Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

Hi

Curious - when the F-106 had the 20mm gun installed in the aft missile bay, was it still possible for it to carry AIM-4's in the front part of the bay?

Tried to search many places for the answer, but without luck, so now I try here Wink

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I believe "Project Six-Shooter" retained full missile capabilities for the Six. I do not remember how many 106s received the modification for installing the gun.

Thanks - this means that it is possible to model an F-106 with both gun and AIM-4's?

It would have been better if they had armed it with a weapon it could actually hit something with. Very Happy

regards, OL

You don't really have to hit anything directly when your Genie rocket could take the whole formation down in one shot! Other than that, the Falcon was a POS. Laughing

IIRC, we have a resident F-106 pilot (Gums). Maybe he'll honor us his stories and clear up this question.

Gums flew the Deuce and the Voodoo, but not the Six. However, they are similar weapon systems, and from that, I'm sure he has some valuable knowledge.

“Six-shooter” bubbled the canopy & put an M-61 in the weapons bay in place of the nuke.

The intent was to turn it into a dogfighter. (I've fought 'em. It really wasn't.)

While the nuke did leave a large margin for accuracy error, nukes going off here and there in a furball would have been at best annoying and in the least somewhat impractical overall. "Two, watch out, here goes another one." “Where did I put that eye patch?” ("I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed.")

The AIM-4 was called the “Hughes Arrow” because you had to hit the other pilot in the heart. It had no proximity fuse. You had a relatively long cooling time before it would acquire and I believe also that once you cooled it, you had a very limited amount of time to use it or you had to drag it home. So you closed the bay on what had been intended as a hot launch or maybe they just jettisoned them? I don't know.

The Delta Dart’s best weapon was the original forward canopy spar which was intended to be used to ram and slice through a Soviet bomber’s wing as a last resort.

It was beautiful and fast but it needed a reliable radar missile, all-aspect AIM-9’s and a true "internal" gun. Where have we heard that before?

However, I defer to Gums also.

regards, OL

I did some homework and found a picture of the gun.

It looks like most of the gun system is internal to the bay, but a special fairing allows the business end of the M-61 to be available with the trapeze bay completely closed.

Doesn't look draggy, much better than the SUU-23 pods.

The doors did have to be open to fire the AIM-4's. Could it hard maneuver with the doors open or would they have had to hang better heaters under the wing?

Something else occurred to me. Could you switch from heat to guns quickly with the doors open?

regards, OL

Salute!

We have a 106 wrench-bender here, so I defer to the expertise regarding actual mechanical installation.

1) The 106 canopy was re-designed at the same time they added the cannon in order to provide better vis and the "ram" concept might have been an urban legend. The Deuce had same canopy design, but I think it was more for aero considerations than "ramming". Ask John-boy about this.

2) The 106 had both the AIM-26 nuke-u-lar Falcon, plus the Genie. The Genie had to be ejected, then the rocket motor ignited when a long, long lanyard removed a sliver of metal to close the electric circuit. Same for the VooDoo, which I flew. The Scorpion launched its Genies off of a rail and had better theoretical accuracy. In any case, I fired a Genie one day at Tyndall and the sucker scraped the paint off of the drone before exploding out in front as it was supposed to.

The AIM-26 came off of a rail, so prolly a smooth launch.

3) The Falcon missiles did not have a sensor fuze. They had to actually hit the target.

The AIM-4 was ahead of the 'winder at that time, as it had a "cooled" sensor and much better maneuverability. Unfortunately, the launch sequence was designed for the 101, 102 and 106 armament system. Integrating it on the Phantom was a bitch, although the thing did prove to be more accurate than the 'winder or Sparrow.

For example: The ADC birds cooled the sensor when the rails extended, without any special pilot switch actions. So we had "x" seconds to fire or the thing wasn't cooled. The Phantom installation required the pilot or GIB to command cooling prior to launch. The AIM-4 also locked on before launch or wouldn't go, best I remember. When we were evaluated on inspections, the weapon simulator would show if the thing had actually "seen" the target.

later,

Gums sends ...

Boman wrote:

Hi

Curious - when the F-106 had the 20mm gun installed in the aft missile bay, was it still possible for it to carry AIM-4's in the front part of the bay?

Tried to search many places for the answer, but without luck, so now I try here Wink

http://www.f-106deltadart.com/weapons.htm

Scroll down to the M-61 section and click on the pictures.

I'm just curious. Are you going to model it with doors open so you can see the AIM-4's or are you going to model it with the doors closed so the gun stands out underneath? Doors open kinda hides the gun between where the AIM-4's would go it looks like.

regards, OL

(BTW do you know what that thing hanging on the right wing in the in-flight picture is?)

Hi Outlaw and thanks

Have checked those pics, but without finding the answer to my question - sorry! Shrug

As for your question - the missile under the right wing is an AGM-78 STARM, Wild Weasel weapon normally seen on F-105G's and F-4G's til mid-80's

http://www.mcchordairmuseum.org/PIC%20P ... GUNPOD.htm

I forgot the picture with the AIM-4's in it. But you're asking about the two in front aren't you?

The McChord museum specifications reference kind of implies they could carry all four AIM-4's with EITHER the Genie OR the gun, but no pics of all four with the gun. You got me.

regards, OL

WOW - that was more than I had ever hoped to see!

Excellent Not Worthy

Incredably cool to see the '6 armed with more than just AIM-4's, makes me almost become a believer in this plane Cheers

TC wrote:

You don't really have to hit anything directly when your Genie rocket could take the whole formation down in one shot! Other than that, the Falcon was a POS. Laughing

Just a quick "go back" for this old thread. Keep in mind that the AIM4 was the first AAM in USAF inventory and was designed specifically to shoot down bombers (which it was good at on paper and in drone tests). It's airframe and control surfaces did not suit the dogfight role even though the AIM-4D (the so called dogfight version) did shoot down 5 aircraft in Vietnam.

The airframe limitations along with the lack of proximity fuse is why it was poor as anything but a bomber killer.

Regards,
Sixshooter

Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

F-106 - Gun and AIM-4's combined?