Aggressor F-15 Eagle (World Fighter Aircraft Collection)

An "aggressor" F-15 Eagle taxies from the hot ramp during the Red Flag 07-2 military exercise.

For many years the F-15 Eagle was the USAF's premier fighter, until the advent of the next-generation F-22 Raptor relegated the Eagle firmly to second place.

The Eagle's genesis goes back to the late 1960s when the United States became aware the Russians were developing a very large, twin-tail fighter which became known as the MiG-25 "Foxbat".   Believing that the two large vertical stabilizers were intended to provide maneuverability in air-to-air dogfighting, the United States started to develop its own twin-tail aircraft to counter the MiG, the result being the Eagle.

It turned out that many of the American assumptions about the MiG-25 were incorrect; like the MiG-15 and MiG-21 before it, the MiG-25 was designed as a short-range, high-speed interceptor with speed of climb as one of the main design goals.   In the case of the Foxbat, high-altitude performance was also a requirement, and the large vertical stabilizers were intended primarily to avoid the problem of inertial coupling which can occur in this flight regime.

Nevertheless, development of the Eagle proceeded and it made its first flight in 1972, entering full production in 1978.   It entered service with the USAF and various foreign air forces, and has been involved in numerous combat situations in the Middle East, including shooting down four of the MiG-25 fighters which it was designed to counter, though none of them flown by Russian pilots.   By February of 2008 pure fighter versions of the F-15 had shot down 104 enemy aircraft, with no air-to-air losses of their own.