Fighter jet (1976): F-15

Generations (a later marketing-and-staff word) run from those first jets through Mach-2 types (MiG-21, F-4), agile 1970s designs, and low-observable types. This page names that history. It does not teach how to fly, fight, or build a jet. Export politics -- who may buy which type -- is as important as wing shape.

English memory is Top Gun, the Battle of Britain's propeller Few retroactively jet-washed, and museum rows at Duxford. Korean memory is MiG Alley, the F-86, and a long climb toward KF-21 as industry. TechShift in this atlas is among the highest of the weapon types. From a late German jet to an export politics

The fighter jet is a training-and-industry system that happens to have wings -- told as history. Me 262 and Meteor as footnotes to 1945; MiG-15 vs F-86 as the first mass jet fight. Soviet pilots in Korea are part of the record. Sabre aces and MiG Alley maps are memory; the Yalu was a political border as much as a flight line.