Cobra Maneuver In Macross Zero

[wolfx]

I'm no aero buff, so bear with me if i sound noobish.

When Shin was dogfighting Nora in the final episode, he did a Cobra Maneuver. It just occured to me I didn't understand what that maneuver was for so i googled it and got these explanations. (one of them from a RPG rule book? LOL!)

http://www.milavia.net/users/fighterjets/maneuvers.php

http://www.kitsune.addr.com/NinjaSpies/Nin...t_Maneuvers.htm

So basically, the maneuver is used to slow your fighter down significantly so the bogey on your tail would overshoot you and you can shoot him down, and only fighters with thrust vectoring (mainly the SU-37) can do it, if i gathered correctly.

So the question is, if the point was to slow down at a dime and shoot Nora from behind, why not just go straight to gerwalk which probably is easier to do, and probably would yield better results anyway?

Or maybe its just COOLER if they did that....which i admit WAS pretty cool.

[David Hingtgen]

Because it LOOKS cool.

And thust vectoring is not required, you just need a lot of engine thrust and incredibly effective and rapid pitch control. And the ability to override the flight computer. Vectoring tends to be the extra boost of pitch control most planes need. Canards work too. Su-37 had both. While the F-22 probably could aerodynamically do it, the flight computers wouldn't allow it, it'd ignore the pilot's commands at a certain point.

Edited February 16, 2006 by David Hingtgen

[myk]

It would've been quicker to have gone to Gerwalk also. Maybe they were going too fast for Gerwalk? I imagine that you couldn't convert at certain airspeeds unless you wanted to tear the ship apart...

[UN Spacy]

It would've been quicker to have gone to Gerwalk also.  Maybe they were going too fast for Gerwalk?  I imagine that you couldn't convert at certain airspeeds unless you wanted to tear the ship apart...

370745[/snapback]

Yeah.....I think once it's passed Mach 1.7 it's passed the transformation limit.

[Graham]

It is actually mentioned in the anime that the VF-0 is going too fast to transform at the point. I can't remember if it's something Shin says or whether it flashes up as a warning on the HUD though. Have to watch that scene again.

I would imagine that all VFs have a maximum safe speed for transforming in atmospheric flight, no matter how tough they are.

Graham

[myk]

Hmm...Didn't Guld go from F to B when Isamu tried to fire the High-Maneuver missiles at him in 'Plus?

[wolfx]

It is actually mentioned in the anime that the VF-0 is going too fast to transform at the point. I can't remember if it's something Shin says or whether it flashes up as a warning on the HUD though. Have to watch that scene again.

I would imagine that all VFs have a maximum safe speed for transforming in atmospheric flight, no matter how tough they are.

Graham

370748[/snapback]

Oh yeah....now that you mention it i remember. Shin and Nora engaged their boosters. Then Shin wanted to turn back and shoot her and i think he mentioned that he wasn't at the safe transformation limit.

I guess that answers my question.

[azrael]

Hmm...Didn't Guld go from F to B when Isamu tried to fire the High-Maneuver missiles at him in 'Plus?

370759[/snapback]

I don't think they were going that fast.

[Graham]

Also remember that Macross Plus is set, what 32 years(?) ahead of Macross Zero and the YF-21 & YF-19 are far more advanced designs and probabably stronger and tougher than the VF-0 and likely to have a far higher maximum safe speed at which they can transform as well.

Graham

[JB0]

I'd imagine the safe speeds for transformation are far higher on later fighters.

Refinements to both the mechanisms themselves and the supporting overtech(stuff like the SWAG armor) likely go a long way towards upping the tolerances. That'd make it a lot less of an issue on a state-of-the-art YF-21 than a primitive testbed VF-0.

[Hikuro]

Didn't Maverick in Top Gun pull of a similar meanouver at one point in the movie? I know it was no cobra meanouver, but it was pretty similar wasn't it? By cutting his thrust significantly that the mig shot past him as his F-14 went OVER the mig?

[myk]

Hit the brakes, and he'll fly right by us...

Mr. Katie Holmes pulled that move twice, and the F-5-er, I mean "MIG" overshot and put Mr. Katie Holmes in the 6 o' clock position. As for Macross, in 'Plus who knows how fast they were going, it's not as if they had visible speed indicators. And in 'Zero, just as Dave said, the Cobra move was done because it supposively looked cool, although I didn't think so...

[Fortress_Maximus]

Hmm...Didn't Guld go from F to B when Isamu tried to fire the High-Maneuver missiles at him in 'Plus?

370759[/snapback]

Yes he did, but that is M+ which had much more advanced technology IMO.

But all things considered that scene in M0 was purrtyy!

Edited February 16, 2006 by Fortress_Maximus

[myk]

Right. It got even better when the '19 did the same move right after, allowing them to shoot it out with gunpods in midair...

