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My father was CO of 318th in 1947 when he 'returned to the fold' and rejoined the AF. It was "all weather interceptor" and was scheduled to upgrade to P-61C but it was cancelled. The P/F -82 replaced the P-61s. I was two years old at Hamilton AFBSemantics! In 1947 when the Air Defense Command was established and later the Continental Air Command, the name/ mission of a "night fighter" was rolled into "all weather interceptor." I think the 318th Fighter-All Weather Squadron (which operated P/F-61s) were one of the first units that underwent this name change.
Think the Mk 6 was best of all Sabres. Wishful thinking to see what it would do in Korea. I was at a demonstration at Eglin when Hoover came to dispel concerns about max gross weight takoffs, He showed everything you could do wrong including rotating too early and finished with a perfect on the deck 8 point roll with full external combat tanks.There was a long pre history to that F-86 crash. The owner pilot tried to buy the aircraft from Fighter Imports at Chino but Leroy had a policy that you had to do x hours in one of his T-33s and reach a certain level of proficiency before he would sell you a Sabre. This guy flunked badly so he paid someone else to do Leroys program and buy the aircraft. The aircraft was then almost immediately taken over by the clown who flew it on its last flight.
This is a photo I took at Reno 72 of Leroy and one of his Canadair Sabres. His hand was injured minutes before he was to take off and demo the aircraft so he asked Bob Hoover to fly it instead. Bob demured at first but Leroy eventually convinced him. The resulting display was breathtaking as Bob used a hollow on the far side of the runway to do a low level pass with only the fin visible. I will try and find the photo.
View attachment 662736
Al, Redick Jim Noble, ??? and Leroy Penhall (with bandaged hand)
According to PLAAF pilots I had spoken to. But the situation seemed to have dramatically improved from the early 70's onward.
however the real bugging trouble was rather fitting it with the indigenous developed WP-6A engine, basically a license version of the Soviet Tumansky RD-9B engine starting the own production and further development in 1964/5 and it took them around 5-6 years to work it out and then even managed to improve the
original engine design.
From the 70's onward actually having a good and suitable aircraft for the PLAAF and PLANAF.
That was my fault, I really meant the A3D. Although I have heard that ejection form the A4D could be a bit hazardous due to camped cockpit.WHaaaat? How dare you
the A-4 Skyhawk is on my favorite US jet-list the number 3. and BTW where are the other 2-3 dead supposed to come from
Regards
Jagdflieger
Thanks! Great post. I think I even understood it.One of the problems of the early supersonic jets was the same problem the short wing B-26 had, improper training for higher performance, higher wing loading, faster landing aircraft. In the early supersonic jets, it was the wing design for supersonic flight, the earlier the planes the more problems. The supersonic wing has more in common with double edge sword than with sub supersonic classic airfoil design.
I'm going into a bit of advanced aerodynamics here but not much, since I'll bog myself down, its been a long time. Supersonic airflow does not behave like subsonic airflow. Bernoulli's principle does not apply. Venturi effect, pushing air through a venturi, a convergent aperture, accelerates velocity and reduces static pressure, does not apply, in fact it is reversed. This is apparent in the design of a modern rocket engine, at the combustion point, pressure is high, velocity is low. The gasses (subsonic) is pushed into a convergent nozzle, and, using the venturi effect, this will cause the velocity to increase and the pressure to decrease, until local Mach 1 is obtained. Then the process is reversed and as the now mach plus flow continues down the divergent nozzle velocity continues to increase and pressure decreases. See picture from http://sahil34935.blogspot.com/2013/03/nozzles.html. Note here, Mach is a function of temperature, and since at the Mach 1 point of the rocket engine the temperature is still very high, so is the velocity of Mach 1.
Now, let's get back to the supersonic wing design. The standard airfoil does not work for supersonic flight since the air going over the top of the wing accelerates more than the air under the wing and is more likely to get to Mach 1, and this causes all kinds of trouble. At zero angle of attack, the typical subsonic airfoil will usually still generate lift, sometimes even at a negative angle of attack it will, like a B-52 landing (see pix from wikipedia). The supersonic wing will typically generate no or minor lift at zero angle of attack. Because it is inefficient at low speed, Drag is high. This causes a danger when you are low and slow. A pilot can get to a point, usually during landing, of getting "behind the power curve". This is a point where your power available does not overcome the increased drag being experienced. This is more critical in the poor slow speed performance of the supersonic wing.
Now, back to the early supersonic jets. New pilots coming out of pilot training going into the F-100, learned to fly on a T-33 with its subsonic wing which probably flew final at about 140 mph, and stepped into the F-100 which flew final at about 173 mph. The old head stick, coming from the subsonic F-86F, which flew final at about 135 mph. Can you imagine Foreign pilots coming out of the F-84Fs, flying approach at 165 mph, stepping into the F-104 cockpit and flying final at 234 mph! Much faster speeds, more trickier wing, a good recipe of some problems.
I kinda guesstimated all the airspeed numbers, but I think you get the point.
Yep, when I hear that term, snags, snowkill and such in the woods are the first thing to come to mind.
Even when not working in the woods, it pays to look up and keep an eye out, especially when a wind comes up and starts knocking that stuff loose.
As far as aircraft goes,
.....
even the USMC's AV-8B.
In regards to the USMC AV-8B, in what conjunction was this aircraft, termed widow-maker?
Regards
Jagdflieger
The Class A mishap rate for the first model of the Harrier, the AV-8A, was astronomical -- 31.77 accidents per 100,000 hours. Notoriously unstable, it had a propensity for rolling over and slamming into the ground. Well over half were lost to accidents. One tragedy-scarred squadron dubbed the plane "the Widow-Maker."
.....
Promising dramatic improvement, the Marines replaced it with the more stable and capable AV-8B model in the mid-1980s.
.....
The lifetime accident rate for the Marines' AV-8B is 11.44 per 100,000 hours of flight, well over the combined rates for other attack and fighter planes flown during those years by the Marines, the Navy and the Air Force.
It is more than twice the lifetime accident rate of the Air Force's F-16 Fighting Falcon, a single-engine tactical aircraft like the Harrier that has been in service since 1979. It is nearly five times higher than the A-10 Warthog, an Air Force attack plane that has been flying since 1976. And it is more than 3 1/2 times the rate of the F/A-18 Hornet, a twin-engine combat plane flown since 1980 by the Navy and Marines that, like the Harrier, operates largely off ships.