What effect would a single F-35 fighter jet (and the knowledge to use/repair) in German hands have on WW2?
Well, we’re in the world of fantasy so it’s entirely admissable to say that Hollywood explored the idea in Philadelphia Experiment 2.I forget the nuts’n’bolts of the film, it’s been a while since I watched it but an F-117 takes off from Ramstein AFB on some air ex, does the wobbly time warp thing and the pilot lands back at Ramstein - only to find it’s gone all WWII on him.The Germans obviously crawl all over their prize, find themselves unable to understand most of it, let alone reproduce it and decide to go with it as a one-shot war winner; they nuke Washington and presumably bluffing the US with more strikes, the US surrenders.I do recall one scene where the Nazi scientist principal is flapping because he promised to reproduce them for the High Command and it’s dawned on him that he’s not even close or ever likely to be.Summary: the Nazis would probably realise the same with an even more sophisticated F-35 in their clutches and go with it as a one-shot war winner.
Why do some fighter aircraft require 2 pilots?
Back in the 60s/70s in a more visual environment 2 heads would have been better than 1 for spotting and tracking enemy jets - not only that they were required to manage the complex systems which could have overloaded a single pilot - so a dedicated radar specialist sitting in the back was probably a good idea regarding multi tasking. Downside is that twice as many pilots lost if shot down, and loss of fuel space in a 2 seat version of a single jet and requires good communication.Both the Air Force and Navy used the F-4 (the Navy was still flying F-8s at the same time) - the F-4s radar / AIM-7 system needed a second man to operate and so enabled a capability the F-8 didn't have. (There was a proposed XF-8 variant with AIM-7 that was never selected possibly for this reason)During the mid 70s transition the Air Force must have felt that technology had come on enough to make the F-15 single seat (ie the single pilot can manage the work load) - whereas the Navy thought 2 seats was still the way to go. The superior AWG-9 might have been more complex to operate over the APG-63....other than that the addition of an extra pilot in terms of effectiveness for air superiority becomes more difficult to distinguish. What might be better is to question what fighter missions today are more effective with 2 pilots.One of the things I noticed is that the Navy prefers to have a two-man crew for its air superiority fighter, a pilot and a RIO like in the F-14 and the F/A-18F. In contrast, Air Force seems to be content with single seat fighters, as exemplified by the F-15C and F-22. In two seat aircraft, the Air Force typically use them for training or, as with the case for the F-15E, for strike roles.F-14 was the last to exist only in two-seat form. Since then every one has come out in 1-&-2-seat model pairs: aB, cD, and, for F-18, also eF. The only unpaired models are F-15E and F-18G, and there are earlier one-seat models of both F-15 and F-18. And of course, with F-22 and F-35, only one-seat models exist. That looks like a general trend of reduction of seats in both USN and USAF. The only difference between USN and USAF might be not that the Navy prefers two-seaters in general, but that it uses them more in real missions instead of just for training.