[valk1j]

There is an indicator shown in Mac zero in the scene after Shin pulls the cobra, when it reaches green he can make the transformation if IIRC. Also Edgar says something to Shin about checking some sort of indicator before going to gerwalk when they are first training in the VF-0D. Shin doesn't and almost crashes the thing, then he gets shot by Roy.

Edited February 17, 2006 by valk1j

[David Hingtgen]

The key thing about the Cobra is that the plane flies BACKWARDS for a short time, with NEGATIVE airspeed. Maverick simply slowed down and pitched up---a 747 can do that, just not as quickly or severely. To fly tail-first takes a very neat plane. Also a key issue is re-accelerating afterwards---effectively coming to a dead stop in mid-air is kinda pointless unless you immediately follow up with something equally impressive, as the guy who was trailing you will then be miles ahead of you and out of range VERY quickly if he's still doing Mach .9

When you come out of a Cobra you have very little airspeed and energy, and will not be able to do ANYTHING until you regain one or the other. If you ever see a Super Hornet at an airshow you'll notice it takes a 20-sec "break" after the high-alpha pass to build speed back up to start the next set of manuevers.

And ironically, I don't recall seeing the speed brakes go out at any time in Top Gun...

Edited February 17, 2006 by David Hingtgen

[Lightning]

I think that was one of the things they forgot to do in the movie....

[ghostryder]

Wow, the SH takes 20 sec to recover energy, and that's prob with no tanks or weapons. How applicable is the cobra in real-life multi-bogie dogfights? Looks cool when it's 1-on-1, but I can't imagine a 20-sec break being a good thing.

I've only seen M0 once and don't remember what they were doing at the time, but why wouldn't Nora, being a more experienced VF pilot, just slow down, transform, and blow Shin out of the sky (again)?

[Beltane70]

I've only seen M0 once and don't remember what they were doing at the time, but why wouldn't Nora, being a more experienced VF pilot, just slow down, transform, and blow Shin out of the sky (again)?

For one thing, while Nora was on Shin's tail, Focker was on hers.

Second, at the time of Shin's cobra manuever, Nora wasn't directly behind Shin, she was slightly below and to the left of Shin. Pretty much her only choice was to match Shin's cobra with one of her own. At least, that's how i see it.

[Oihan]

Because it LOOKS cool.

And thust vectoring is not required, you just need a lot of engine thrust and incredibly effective and rapid pitch control.  And the ability to override the flight computer.  Vectoring tends to be the extra boost of pitch control most planes need.  Canards work too.  Su-37 had both.  While the F-22 probably could aerodynamically do it, the flight computers wouldn't allow it, it'd ignore the pilot's commands at a certain point.

370739[/snapback]

I'm assuming the F-22 is our most advanced fighter? We can't even get the thing to do a cobra manuever? Why would one limit it's abilities?

[JB0]

Because it LOOKS cool.

And thust vectoring is not required, you just need a lot of engine thrust and incredibly effective and rapid pitch control.  And the ability to override the flight computer.  Vectoring tends to be the extra boost of pitch control most planes need.  Canards work too.  Su-37 had both.  While the F-22 probably could aerodynamically do it, the flight computers wouldn't allow it, it'd ignore the pilot's commands at a certain point.

370739[/snapback]

I'm assuming the F-22 is our most advanced fighter? We can't even get the thing to do a cobra manuever? Why would one limit it's abilities?

371262[/snapback]

As I understand things, it basically has to do with the fact that if we let our fighter run on the upper edge of it's capabilities, it'd turn the pilots to something resembling strawberry jelly.

I'm sure one of the avaiation people can correct me.

Edited February 18, 2006 by JB0

[David Hingtgen]

Inherent philosophy difference between the US and Russia. Russian planes allow the pilots to override any and all precautions/limits/warnings, and use thrust vectoring to get the plane to do moves it couldn't normally do.

US planes have absolute limits the computer won't let the pilot go past, and will not allow thrust vectoring to "create" new moves---it is only allowed to help it do moves it already can do, faster/better.

As for how useful is the Cobra--that is a hotly debated topic, but AFAIK most pilots consider it worthless. (Do it, and you've lost all your energy and are a sitting duck--you darn well better make it count and follow up with a guaranteed kill or it'll be the last move you ever do) A Super Flanker could certainly make much better use of it than the Super Hornet, as the Super Flanker has insane amounts of thrust to quickly re-accelerate. A famous Super Flanker crash actually had it HIT THE GROUND then using sheer power LIFT BACK UP VERTICALLY with the thrust vectoring and allow the pilots to eject. Super Hornets have low power, that is their achilles heel. Awesome high-alpha performance, but not the thrust to exploit it very often.

