockwell, the Republic Division of 
Fairchild Hiller, General Dynamics and McDonnell Douglas all submitted 
proposals for the CFS.  In December of 1967, both General Dynamics and 
McDonnell Douglas were given contracts for a second CFS, with 
Fairchild-Republic, Grumman, Lockheed, and North American Rockwell 
having to proceed at their own expense.  

During this period, the industry vacillated between considering a 
large, twin-engined aircraft with advanced radar and long-range 
missiles and a small, MiG-21-sized, single-engined aircraft with 
minimal electronics systems but with an emphasis on maximum 
performance and high maneuverability.  However, guided by the Air 
Force's unhappy experience with the Lockheed F-104A Starfighter, a 
single-engined high-performance aircraft with minimal electronic 
systems which the USAF had found that it did not need, the 
twin-engined, advanced electronics option seemed more attractive.  

This second CFS was completed in May of 1968, and in early September 
the FX Concept Development was authorized.  Requests for Proposals for 
the Project Definition Phase (PDP) were requested from eight different 
manufacturers on September 30, 1968.  These companies were McDonnell 
Douglas, Boeing, Fairchild-Republic, General Dynamics, Grumman, 
Lockheed, Ling-Temco-Vought, and North American Rockwell.  This time, 
the RFP was much more specific.  It specified that the new fighter 
should have low wing loading with buffet-free performance at Mach 0.9, 
a high thrust-to-weight ratio, long-range pulse-Doppler radar with 
look-down/shoot-down capability, a ferry range sufficient to permit 
deployment to Europe without midair refuelling, and a maximum speed of 
Mach 2.5.  A twin-engine format was preferred because of its higher 
reliability.  The RFP also specified that a one-pilot cockpit was to 
be used, the development of more advanced computer systems, radar and 
electronics being thought to make the radar intercept officer 
unnecessary.  The gross weight was not to exceed 40,000 pounds.  The 
aircraft was to superior in air combat to any present or projected 
Soviet fighters, both in close-in visual and in beyond-visual-range 
air-to-air combat.  

PDP contracts were awarded to Fairchild-Republic, McDonnell Douglas, 
and North American Rockwell on December 30, 1968.  The North American 
Rockwell and Fairchild-Republic proposals both had single tail fins.  
The Fairchild-Republic proposal had its engines hanging out from the 
fuselage underneath a blended lift surface.  The McDonnell Douglas 
proposal was a large, single-seat aircraft with twin-fins and a pair 
of turbofan engins.  

By now, the FX was known as the F-15, and all three contenders were 
hard at work.  

On December 23, 1969, the McDonnell Douglas proposal was named the 
winner of the contest, and the company was authorized to proceed with 
the design and development phase, to build and test twenty Full Scale 
Development (FSD) aircraft, and to manufacture 107 single-seat F-15s 
and two-seat TF-15s.  

Principal engineering work on the F-15 was overseen by George Graff, 
who was head of the design team.  Program manager Don Malvern 
organized the effort and moved it forward.  Very early on, the 
McDonnell Douglas team rejected the idea of using a variable-geometry 
wing as being too complex, too heavy, and too expensive.  The team 
selected instead a large-area, fixed-geometry wing with 45 degree 
sweep at the leading edge.  The use of advanced avionics and 
electronics made it possible to use the single-seat configuration 
favored by the Air Force.  The engines were to be a pair of Pratt & 
Whitney afterburning turbofans fed by lateral intakes.  Armament was 
to consist of four AIM-7 Sparrow semi-active radar homing missiles 
mounted on the lower corners of the fuselage and four AIM-9 Sidewinder 
infrared-homing air-to-air missiles carried on wing stations.  A 20-mm 
M61A1 cannon cannon was to be installed in the starboard wing leading 
edge.  Provision was incorporated for the carrying of three 610-gallon 
drop tanks or up to 9000 pounds of air-to-ground stores, although the 
air-to-ground role was only secondary for the F-15.  

The F-15 was ordered "off the drawing board", and there was to be no 
prototype as such and no competitive flyoff against other 
manufacturer's aircraft.  This raised quite a bit of controversy, many 
people in the press fearing another cost overrun debacle.  However, in 
response to criticism from Congress and the press over cost overruns 
and lengthy delays that had occurred in both the C-5A Galaxy and F-111 
programs, the USAF had introduced a set of demonstration milestones 
which the contractor had to meet before the next stage of funding 
could be issued.  For the F-15 project, the milestones began with the 
preliminary design review which was to be held by September 1970, and 
ended with a requirement that the first aircraft were to be delivered 
for test to the Air Force in November of 1974.  

Sources

   McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Since 1920, Volume II, Rene J.
   Francillon, Naval Institute Press, 1990.

   Combat Aircraft F-15, Michael J. Gething and Paul Crickmore,
   Crescent Books, 1992.
   
   The American Fighter, Enzo Angelucci and Peter Bowers, 
   Orion, 1987.

   The World's Great Interceptor Aircraft, Gallery Books, 1989. 

   F-15 Eagle, Robert F. Dorr, World Airpower Journal, Volume 9,
   Summer 1992.


Joe Baugher			  **************************************
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