Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

Gums,

This look kinda familiar?

The loud "hard" burner lights from those gals...

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Whoa! lotta fire in the missile launch! Looks like the missile grazed the bottom of the airplane and kept on going. Cool burner shot too.

Heh heh heh!

JR casts his wappalooza pike lure and ol' Gums bites!

That's the AIR Genie, not the Aim-4.

Only fired one successfully (second one had a motor mal and was a bomb!!!)

The Genie was ejected from a rack. The bay door rotated about 2 seconds before firing, then the carts fired, the thing went down a few feet, the lanyard pulled and the motor ignited.

Was not like all the slow-mo movies we had seen. The sucker zipped out smartly to about Mach 3 plus velocity of the Voodoo. It looked like a large tracer bullet!

*******************

Some war stories:

- we would fly target missions for other Voodoos at 49000 feet. USAF required pressure suits above 50K, hence ........

So we would cruise along at mach 1.15 or so using mil power on one engine and min AB on the other.

After other guy tried his snap up from 20 K, we would pull back to idle and descend back towards homeplate.

Was neat, as the sucker would remain supersonic in idle until we got below 30K or so. Not many jets besides the Zipper that could do that.

- On cold days, AB takeoffs had a problem due to the nose gear not wanting to retract forward, into the wind.

MacAir increased the hydraulic pressure on the nosegear.

Helped, but once below about zero F, was still a problem.

So we used to make mil power takeoffs once the computed roll was less than 2000 feet.

THINK ABOUT THAT YOU YOUNG SPROGS!

Zero to 200 mph in less than 2000 feet! Work out the gees.

- On cold, clear nights, AB takeoff, we would pull to about 30 degrees on the attitude indicator, then unload to about .87 gee ( work out the cosines and sines yourself).

Accelerate (yes, still accelerating) to 400 knots or mach 0.9 , then hold that until about 20K. AB flames in mirrors, really cool.

Bunt over gently and go supersonic about 23,000 feet, then hold it until mach 1.33 or so, then pull back up.

35000 feet in about two and a half minutes from brake release. Not bad for a jet in 1966, huh?

Those were the days my friends, and I savor them. 22 years old, full of piss and vinegar, a literal rocket to fly..............

out,

A friend of mine was a crew chief on one circa pre-Gums time frame Smile

He said it was a cool jet and was around some of the early ones where there was some kind of pitch control problem that was kinda dangerous but was mod'd or fixed or something right away by the people that know engineering stuff. Got both a interceptor and a photo one here at the musuem. Pretty neat looking and one of the more cool names for a jet lol.

That last photo is real nice JR.

What were the gizmos like for the backseater in the interceptor?

Obi-Gums speaketh!

'pitch-up', that's what it was called.

MacAir put the tail on the Phantom down below to prevent it from that phenomena. And BTW, note all of early MacAir names were demons - Demon, Banshee, Phantom, Voodoo, etc.

The VooDoo's main wing would send a vortex over that high, t-tail and the sucker(tail) would then see an angle of attack the wrong way. It would 'dig-in', and the nose would get higher and higher until you tumbled the jet.

So we had a pitch limiter to keep us a degree or so of AoA from pitch up. Manual Conrol Stick Limiter (MCSL). Then we had a CSL (Control Stick Limiter) that worked when we were flying about with the autopilot on - mode was called Control Stick Steering (CSS). Then we had the 'pusher'. It pushed the stick forward at 28 pounds of pressure if the gizmos detected a high pitch rate or AoA above some value. So when I got to the F-16, I had been there, done that with respect to pilot override features.

The Voodoo cruised at .78 or .8 mach up at altitude. If you rolled into a 30 deg bank at that speed, the thing actually began to buffet. You see, it was meant to fly real fast. Down low, no problem.

From a pilot perspective, I never had a problem with pitch-up, as the beast would warn you by buffeting and then wing-rock. I only had the nose get 'light' one time, due to my aggressive pull to get aimed at the target.

Was a neat jet for its time and its mission. More war stories to follow.

Gums wrote:

MacAir put the tail on the Phantom down below to prevent it from that phenomena. And BTW, note all of early MacAir names were demons - Demon, Banshee, Phantom, Voodoo, etc.

Mack McDonnell was a big fan of spectral forms, one of his interests, so he named his aircraft accordingly. The first one was the Moonbat, which although promising, never made it into production right at the end of WWII. What some poeple forget is that the F-4 was the second Phantom, the first was the FH1 Phantom, the Navy's first carrier jet.

I miss the days of 'theme' aircraft names from manufacturers. Grumman had Bearcats, Hellcats, Panthers, Tomcats; Vought had Cutlass, Crusader, Corsair; Boeing had the Flying/Super/Strato-fortress series; Lockheed had the Constellation, Shooting Star, Starfire, Starfighter, Orion, Galaxy, Starlifter; this could be an entire thread... (sigh)

My drive home from McDD (now McBoeing) takes me on Banshee Rd and Phantom Rd.

A neat bit of trivia for my fellow Voodoo buffs. The last 101 to make a USAF flight flew from Tyndall in 1982 (belonged to the 2nd FITS "Horny Horses") It flew up to Canada and 2 years later, made the last 101 flight for Canada. If I can dig up a tail number for you, I'll post it here. I know the jet is on display in Canada, and somewhere there are pics of the jet online. Always interesting to hear stories for former One Oh Wonders, Scope Wizards, and Voodoo Medicine Men. Where did you fly them Gums?

Quote:

What some poeple forget is that the F-4 was the second Phantom, the first was the FH1 Phantom, the Navy's first carrier jet.

It's actually amazing how many people give a funny look when they hear "F-4 Phantom II". Laughing

Corsair II, Thunderbolt II...

Dont Forget the original name fielded for the YF-22 Lightning II

And its counterpart in the ATF program the YF-23 Black Widow II.

I know about the Black Widow II story - did Northrop ever officially name the YF-23?

Every reference I can find on it always come back with the "Black Widow II" name. Im not sure if that was just the teams name for it or whether or not it was officially tagged on by the Company.

A good buddy of mine who was working at Lockheed-Martin on the F-22 project told me the company thought the name was set as "Lightning II" but the USAF refused it at the last moment. Matter of fact he told me Raptor was to be the name the day before the announcement. They were very upset at it, but there was nothing they could do.

He has sent me images of some of the promotional stickers LMCo had made for flight test and for the NATF version. Very interesting stuff. None of the stickers used the Lightning name yet though.

Kevin
The Ejection Site

Forum: Military Aircraft of the Cold War

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