Finally---the US never fully shows what it planes can do. We just learned in 2004 that the F-15 can tail-slide, some 32 years after the F-15 first flew, and everyone thought they knew just what it could do. Maybe in 2040 we'll know exactly what the F-22 can do.

Edited February 18, 2006 by David Hingtgen

[Nied]

Because it LOOKS cool.

And thrust vectoring is not required, you just need a lot of engine thrust and incredibly effective and rapid pitch control.  And the ability to override the flight computer.  Vectoring tends to be the extra boost of pitch control most planes need.  Canards work too.  Su-37 had both.  While the F-22 probably could aerodynamically do it, the flight computers wouldn't allow it, it'd ignore the pilot's commands at a certain point.

370739[/snapback]

I'm assuming the F-22 is our most advanced fighter? We can't even get the thing to do a cobra maneuver? Why would one limit it's abilities?

371262[/snapback]

As David points out above the F-22 could pull a cobra and maybe even it's more elaborate brother the bell maneuver (the aircraft pulls a full 360 while flying forward), it's just that it's on board computers are currently programmed not to let it. For all of it's coolness the cobra is a dubious move in a dogfight. It kills nearly all of your forward airspeed which might get an enemy on your tail to overshoot you, but would leave you a slow target for anyone else in the area. Besides technically line serving Su-27s can't pull a cobra either, they have the same Angle of attack limiters in their flight computers as the F-22. Sure they'll switch off the limiter so that an ultra experienced test pilot can pull a flashy move at the Paris air show, your average RuAF, PLAAF, or InAF pilot is just as likely to put himself in to an unrecoverable spin than actually pull a cobra in combat (ditto with your average USAF pilot in an F-22) hence the limiters.

[edit] Wow! I must take too long to write my posts. Two people get in a response under me! [/edit]

Edited February 18, 2006 by Nied

[Ishimaru]

How do we know that the military is just hiding something and that thiers something far superior than the F-22 in just peforming these maneuvers in any case the fighter might not even be able to handle it due to the fact that it might tear itself apart....

Maybe its something that we dont about, hey it happened in Macross didnt it well sorta?

[F-ZeroOne]

While the F-22 probably could aerodynamically do it, the flight computers wouldn't allow it, it'd ignore the pilot's commands at a certain point.

370739[/snapback]

I'm assuming the F-22 is our most advanced fighter? We can't even get the thing to do a cobra manuever? Why would one limit it's abilities?

371262[/snapback]

Another reason is that aeroplanes can break. High-G stunts stress the airframe as well as the pilot. Theres quite a few horror stories from World War II about the effects (my favourite involves two pilots arguing that it was impossible to pull the wings off a P-51 in a dive. They were interrupted by a strange sound, looked up to see two silvery objects fluttering down from the sky, followed by a plunging, wingless Mustang burying itself into the turf... ) of putting too much load on aircraft.

With modern materials, its probably less of a problem, but then again engines are much more powerful than they used to be.

Perhaps the bigger problem is simply pilot loss-of-control.

Edited February 18, 2006 by F-ZeroOne

[David Hingtgen]

One of the more recent phenomena is G-lock. There, it's not so much how MANY G's, but how RAPIDLY they BUILD. Just because a pilot can take 9G's by gradually building up to it in a turn, doesn't much indicate how well he'll take 7 or 8 put on almost instantly. The F-20 made people aware of this, as several of the prototypes crashed when it pulled 9+ G's during demos, despite having very experienced test pilots at the controls who were constantly exposed to high-G moves (10, 11, even 12). But the F-20 was so agile it didn't build up to 9G's, it pretty much was just instantly there, and the pilots blacked out.

[Gaijin]

How do we know that the military is just hiding something and that thiers something far superior than the F-22 in just peforming these maneuvers in any case the fighter might not even be able to handle it due to the fact that it might tear itself apart....

Maybe its something that we dont about, hey it happened in Macross didnt it well sorta?

371328[/snapback]

Don't speculate about us.

[emajnthis]

I've seen both planes the Su-37 and the F22 pull the bell maneuver in videos. Whether or not it was a purposely sanctioned move to pull off is another thing, but my buddies and i at work were bored and wanted to see the limits of the Su vs the 22 and see which one is "better". They both could pull some insane moves, but the Su by all tests had slightly better maneuverability (as inherit in its bird like design) while the F22 could pull the same moves just not nearly as fast, but had more break neck speed than the SU. I'd have to do the research all over again, but I think i could try and find the websites i pulled the info from again.

[1/1 LowViz Lurker]

Maybe its something that we dont about, hey it happened in Macross didnt it well sorta?

It transforms into a mech while in space to fight giant aliens in powered armor. Huge media blackout.