Talk:AIM-4 Falcon

Phoenix/Maverick connection
Would it make sense to mention how the AIM-4 Falcon design influenced later weapons, such as the Phoenix and Maverick? Epstein&#39;s Mother 10:01, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

One Mess of an Article
This article states: "The AIM-4F/AIM-4G Super Falcon remained in USAF and ANG service, primarily with Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart interceptors, until the final retirement of the F-106 in 1988." The F and G were only used on the F-106. Indeed, this article is rather oddly written - the Falcon was first and foremost a bomber destroyer, yet most of the article is devoted to its failure as a weapon against maneuverable fighter targets in a dogfight situation - basically a case of the wrong tool for the job. For a really excellent history of the missile and its operational life, see: http://www.ausairpower.net/Falcon-Evolution.html  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.158.48.18 (talk) 12:48, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

The AIM-4F/G had a .98 Probability of Kill when fired from the F-106, which had a computer system to prepare and fire the missiles. The failure of the these missiles in Vietnam was a failure of the F-4D aircraft system, not of the missile. The AIM-4F/G missiles could be fired closer to the target than the Sidewinder, as the rocket boost phase (no guidance) was only .6 seconds for the AIM-4 vs. 1.8 seconds for the Sidewinder. I personally fired an AIM-4G at very close range at a drone target and blew it out of the sky with a direct hit. I also fired one AIM-4G against a BOMARC missile at 55,000 feet with a 2,000 mph overtake and blew it out of the sky. Wikipedia sources say the Sidewinder had only an 11% kill rate in Vietnam. The new Sidewinder AIM-9X uses Hughes Aircraft's AIM-4 technology, which was bought by Raytheon. §Bruce Gordon, F-106 pilot. Source: personal experience firing the AIM-4G. Flew F-100s in Vietnam. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.97.196.251 (talk) 13:45, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Sidewinder
"The Sidewinder was much more effective and continues to serve the armed forces of the United States and numerous allied nations to this day." 1. Why is that sentence there? 2. That sentence is wrong. The AIM-9 Sidewinder had initially just as poor a record. In the 50's and 60's the AIM-9 was not better than the AIM-4B/C/G. The SARH Falcon's guidance performance depended on the aircraft it was used with. The F-4 had poor results. The F-106 had good results. --Moritzgedig (talk) 21:08, 20 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Reliable sources please. And as for The F-106 had good results, I don't recall the F-106 ever being used in combat, so how could it have good results? BilCat (talk) 21:33, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Against target drones in simulated combat it had good results. Are you claiming that a fighter can never be called god unless it has been used in live combat against a shooting enemy? They can test these things. The F-106 was designed from the ground up as a weapons system integrated with the AIM-4, and it had a very high ratio of kills in live fire tests from the F-106, which could use bot IR and SARH versions to complement each other as well. When fired from an F-4 as a stand-alone, the missile had trouble tracking well enough to score a direct hit because the firing solution was at the whim of the pilot. On the F-106, the pilot selected the desired target and flew an intercept course, the computer itself decided the optimal point to launch, and it made some very spectacular shots for the era,. both against high speed off-angle targets, and against simulated fighters. But bombers were always the intended target. In Vietnam they had a convergence of the wrong plane for the missile, an unexpected sort of combat, and crappy maintainance/environmental conditions for storage.

64.223.92.229 (talk) 15:24, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Confusion with Aim-4 replacing Aim-9
The article had (and to some extent still has) serious factual errors in its summary and details, where it portrayed the aim-4 as being the original short range missile of the USAF F-4s in the Vietnam war, only for them to be modified to carry the Aim-9 when the Aim-4 proved to be useless.

This is completely incorrect. The Aim-9B was used by USAF F-4s from the start of the war, with the first Aim-9 kill of the war being by a USAF F-4C in July 1965, and the first introduction of the Aim-4 being on the F-4D in 1967. Quite opposite to the Aim-9 being introduced to replace the 'useless' Aim-4, the Aim-4 was actually introduced because the Aim-9 was not working well enough, and they pressed the Aim-4 into service to try and see if it did better. (it did not).

The Aim-4 performed even worse than the Aim-9 on F-4s, mainly because it was not designed for that aircraft or that type of fight, and F-4D models were re-wired to take the Aim-9 again, as the F-4C had always been.

This cannot be a debate, just read the kills record wiki page here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_aerial_victories_of_the_Vietnam_War

It leaves no room for interpretation or doubt as to the order of introduction, and which model carried which missle and for which service. 94.174.148.196 (talk) 10:39, 13 June 2024 (UTC)