Fighter: Flop or Not

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swampyankee said:
The USN had more than one not-entirely successful aircraft in that generation,but the F7U Cutlass was probably the worse.
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They didn't call it "the Gutless" for nothing. On a USAF base with two-mile runways and with a slightly shorter nose strut it MIGHT have worked....sort of.
Now how about a pair of J-79s?
Cheers,
Wes
 
fubar57 said:
Over a quarter destroyed in accidents and responsible for over 20 pilot deaths?
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Technically, the F8U had something like 50% destroyed in carrier-landings and it was considered a great aircraft.

Of course the F8U had a number of differences
  • It had a better forward visibility
  • It had a much better T/W ratio
  • It had a much more successful combat-record
  • It had a combat record
  • It had better PR (let's be honest, some aircraft get better reputations than others, and that reputation spreads -- the F-104 was better than most gave it credit for even though it definitely was lacking some things)
......the alphabetized list of what is wrong with the XF7U-3 is so long, they had to start the alphabet over
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The pitfall of using alphabetized lists
Pilots with short arms have difficulty reaching the power lever in the MAXIMUM thrust position.
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Human factors issues are often neglected, when they are in fact so important.
Shortround6 said:
How much of the blame is due to the engines? and how much to the layout of the aircraft?
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And how much to the Navy?

Keep in mind
  • They selected Vought over McDonnell
  • They selected Vought's tailless design over the tailed-design seeing it, ironically, as lower risk.
For example the F-102 was lighter (clean) had a lot more wing area and it's reliable single engine gave over 25% more thrust (non afterburning) than the two engines in the F7U.
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It's interesting how the F7U's weight creeped up so much from the initial estimates and when the contract was signed, to when the aircraft began testing to operational service.
swampyankee said:
The USN had more than one not-entirely successful aircraft in that generation,but the F7U Cutlass was probably the worse.
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I beg to differ, the F6U was way worse... it didn't even enter service
 
The F6U wasn't really an airplane, more like a winged turd.
 
F-89 vrs _______?????
F-86D
F-94
F-102

first designed as such, jet all weather interceptor (Night fighter) and as such did NOT require fast climb to altitude as it was supposed to be already in the air when the enemy arrived.

So what else could do the job and how much of the 'failure' of the F-89 was due to either engines or weapons systems.
 
The F-89 had the most capable AI radar that had been attempted up to its time, able to do deflection and head on shots in addition to the traditional tail chase approach. With the electronics of the time, this entailed a heavy, bulky, power-hungry radar and fire control computer. Add to that the engines dictated by USAF didn't develop as projected, and the "barrage of little rockets" weapons system had issues, and it's a wonder it ever reached service status. Only in the pressure cooker of the cold war with Tupoleva-phobia running rampant! A program with that many issues wouldn't survive today. Makes F-35 seem a piece of cake.
Eventually it got sorted out and with the later Genie and Falcon missiles achieved some level of respectability. Our local Air Guard had them and found them to be a maintenance nightmare. But they got so good at it they were designated a rework facility and upgraded all the AF's F89s to the newer missiles. Flop,...or not? Eyes of the beholder.
Cheers,
Wes
 
During the 1950s, technology was changing so rapidly that an aircraft could be obsolescent before the ink on the final specs dried. I think somebody could write a paragraph claiming that the AJ Savage, A3D, B-66, F6U, F7U, F-94, F-104, C-5 (it took the USAF longer to get tanks from the US to Israel by C-5 than it took Israeli merchant ships to do so), C-133, F3D Demon, (it looks like the Navy does worse here....), and many others were flops and somebody, with equal conviction and equal validity could write that they weren't (well, it would be very hard to write a defense of the F6U Flying Turd) .

Later, it's more difficult, mostly as relatively few development programs were run, but also because engine and and aerodynamic technology are more mature. But then, there was the A-12 Dorito Chip.
 

F3H Demon (got the name and designation wrong ). Its big problem seemed to be its engines. Like a lot of aircraft of the era, it got bitten by the crappy Westinghouse J40, then the barely acceptable J71; the quite good J57 wouldn't fit and the J79 wasn't ready yet (and early versions of that engine had their own issues). The F3D was never designed as a high-performance aircraft, so the fact that it was a slouch wasn't surprising.

I think that you're absolutely right in the problem being a mix of the Navy's more demanding environment and problems with their procurement process. One problem was certainly the Navy's insistence on the Westinghouse J40, which was probably showing itself a failure well before some of these designs were fixed, although I think the F7U Cutlass also had some serious problems related to its configuration, which no amount of power could fix.

Flops due to engine: F3H Demon
Flops due to configuration: F7U Cutlass
Flops in original role: F-84, A3J Vigilante (impracticality of the "tunnel" bomb bay)
Flops due to bad design: F6U Cutlass

Two more nebulous categories are aircraft that were "flops" because they had superior contemporaries and those because they were badly specified The first group probably includes the AM Mauler and the F11F, among USN aircraft, and possibly the F-101 for the Air Force. The second group -- excluding those where the Westinghouse J40 was specified -- may include things like the F2Y Sea Dart and the P6M SeaMaster, although neither got past flight testing.
 

Vought seemed to dislike average-height pilots: some reports said the Corsair's cockpit setup was difficult to use for a pilot under about 6 ft tall, and the seat wasn't vertically adjustable, making the forward visibility problem even worse. Median (and average) height of US white males was about 5 ft 8 in tall; Vought was designing for a fairly small minority of the naval aviator pool
 
On the subject of flops, one has to consider the timing of an aircraft among other things. The F-89 may very well have not performed as well as hoped but what else was available to perform the the same mission/s in the same years NOT what was available even two or three years later.
The threat of nuclear armed Russian bombers was all too real in the very late 40s and during the 50s and a variety of defense systems were rushed into service, many of them too quickly but waiting for perfection (or even decent reliability) meant no defense at all for a number of years.

