Air Force struggles to develop a fighter for over a dozen years, circa 1971

Here is Senator Stuart Symington lambasting the Air Force in December 1971 about their inability to develop new fighter aircraft:

I have pictures which prove that the Soviets have developed 13 new fighters since 1954. We have not developed one.

Symington was the first Secretary of the Air Force from 1947-1950. At the time of the Senator’s shocking statement, the TFX aircraft—which became designated the F-111—had not been deemed fully operational. Its belated introduction into operations occurred in July 1967, but a malfunctioning horizontal stabilizer postponed full-operability when it took down three F-111 aircraft over Vietnam in 1968. Not until four years of defect correction had passed was the F-111A deemed fully operational. The Navy bailed out of the joint program.

Although the Soviets may have put out 13 fighter aircraft between 1954 and 1971, it is not true that the U.S. failed to fully develop a single fighter over that timeframe. Senator Symington must have meant that the U.S. hasn’t developed a new fighter since 1958; even then, the F-5 Freedom Fighter reached first flight in July 1959 and flew more than 2,600 combat sorties over Vietnam. It was also attractive to foreign allies. At the time, Northrop was the only firm that could produce a fighter in a similarly lean and low cost environment as European firms.

Other fighter programs were prototyped and cancelled, like the YF-12, where Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson sought to convert the A-12 into a fighter (not to be confused with the later boondoggle, the A-12 Avenger II.)

Senator Symington’s misleading points went unchallenged by an embarrassed Air Force which had adapted the Navy’s A-1 Sky Raider, A-7 Corsair II, F-4 Phantom II, and the Marines OV-10 Bronco for use in Vietnam. The Air Force also relied on Navy air-to-air missiles including the AIM-7 Sparrow and the AIM-9 Sidewinder.

Luckily, the tide started to turn with the Laird/Packard prototyping program and the coming of the F-15 and the F-16, in addition to the rugged A-10. Is there a parallel today, should the digital century series get off the ground?