Love the origin story of the F-15, and can’t believe it still holds up today!
another interesting cold war happenstance like this was the 50’s Bomber Gap incident. essentially the Russians tried building a modern post war bomber but could only get like 10 quality ones off the ground, and so to make up for their lack and to mess with the west they flew them everywhere and in plain view, painting different tail numbers between flights and fooling the west into thinking they had hundreds. so what did we do? built HUNDREDS of our own, only to find out the truth later.
another interesting cold war happenstance like this was the 50’s Bomber Gap incident. essentially the Russians tried building a modern post war bomber but could only get like 10 quality ones off the ground, and so to make up for their lack and to mess with the west they flew them everywhere and in plain view, painting different tail numbers between flights and fooling the west into thinking they had hundreds. so what did we do? built HUNDREDS of our own, only to find out the truth later.