The F-89 went through 4 different but sometimes overlapping armament systems and a number of different radar/fire control "computers" (and in the days of vacuum tubes/valves that was a nightmare) so one has to be careful about calling the entire program a "Flop".
Some combinations worked better than others.
Over 30 USAF squadrons used at least some version of the F-89 and while service use alone is no guarantee of success (or non-flop status see F7U) the last F-89s did not leave ANG service until 1968/69 (drone use lasted longer) so a service life of over 15 years has to count for something.
I would also note the curious fact that most of the F-89 use was in the northern states, defending against threats coming in over the arctic.
Maintenance being rather difficult a fair amount of the time. (changing vacuum tubes or circuit boards in Minnesota in December?)
 
Shortround6 said:
(changing vacuum tubes or circuit boards in Minnesota in December?)
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How about Limestone Maine, or Thule Greenland?

Reference Swampyankee's "potential flop list", one could argue that the F8's and RA5's tendency to "flop" onto carrier decks or into the water off the angledeck would qualify them as legitimate flops. The Crusader suffered an inordinate number of landing gear failures, and the Vigilante was such an unwieldy beast in approach configuration that it was prone to unsuccessful bolters, ramp strikes, cable breaks, and all sorts of flight deck mayhem. The Vige had the highest landing weight, highest approach speed, and wobbliest approach of any jet in the fleet. It was called "the Ensign eater" and "the LSO's curse", and became off limits to first-tour pilots. With two J79s like an F4, it weighed 20,000 lbs more, cruised 30 knots faster, had an hour more endurance, and nearly twice the kinetic impact on the arresting gear. Its limited maneuverability made it SAM fodder, and it joined the Thud on the EPA list of endangered species of birds. Nothing, except maybe the Thud, could touch it for "speed in the weeds". But it was arguably the prettiest tactical jet ever made. Certainly the prettiest flop on the list. Eyes of the beholder again.
Cheers,
Wes

PS: And oh yes, the Sea Dart and Seamaster never finished flight test due to a political decision not to pursue that avenue of sea/air power.
 
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The A3J/A5 Vigilante would have been a great aircraft if it had a sensible bomb bay system and some land-based air force took put it into service as a strike aircraft. Beautiful airplane, easily the prettiest strike aircraft built (well, it's competition includes the Tornado and the F-111, neither of which would win a beauty pageant....) but stuffed with bleading edge electronics, aerodynamics, and even materials (Al-Li alloys!)

And for the Sea Dart and Seamaster? It may have been a political decision, but the politics may have been more within the USN than on Capital Hill.
 
swampyankee said:
And for the Sea Dart and Seamaster? It may have been a political decision, but the politics may have been more within the USN than on Capital Hill
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The Seamaster and its escort were a threat to almighty SAC and its monopoly on the Strategic Nuclear Deterrent. Gospel according to SAC was that SND rendered the Navy and the Marines obsolete. After Korea there would be no more "conventional" war. In that they were correct; they just didn't realize how wrong they could be.
Cheers,
Wes
 
swampyankee said:
The A3J/A5 Vigilante would have been a great aircraft if it had a sensible bomb bay system and some land-based air force took put it into service as a strike aircraft.
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That tubular bomb bay was designed with the idea of ejecting the bomb while going supersonic at zero altitude without endangering the aircraft. (Time delay of course) The designers' "slipstick math" failed to accurately predict the power of the slipstream pocket behind the aircraft.
If you've ever seen a Vige with all its panels stripped and engine bays empty you'd understand why it was structurally impossible to retrofit a conventional bomb bay without burdening an already overweight aircraft with intolerable additional weight. The Vige was one of a very small fraternity of aircraft designed to deliver nuclear ordnance at extreme low level in excess of mach 1. Most mach-capable nuclear bombers were limited to weapons release at high subsonic speeds.
Cheers,
Wes
 

I would never have considered retrofitting a conventional bomb bay as that would be a clean-sheet design of the fuselage; that's a different aircraft. The bomb tunnel was an unconventional solution that seemed to be a Good Idea at the Time, and would have gotten the head of the design team kudos had it worked right (and everybody would have copied it. Somebody was the first person to come up with the conventional bomb bay). There were also mechanical problems with the bomb tunnel which were pretty much impossible to correct, leading to the tunnel contents remaining behind during some catapult launches. For the aero issues, the only thing they could have done -- and they should have, as it was known that the flow in that region of the aircraft was very complex, almost certainly unsteady, and anything ejected from the tunnel would need to go through there, possibly with the engines in afterburner or with one engine inoperative -- was a lot of tunnel testing. The problem with that is that this would require a complex model, accurately replicating the flow around the rear of the aircraft, including the jet flows. This would probably require something like the Variable Density Wind Tunnel to get to the full-scale Reynolds' number. Stores ejection is a pretty difficult problem from either external carriage or from conventional bomb bays; there are fixes for either that can be added during flight testing without too much impact on the air frame. I don't think they could have gotten the bomb tunnel to work aerodynamically without major redesign of the rear end of the aircraft.

Magnificent aircraft, though.

The Good Idea at the TimeTM​ is probably one of the more fertile bases for flopdom.

Onto a more unambiguous flop, although it may be before the time frame: the Curtiss SO3C!
 
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Well, within the Pentagon, then. Armed forces are bureaucracies, and the most important battle they have is for funding, preferably at the expense of their rivals.
 
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