F - 100

North American F-100 Super Sabre

North American F-100 Super Sabre

First Flight:                       1953, May 25 (prototype)

Type:                                 single-seat fighter-bomber

Power:

                                          Pratt & Whitney J57-P21 turbojet

                                          7718kg / 17,000lb afterburning thrust

Armament:

                                          20mm Pontiac M39E cannon (4)

                                                          200 rounds per gun

                                          3402kg / 7,500lb external armaments:

                                                          Bombs – Mk80 series, M117 bombs

                                                          Rocket pods and various missiles

                                                          AIM-9 Sidewinder AAM (2)

                                                          AGM-12C Bullpup B tactical air-to-surface missile

Size:

                Length:                 15.09m / 49ft 6in

                Height:                  4.95m / 16ft 3in

                Wing:

                                Wingspan:          11.81m / 38ft 9in

                                Wing Sweep:     45^o

                                Wing Area:          35.77m² / 385ft²

Weights:

                Empty:                  9534kg / 21,000lb

                Combat:               13,633kg / 30,061lb

                Max Take-off:      15,813kg / 34,832lb

Fuel:

                Internal:                4500kg / 9512lb

                External:              4050kg / 8560lb – 2 drop tanks of various sizes

Performance:

                Max Speed:        1390kph / 864mph

                Ceiling:              13,725m / 45,000ft

                Range:                3210km / 1995 miles with external drop tanks

                                            2415km / 1,500 combat range

                Climb:                4877m / 16,000ft per minute

                                          10,670m / 35,000ft @ combat weight = 3 min 30 sec

Larger fin on left added needed stability

How convenient it would have been for everyone if engineers could move a few things around on the proven F-86 Sabre and come up with the Air Force’s first truly supersonic fighter.  They certainly tried.  The problem was they could never overcome the liability of the Sabre’s 30^o swept wing.  The F-86 just wasn’t going to make the grade so North American, makers of the F-86 and the legendary P-51 Mustang, was just going to have to clear off its drawing boards and start over from scratch.  They came up with a jet that was all new.  For starts, it had a 45^o sweep to its wing.  The pilot who first took the plane out bet someone two beers that it would break the sound barrier on its initial flight.  He won his bet. 

CH-53, like one here, retrieved down jets in Vietnam

The F-100 was fast – certainly meeting the Air Force’s requirements of a fighter that would go supersonic while sustaining level flight.  The Soviet counterpart to this new Super Sabre would actually go faster but it had a different design philosophy.  Russian engineers were willing to sacrifice range for speed and maneuverability and they got what they wanted in this third generation, light-weight MiG jet.  The F-100 earned its respect, as it turns out, as a rugged ground attack aircraft.  It literally did some serious heavy lifting with more than a couple tons of ordinance hanging from its wings. 

F-100D in ground attack mission over Vietnam

The ultimate expression of this fighter-bomber was the F-100D and it slung a lot of mud striking targets in the jungles of Vietnam.  People will always talk about the treacherous missions that Phantom and Thud pilots took in Operation Rolling Thunder north of the DMZ.  Rightly so – these pilots took great risks and a lot of these guys didn’t return home, not for quite a while… some never.  Yet, what do we know of the F-100’s role in that war?  Fact is the F-100 flew more combat missions in Vietnam than any other aircraft.  In the space of five years – 1964 to 1969 – the four wings of Super Sabres stationed in Vietnam flew more sorties that 50,000 P-51 Mustangs did in all of World War II.  That’s 360,000 sorties if you’re keeping count.  It cost the Air Force 186 planes, mostly due to ground fire south of the DMZ.  The Super Sabre just didn’t have the needed range like the newer F-4s and F-105s.

Super Sabre drops Snake-eye Retarded Bomb

Most pilots liked flying the F-100.  It was robust, handling was decent and its systems were generally reliable.  It did have its faults, as you would expect.  The first generation of these aircraft, the F-100A, had a nasty tendency to break up in mid-air.  The aircraft was grounded in 1954.  It turns out that pulling out of a hard dive created stability problems that wrenched apart the airframe.  The problem was solved by giving the jet a larger fin and longer wings.  One problem that was never adequately addressed was the tricky nature of landing the plane.  The pilot had to keep his focus or risk stalling his jet or have it roll at a very inopportune time.  You had to come in fast and rely on your drag chute to keep from running off the runway.  It’s been described as a controlled crash.  Sounds like a carrier landing, doesn’t it.  Think about this: there were 1274 F-100Ds produced and over 500 of them were lost to accidents.  You just can’t sugarcoat a fact such as this.  No one tries to – they just don’t talk about it.  Maybe a lot has to do with the difficulty in keeping them maintained.  It’s the Cold War.  Everyone takes risks.  Stuff happens.

