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

MiG 19

MiG 19 - NATO code name:  Farmer

Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG – 19

First flight:                   1953, September 18

Type:                           single-seat day twin-engine fighter-bomber

Power:                        

                                    Tumansky RD-9B turbojets (2)

                                    2549kg / 5730lb thrust

                                    3300kg / 7275lb afterburning

Armament:

                                    30mm / 1.18in cannon NR-30 (3)

                                                Wing root – 2

                                                Nose - 1

                                    500kg / 1102lb weapons under the wings

Size:

            Length:            12.6m / 41ft 4in

            Height:              3.88m / 12ft 8.75in

Wing:

Wingspan:       9.2m / 30ft 2.25in

Wing Area:      25m² / 269.11ft²

Aspect Ratio:   3.24

Wing Sweep:   55^o

Tailplane:         5m / 16ft 4.75in

Weights:

            Empty:             5760kg / 12,699lb

            Normal:            7545kg / 16,634lb

            Max take-off:   9100kg / 20,062lb

Fuel:

            Internal:            1687kg / 3719lb

            External:          1140kg / 1608lb with 2 drop tanks

Performance:

            Max speed:     1450kph / 901mph

            Cruise speed:  950kph / 590mph

            Ceiling:            17,900m / 58,725ft

            Range:             2200km / 1367 miles with drop tanks

            Climb:              6900m / 22,640ft per minute

MiG 19: split air intake; wing fence for streamlining

When you have several powerful nations crunched up in the small space that is Europe bad things are bound to happen.  It’s been that way for hundreds of years.  Joe Stalin knew something about the dynamics of power between nations.  Stalin was a realist.  There are no friendships among the community of nations.  There are only shared interests and conflicts of interests.  Diplomacy is the preferred means of settling issues of dispute but history has proved the value of a powerful military no matter the approach leaders choose to make.  When another nation wants something you consider to be yours appeals to morality are a poor second to the threat of a strong military presence and the will to use devastating force. 

Armed with 3 30mm cannon; armament on wings

The United States and the Soviet Union had a brief alliance because they shared the need to destroy Nazi Germany.  Once that issue was settled the suppressed conflicts of interest between the two nations quickly re-emerged and the gloves came off.  Both nations soon found themselves in a race to develop weapons of technical superiority over the other.  At the very least neither nation wanted to concede a military advantage to the other, if at all possible.  This was dramatically demonstrated in the rapid deployment new combat aircraft during the early years of the Cold War.

Air-to-Air missiles mounted under wings

Development of the Soviet MiG-19 reflected the urgency that also motivated America’s bringing to operational status jets such as the F-80 Shooting Star and the F7U Cutlass.  Early models were prone to accident because the engineering had not been thoroughly worked out.  You took a big risk piloting a jet on the bleeding edge of technology.  It’s a good reason why patriots of both countries honored these anonymous men in uniform.

F-6 with brakechute:  Chinese version of MiG 19

The first MiG-19s put into service had to be withdrawn because of a series of crashes due to stability problems.  The MiG-19 may have taken on the role of a fighter-bomber but it was clearly meant to be an interceptor.  It was a screaming dart of a jet with two engines equipped with afterburners, an astounding swept-wing of 55 degrees and performance that could best most any contemporary jet in a dogfight.  Is it any wonder this aircraft would quickly dive itself into the ground on the slimmest pretext of pilot error?  It’s clear the tailplane absolutely had to become a single movable piece but other adjustments probably had to do with allowing mere mortals to fly the aircraft without killing themselves.  They could have benefited from the kind of on-board computers we have today that keep inherently unstable jets, like the B-2 bomber, airborne.  

Arab nations among foreign buyers of MiG 19, F-6

The MiG-19 was a killing beast.  Imagine what three 30mm cannon would do to your airframe if you got lit up in the MiG’s crosshairs?  Sure, the cannon range might have been longer and their rate of fire wasn’t blistering but how many rounds this size does it take to shred your means of staying airborne?  May, 1972 over North Vietnam:  7 American F-4 Phantoms are shot down by the Chinese version of the MiG-19.  Of course the American Phantoms knocked 10 of these MiGs out of the sky but the MiG-19 was designed in the 1950s.  It’s obsolete.  What gives?  Here’s something to think about.  The Israeli’s claimed to have shot down several MiG-19s without a single loss of their own during the Six Day War in 1967.  Here’s the difference in results between 1967 and five years later over Vietnam.  Israeli pilots were trained to dogfight.  American pilots were taught to fly jets.  The Phantoms that first appeared over the skies of Hanoi had no guns.  It was all about the technology.  Simply lock your radar on an enemy bogie and fire your missile.  Wrong – we weren't quite in the push-button age of The Jetsons, yet.  Guns still mattered and so did the skill of the pilot in the cockpit.  That was just one of the many painful lessons leaders in the U.S. hopefully learned from their experience in Vietnam.

