Hornet: Best Dogfighter? | Tug Wilson (Clip) 

I know a couple retired F-18 pilots, and they both said the same exact thing. The F-18 has superb nose pointing ability. When fighting against the F-16 the strategy is always slow down the fight, which is where the F-18 excels.

Once when flying backseat in the F-15E we were fighting a Hornet from a 9000 foot offensive BFM setup. At fights on I watched the Hornet going offensive while I was thinking, “Oh this is going to hurt.” By the time the thought was done he was gunning us. 😮

Never forget seeing those square cornered loops the F18 could perform for the first time.

Awesome. I'll take his word for it. It's certainly an awesome looking plane.

Definitely underrated in my opinion such a strong fighter stood the test of time already

Great insights!

Great Video dude!!!

Brilliant!

I been educated today! Great clip!!

The Green Mountain Boys used to come up and play with their F16s against the Hornets in Canada. I remember that the Hornets had their hands full when fighting the F16s. The Hornet served Canada well, being multi role and tough. Kudos to the techs servicing and fixing them, especially in the Northern FOLs.

There is a video of a Canadian F/A-18 in 1988 at the Toronto CNE doing a full 360 degree turn in slightly under 18 seconds. The Marine Corps received the majority of the -402EPE powered Hornets, and it sounds like a very tough fight with a good pilot.

Another nice interview

Love reading all these FB Ex Hornet pilots telling us they flew.. No point in listening to the actual real pilot being interviewed.. Thanks everyone 👍🏻👍🏻

It's been widely known since the 80s that the hornet could get it's nose on you faster than anything else.

The F18 have" live wings" and asymmetric slats deflection for rolls +/-3 degrees,7.5 -9"soft' G's

Every Hornet pilot says the same thing about this Beaty. Until they face a well flown M2000 :-) Other than half joking, a truly enjoyable interview, well done.

While F-18 was incredible at high AoA and slow speeds below 100 knots, there are some pretty easy ways to beat a Hornet in a high thrust fighter especially in guns-only scenario in the fighter community. It was very dragy (hence the slower speed) and did not have good energy addition rate. You did a max pull G radius turn and better be hoping your nose is pointing at your opponent and you get the kill because after that, the Hornet was done. It would bleed all energy and was not easy to recover it quickly. It was basically done after that. The opponent (with much higher thrust) could go vertical and get a kill on it high-to-low as it did not have the energy or the thrust to go up. Also, the slow speed nose authority and maneuvering works well in a 1v1 situation. Not so in many vs many where you could not slow down even if you were locking someone up as you needed speed in case you need to get out of someone else tracking and getting a lock on you. You needed energy/knots to have even a remote chance of dodging an incoming missile. As they say, speed is life.

Always thought they should refit A batch of legacy Hornets with the super hornet's engines and thrust vectoring for training purposes.

A lot of stat card reading keyboard warriors that haven't done a single BFM set irl are really out here ready to tell an actual fighter pilot about his own aircraft.

What time period is he talking about?

Weakness: How do you rate the Hornet as an interceptor?

F 18 is simply a twin tail,enlarged f5.wich is the best looking jet,s ever made..f 22 is the only American plane that does the roll,it was d designed to do.f18 is a 50 year old design..they have spent more on adaptions than on the purchase cost.you can only whip an old horse for so long.

isn't that the old good interview?

F-16.

F-16 is a better dogfighter than the F/A-18....And always was. The YF-17 was basicly the Hornet prototype and it was much faster and more agile than the F/A-18 it later became. But the F-16 beat it out..The Hornet was good below 200 Knots. But above it the Viper nailed it.

7.5 g-limited airplane - and the best dogfighter??? Hmmm...

Sorry, but MIG 29 wipe the legacy Hornet if ROE allow visual dogfights ,guns only.