Good memory Gman!
. Since the gun package mounted where Genie was carried, the most likely fight was going to be fighter vs fighter, instead of "Six" vs Russian bombers coming over the North Pole, i.e. shoot 'em in the face with the nuke.
The Six was designed as a single role air defense interceptor. As such, it was very fast and could accelerate in a heart beat, and do it all at high altitude because of the big delta wing. When loitering around at 300 knots or so and the need to go fast arouse, a slight unload and crack of the afterburner, it would quickly accelerate to the 400 to 500 knots range depending how much smash was desired. On a DACT mission once, my afterburner refused to light off once we got into the fighting airspace. There was no way I was going to pass up the opportunity to fight the evil F-15 horde that was waiting for us. So, I stuck with my ops officer, continued to maneuver as a tactical two ship, and quickly learned I could accelerate to supersonic speed by unloading to less than one G and going to mil power. I quit trying to light the burner because in normal ops it would produce a small "burner puff" which would give away the best intended hiding attempt. All that being said, when it was time to step into the phone booth for a knife fight, the Six would produce one great "bat turn". And then it was time to unload, point nose down, and go full grunt with the burner and regain energy. The six required a lot of ingenuity and surprise against the newer F-teen jets. The bat turn pretty much had to be perfect to set up for a quick snap shot against a better turn sustaining fighter. We were very happy to have the gun. It opened up a lot of options short of radiating everything in sight with the Genie. But what an attention getter that would have been. I was fortunate to have live fired three Genies (without the nuke warhead, of course). That's a whole other fun story for another time. The "Six" or "Iron Triangle" was a distinct pleasure to fly and always turned heads when it showed up on initial at 400 knots, or maybe just a little more. It was truly the Lamborghini of its time.
Apologies for going of in the bar ditch with the thread. Just wanted to answer Gman's question. We now rejoin our regularly scheduled thread. Check six!
My jet during an air defense alert tour at Davis Monthan AFB, Az.
Oh by the way, Gman, when we flew cross country from Minot, ND to Tucson, it was a full AB climb to 39,000 feet, roll out on course abeam the departure end of the runway, cruise at 540 knots TAS until the external tanks burned out, and then up to 45,000 feet or higher for the remainder of the trip.