A-10 exhibits ground support design unlike MiG 19

Let’s sum it up.  The engineers at Mikoyan-Gurevich came up with a damn good fighter – fast, reliable and effective.  It out-performed the F-100 Super Sabre, its American equivalent.  It lacked combat radius so let’s not think of it as a true fighter-bomber.  You need to get somewhere and you also need fuel enough to have time over the target if you’re serious about a ground support mission.  Supersonic speed is of no use if all you want to do is land a bomb accurately on someone’s head.  You want ground-support?  Is there any plane better at what it does than the American A-10 Warthog?  The problem is the Air Force is always looking for reasons to ground this plane forever.  Backing up grunts on the ground isn't sexy enough for the strategically minded big brass.  If you’re serious about wowing the ladies don’t drop a turd in the punchbowl and don’t tell them you fly a Warthog.

F-100 was no match for MiG 19 in dogfight performance

MiG 19 reveals twin-engine configuration

Related Topics:

MiG 17

MiG 21

F-8 Crusader

F-102 Delta Dagger

F-102 Delta Dagger

F-102A Delta Dagger

Convair F-102 Delta Dagger / ‘Deuce’

First Flight:                          1953, October 24

Type:                                     Single-seat interceptor

Power:

                                                Pratt & Whitney J57P-23 turbojet

                                                5307kg / 11,700lb thrust

                                                7802kg / 17,200lb afterburning thrust

Armament:

                                                AIM-4C Falcon infra-red homing air-to-air missiles (3)

                                                AIM-26A Nuclear Falcon

                                                Or

                                                AIM-4A semi-active radar homing (3)

                                                AIM-4C Falcon infra-red air-to-air missiles (3)

Weapons System:

                                                Hughes MG-10 fire-control system

                                                Track several targets simultaneously – 50km / 31 miles

                                                Lock-on individual aircraft – 25km / 16 miles

                                                Internal weapons bay holds all armament to reduce drag

Size:

                Wingspan:           11.62m / 38ft 1.5 in

                Length:                 20.84m / 68ft 5in

                Height:                 6.46m / 21ft 2.5in

                Wing Area:          61.45m² / 661.5ft²

Weights:

                Empty:                  8630kg / 19,050lb

                Load, normal:    12,565kg / 27,700lb

                Max Take-off:   14,288kg / 31,500lb

Performance:

                Max speed:        1328kph / 825mph

                            Cruise:    869kph / 540mph @ 10,670m / 35,000ft

                Ceiling:              16,460m / 54,000ft

                Range:                2173km / 1350 miles – max

                                             1610km / 1000 miles – 2 drop tanks / full armament

                            Fuel:      4107 liters / 1,085 gallons – internal, max

                                           5735 liters / 1,515 gallons – drop tanks, 2

                Climb:                5304m / 17,400ft per minute

Production:                        875 aircraft delivered to the US Air Force

YF-102 pre-production model

The early interceptors used by the US Air Force lacked the necessary speed and climb rate to intercept enemy bombers far from their intended target.  The jets coming off the drawing board following World War II were designed to be fighters, able to maneuver in dogfights, although these first efforts like the F-80, F-84 and F-94 were disappointing in this ability.  They also lacked thrust and swept-wing aerodynamics. 

F-102 shadows Tu-95 Bear

An interceptor doesn’t need dogfighting ability to defeat bombers.  It just needs speed and lots of it.  It also needs to pack a knockout punch that will quickly dispatch a bomber from the sky.  What the Air Force wanted for this role was an airborne weapons system that could fly faster than the speed of sound at level flight.  Using gravity in a dive to break the sound barrier was cheating.  The winning design was for a jet that would eventually come to be known as the F-106 Delta Dart.  It was a very ambitious project and it was soon apparent that development would take too long to meet the current threat posed by Soviet strategic bombers.  The Air Force agreed to produce an interim solution that would become the F-102 Delta Dagger, or ‘Deuce’ as it was called by its pilots. 

Early F-102s fired unguided Mighty Mouse missiles

The F-102 benefitted from a research plane developed by Convair in 1948.  This was the XF-92.  It was specifically designed to test research Germany had done on developing a delta wing jet during World War Two.  The knowledge gained from flying the XF-92 contributed considerably to the design of the F-102.  Still, there were unanticipated problems.  Despite a powerful jet engine the F-102 was not able to attain supersonic speed at level flight – a basic requirement.  The problem was the aircraft wasn’t slippery enough in cutting through the atmosphere.  It had an unexpected problem with drag.  Transonic speed, or going faster than sound, required the fuselage to be redesigned so that it was narrower over the wings and wider on the ends.  This became known as the “area rule” and it resulted in a fuselage that vaguely resembled the shape of a Coke bottle.

All armament was within an internal weapons bay

The exotic fire control system developed by Hughes also delayed the jet’s delivery date.  Besides having an airborne radar system capable of tracking multiple targets simultaneously, it introduced an on-board computer to fighter-sized jets and it provided a datalink system synchronized with the ground-control radar operator.  It was a fine package but it proved to be a difficult birth and when the F-102 finally went into service with the Air Force in 1956 it was three years late. 

XF-92 had a nose air intake

Captured German war designs benefited the XF-92

Better late than never.  The F-102 performed admirably and at its peak it was flown by 26 squadrons of the US Air Defense Command.  It was more than an interim solution.  It was a world-class interceptor in its own right and it made a significant contribution to the history of Cold War aviation.

Tail bulge, or Marilyns, enabled supersonic flight

Related Topics:

MiG 17

MiG 21

Tu-95 Bear

F-104 Starfighter