Jet tankers soon replaced slow props show here

These F-100s have their dive brakes deployed

Related Topics:

MiG 19

F-94 Starfire

F-102 Delta Dagger

F-105 Thunderchief / Thud

F-89 Scorpion

F-89 Scorpion

F-89 Scorpion

First Flight:                 1948, August 16

Type:                           Two-seat all-weather interceptor fighter

Crew:                                   

Pilot

                                    Radar Operator

Power:                                                

Allison J-35-A-35 turbojet engines (2)

3266kg / 7200lb afterburning thrust

Armament:

                                    Mighty Mouse 70mm / 2.75in unguided rockets (104) in wingtip pods

                                    Falcon missiles (3) and rockets (27) – alternative

Size:

                Wingspan:           18.18m / 59ft 8in

                Wing area:          52.21m² / 562ft²

                Length:                 16.41m / 53ft 10in

                Height:                 5.36m / 17ft 7in

Weight:

                Empty:                  11,428kg / 25,194lb

                Max take-off:        19,160kg / 42,241lb

Performance:

                Max Speed:        1024kph / 636mph

                Ceiling:                 14,995m / 49,200ft

                Range:                  4184km / 2600 miles

                Climb:                   1600m / 5250ft per minute

Two Man Crew

During the Cold War of the early 1950s the United States developed jet interceptors designed to counter a perceived bomber threat from the Soviet Union.  Possibly the best of these fighters was the F-89 Scorpion because of its rugged performance and its sophisticated weapons control system that utilized one of the best airborne radar systems of its time in conjunction with a computerized fire-control system that could launch its rocket payload automatically once the target was within range. 

Snowy Flight Line

The Scorpion was designed to replace the P-61 Black Widow, a World War II propeller-driven night fighter.  The mission-goal of these Cold War fighters was to intercept nuclear-armed Soviet bombers as far from American cities as possible.  This required exceptional speed and the thrust of the Scorpion’s two Allison turbojet engines gave it nearly twice the speed of the vintage Black Widow.  Propeller planes just don’t make it in the nuclear age of jets.  The P-61 would have been no match for the jet-powered Soviet M-4 Bison or the Tupolev Tu-16 Badger.  Two other American jets of the time, the F-86 Sabre and the F-94 Starfire, were also employed as interceptors but they lacked the range of the Scorpion and the F-89 exceeded their abilities as a weapons platform.

Early version armed with machine guns

Source:     Jet Pilot Overseas

Nearly 700 F-89D’s were built and most of them served with Air Force squadrons stationed near the Arctic Circle in an arc stretching from Iceland to Alaska.  The harsh polar weather challenged both the planes and the men that flew them.  Although these jets were called all-weather interceptors the fact was they were often grounded by the most severe weather conditions.  After all, we’re talking about an aircraft being developed shortly after World War II and the avionics for blind flying wasn’t all that sophisticated.  It’s remarkable enough that the Scorpion had a computerized fire-control system, rudimentary as it was by today’s standards. 

Nuclear-tipped Genie missiles

Source:     319th

Armament on the F-89 began with six .50 caliber machine guns mounted in the nose.  This approach was quickly recognized as inadequate for the mission and the guns were soon replaced by radar in the nose and a flurry of 104 70-mm rockets that would be launched from very large pods mounted on the plane’s wingtips.  This resulted in an aircraft heavily weighted down by weapons and the fuel needed for it to range almost 1,400 miles from its base.  Performance was sluggish.  Its rate of climb was agonizingly slow and, were it to fall behind its intended target, it would take too long to close the distance needed to come within firing range.  The aircraft’s weight problem was evidenced by its overly-large main wheels of its landing gear.  In fact, the plane was sometimes referred to as the Stanley Steamer because the monster wheels seemed so unlikely for a jet.

70 mm rockets in wing pods

Later versions of the F-89 attempted to solve its performance problems by substituting fuel for rockets in its wing pods and relying on a single nuclear-tipped missile, call the Genie, to knock a formation of enemy bombers from the sky.  The resulting 1.5 kiloton blast would not only immediately destroy or disable most of the bombers but it was problematic for the survival of the Scorpion and its crew, as well. 

Falcon missiles attached to outer pods

By 1959 the supersonic F-102 Delta Dagger was replacing the aging F-89 Scorpion as America’s frontline interceptor.  The F-102 would, in turn, be replaced with the F-106 Delta Dart.  By now, though, the primary strategic threat to North America was the rapid deployment of nuclear-tipped ICBMs – the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile – for which there was no defense.  War between the globe’s two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, was averted by the concept of MAD – Mass Assured Destruction; the annihilation of one nation would result in the complete destruction of the other.  So was the governing logic that prevented the Cold War from becoming unacceptably hot.

Crew of F-89H

Source:     Jet Pilot Overseas

Related Topics:

Tu 16 Badger

Tu 95 Bear

F-86 Sabre

F7U Cutlass