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F-15N | the forgotten 'Sea Eagle' episode artwork

Sep 17, 2026 16 min

F-15N | the forgotten 'Sea Eagle'

from Military Aviation History

See the video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uheYOBjwUKU What if the F-15 Eagle had gone to sea? In the early 1970s, McDonnell Douglas proposed a carrier-based version of the F-15 for the US Navy. Known as the F-15N, it promised extraordinary speed, a lighter airframe, and more advanced avionics. But adapting the Eagle for carrier operations meant solving one major problem: how to give it the fleet-defence capability of the F-14 Tomcat. This is the story of the F-15N: the carrier modifications it would have required, the efforts to integrate the AIM-54 Phoenix missile, and the remarkable F-15N-PHX concept, which could have carried up to six Phoenix missiles. So why did the Navy ultimately walk away from an aircraft that looked so promising on paper? Made possible by our members—this is what keeps the channel independent and ongoing https://peacemaker.net.au

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F-15N | the forgotten 'Sea Eagle'

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