Quote:
Originally Posted by Tegyrius
The traditional argument is that the A-10 is more capable of low-level flight for terrain protection from ground fire and is more likely to survive the inevitable hits. In practice, we'd need someone to do a deep dive into the respective designs' records of combat losses versus damaged aircraft returning to friendly tarmac.
- C.
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I'll go along with "more survivable", not least for the A-10 having two engines vs one. I remember much being made of the A-10's redundant control systems, but have no idea, off-hand, if the A-7 had those, too.
"Low-level flight", to me, sounds more like a pilot-training issue, and with both planes designed for subsonic low-level attack missions, I suspect there may not be much difference here.
A quick skim of Wikipedia turned up that A-7s were well-regarded over Vietnam by the Navy pilots, especially for low fuel consumption. Air Force A-7s had only 6 losses for 12,928 sorties, lowest for any fighter in theater, and second only to B-52s for tonnage dropped on Hanoi. The Navy recorded 98 A-7 losses, no data on sorties given.
Wikipedia again: For ODS, 8100 A-10 sorties, 4 losses.