F-8 Crusader or F-105 Thunderchief

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That's what I have read too. It was a field expedient change that was not DoD authorized. Rationale for getting approval was for ground attack operations, but initiators of the project had a real goal of testing them against MiGs. Once they had proven them successful in fighter sweeps, they then lobbied congress for monies to properly integrate a gun into the airframe to get the performance up to peak.
 
I guess the pod at high speed would actually distort and throw lead all over the sky. On the TV show "Dogfights" I believe they spoke of this and I think Lou Drendel mentioned this in his book "And Kill MiGs."
 
I think it was a vibration problem induced by eddy currents. Even though they had three stations for attaching gun pods (centerline and both wings), they only used the centerline station for planned air-to-air engagements. I recall them noting that the pod resulted in a huge drag upon the airplane and thus range was severely curtailed. Operations were well planned with missile carrying escorts in close proximity as wingmen and top cover too.
 
FLYBOYJ said:
From what I understand the gun pod on the F-4 was not an accurate weapon - comments?
Click to expand...

I remember seeing a tv show about the F4 that showed a segment of video of the gun pod firing. There was several inches of movement up/down/ side to side. It's no wonder it was fairly inaccurate.
 
Messy1 said:
I remember seeing a tv show about the F4 that showed a segment of video of the gun pod firing. There was several inches of movement up/down/ side to side. It's no wonder it was fairly inaccurate.
Click to expand...
I've seen that video several times too.
This clip shows the gun pod firing and the up/down/ side to side motion you mention.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXI8bo0lfDo


Wheels
 
I had the good fortune of having started a thread on the ARC forum pertaining to the F-105.

An amazing amount of information that came out of it. The question was really, why the F-105 was not also sold to any other nation.

We got into things like: was it a SAC a/c or should it be TAC?

A fighter with an internal bomb bay in TAC? maybe not
Not 4+ engines? no way in SAC

That started out as an interesting discussion all by itself as well

Ivan
 
To simplify - TAC was subordinate to SAC and treated as a bastard stepchild.

The 'mission for the F-105 was to be able to penetrate low and deliver via toss bomb technique one nasty nuc. The secondary mission was tactical air support with large external load.

As to saleability - the F-105 line was shut down in 1965(?) and almost exactly 1/2 of the fleet was lost in Vietnam.. They were still the fastest low level ship in the world and pretty damn fast at altitude so it had value remaining as a nuclear capable ship... so we weren't selling ours to anybody else and they started transition to Nasty Guard in 1972+ timeframe.

The favorite message of the Red Flag Thud Drivers to chasing F-16/15's on the deck was 'check your 12' because they weren't gonna catch up.
 
Apparantly, they tried to sell the F-105 but no interest.

Not like the F-104, but there the "incentive" to the German Defence minister may have helped a bit.

It is strange with the naming. If the ppurpose was one big nuke, it could (should?) have been B-105. The F-111 is another one, which I would not like to call a fighter.

Despite the losses, I also think F-105 had a lot of capabilities. Maybe it was also starting to be late in the day for the Century series approach and newer approaches came into play. F4 coming online. F-14/15 thinking coming into play, etc.

Ivan
 
Comparing F-8 and F-105 cannot be a fair comparison. Different mission profiles as far as I know. Exactly as has been said above.

A fair comparison could be F-104 vs. F-105 (at least in the nuclear bomb tossing role)or F-8 vs Mirage III (?).

Ivan
 
The F105 did fairly well in the wild weasel role. I don't think the F8 could have done that. But then, the F105 was not designed as a dog fighter and the F8 as a tactical bomber.
 
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