F-18
Beginning life as the YF-17, what would become the F-18 wasn’t off to the best start. Entered against the YF-16 in the Lightweight Fighter Program competition, I can only imagine Air Force officials observed the performance of the “Cobra” (as Northrop liked to call it), pinched the bridge of their nose, sighed, and said “Did you guys even read the request?”
Outperformed in nearly every way by the YF-16, the YF-17 was also more expensive, running two prototype engines instead of a single, proven one. That the YF-16′s engine was the same kind used in the F-15 was a huge economic bonus. Obviously, the YF-17 lost.
However, Congress had ordered the Navy to find a cheaper alternative to the F-14. Grumman had the insanely innovative idea of offering them a different F-14, and McDonnell-Douglas’ proposed F-15 Sea Eagle wouldn’t be cheap enough. The Navy has a long-standing and proven tradition of picking up fighters with inferior performance because they’re better suited to aircraft carriers. They liked that the YF-17 had two engines and had Northrop get to work on an improved version adapted to carriers.
You may note that it’s called the McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18 now (or the Boeing F/A-18 by people who still bother to keep up with the amalgamated mess that is the modern aviation industry). Northrop realized their history of making better F-5s nobody wanted (which kinda-sorta includes the YF-17) left them at a disadvantage in actually getting the Navy what they wanted and partnered with McDonnell-Douglas to make the F/A-18. The two companies had a falling out and McDonnell-Douglas wound up just buying the rights to the whole thing from Northrop for $50 million. Northrop would go on to make another super F-5 intended for export: the F-20 Tigershark, which would also lose to the F-16.
For the most part, the F/A-18 was what the Navy had hoped for: It performed significantly better than the aircraft it was meant to replace and it was surprisingly reliable. The main problem was that it was a huge gas hog: Requiring aerial refueling almost immediately after taking off from the carrier, the F/A-18 would always be short-legged and less than ideal as an alert fighter. The Navy would continue operating F-14s until the bigger Super Hornet variants came along to replace them.
Canada would replace its CF-104 Starfighters with the CF-18, but that’s not really saying much for the Hornet, because the Starfighter could be replaced with a Cessna 206 with a drunk redneck armed with a deer rifle strapped to each wing and it’d be a tremendous improvement.
