General Dynamics Was Hawking the Fighting Falcon All Over The World in 1977.
The 1977 General Dynamics Marketing Film “The Dynamic Sixteen- The Multinational Fighter” is a great look at the GD’s F-16 Fighting Falcon and how it compared to the primary Air Force fighter of the day, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. The film was obviously created to be used as a backdrop for sales displays and discussions about the F-16 and its attributes. F-16 sales to foreign nations have accounted for just under half of the nearly 4,600 F-16s produced to date. Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway were the countries who partnered with GD to develop the F-16 and hundreds of them have been flown by their air forces since the F-16 went into operation in 1978.
In addition to Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway, other foreign air forces to operate the F-16 include Bahrain, Chile, Denmark, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Taiwan, South Korea, Romania, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.
When compared to the fighter/interceptor aircraft most commonly used by many of the export customers for the F-16 at the time such as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, the North American F-100 Super Sabre, the F-4 Phantom II, and various Mikoyan-Gurevich MiGs, the Fighting Falcon was judged by many to be a superior aircraft in any number of ways. The majority of countries who became F-16 operators still fly the diminutive jets.
