Hi thanks a lot for your comments I am the pilot seen that film 23 years after My last flight on that machine before flying the Super Étendard Nice souvenir Jeg
Hello ... quelques années plus tard .. et après bien de péripéties ... que de souvenirs... je me souviens bien de vous du temps où j'étais contrôleur à Landi .. Ah toute une époque cdlt Ch ODIER
This was wonderful. From 1975-1977 I was one of a handful of engineers providing depot-level support to USN Crusaders, and I've loved the plane ever since. I feel extraordinarily lucky to have had the chance to be involved with it at all. By the time I got there, our Navy only had about 30 RF-8G photo-reconnaissance aircraft, but we did get one DF-8 drone controller, so I got a look at the fighter version. The pilot in this video put on the absolute best performance I've ever seen from a Crusader - it brought actual tears to my eyes to see it doing so incredibly well in the air, just a couple of years before the last ones were finally retired. What a plane!
I've always wanted to see a Crusader howl about so this video is special to me too, never thought stuff like this would be available to look up in 2019...I am too young to have ever seen many aircraft fly. Very lucky to have seen a flying QF-4 once 15 years ago in Tucson. Barely saw the Tomcat before it disappeared.
This is the best F-8 Crusader flight demonstration I have ever seen! That is one incredible pilot, he is definitely max performing the aircraft! Thanks for posting😁👍
@@t1fou And so was the F-4, and that jet is hardy agile. There were Gloster Gladiator pilots in WWII which were able to shoot down Bf 109s but that doesnt really prove anything except any plane can shoot down any other plane in the right circumstances. Although to be honest your example is more like saying "the Bf 109 was even able to shoot down the very maneuverable Gloster Gladiator biplane in several dogfights!". Yes, that is strictly accurate. Yes, the Bf 109 shot down numerous Gladiators. Yes, the Gladiator is much more maneuverable than the high-speed Bf 109. But no one seems to think it very amazing or impressive that the much faster, newer Bf 109 was able to routinely destroy the Gladiator, because speed and rate of climb were immediately found to be much more important in winning in aerial combat, and the Gladiator was left far behind in those areas. The Mi-17 was much older and slower than the F-8. So its not at all impressive that the F-8 was "even able" to shoot down Mi-17s, its much more impressive that several MiG-17s were able to shoot down F-8s.
I grew up close to a French Air Force base and with the years I have been managed to recognize the different types of jets that were taking off by the sound they were making before I could see them (Mirage F1, Mirage 2000, Mirage IV, Jaguar etc). I remember that sometimes I heard engines roaring at the begining of the runway and all of a sudden a big "BOOM", then I knew that some French Navy Crusader have made a stop at the base and got ready to take off. The "boom" was the afterburner being cranked :)
Thanks for posting this! A nice demo flight with a REAL sound track better than any music that could be put in its place! I've read there are a few ex French Navy Crusaders in the States so hopefully we'll get to see one perform again one day.
Yes it was the good time of the meetings and open days in France where the ears were not shattered by the music ... the real sound, the true atmosphere of the airfields. To my knowledge, there are no French crusaders preserved in the United States. Below is a list not completely updated of French crusader preserved in museum f8-crusader.com/index.php?act=42
It did indeed, my house was under their route when they’d fly from Toulon to Brittany, sometimes it was a full escadrille that would zoom above us, sometimes not too high above, sometimes not too slow either ;)
Awesome. One of my favourite aircraft. An absolute firecracker in its day! I always think military pilots getting to fly vintage aircraft are lucky. No fly by wire, just honest skill. It would be just like getting to drive a vintage Jaguar or Porsche. You’d make the real drivers green with envy in their flash new Lexus.
The F-8 was actually the first fighter to have FBW installed, it was a testbed for that technology. If they had put FBW in along with the engine mod described below, it would have been something for sure. There was a group called Thunderbird Aviation, out of Arizona, back in the 1990s. They had put together two flyable F-8s, though only one was actually flown. It was used for military contract flying, and also they did some air shows with it. What they did was put an uprated J57-P420 in it that they got from the Marine Corps. This jet had a 1:1 thrust to weight ratio with 5,000 lbs of fuel on board. It was a real beast. They flew it against current USAF jets...it would run a clean F-15 straight out of gas, and it would literally walk away from an F-16 at lower altitudes. The pilots who flew this thing reported that it was more than a match for those planes in the right hands. Here's more from those pilots who flew it: www.vfp62.com/Thunderbird_F8.html
love the howl those j57s had. quite similar to the J79. also, i notice the radar interference in the video from the airport radar....it use to do this to my moms cavalier when we drove by the airport here XD
Merci pour cette chouette archive. ...''sur les porte avions français''... On n'imagine pas une telle aisance quand on le regarde au sol. Il a un fuselage assez massif mais une silhouette tout à fait moderne. Je ne crois pas qu'il y en ait un à Savigny les Beaunes mais il y en a un beau à l'entrée de Landivisiau. Je m'étais pointé un jour tout naïf pensant qu'il y avait un espace public, pour touristes, une librairie.. :-)) un endroit pour spotter au moins... Même pas ils étaient tous en Lybie ou en Syrie.
Finally a video with the sound of an F-8! It’s great to see this video of a great aerobatic demonstration of a Crusader. I grew up seeing F-8’s at Los Alamitos Naval air station in Calif.during the 1960’s when I was a kid. I think they were just visiting though as they were in the minority after the A-4 and F-4 there. There’s nothing like that howl/screech except maybe a legacy Hornet. I look forward to the day that I might get to see a civilian F-8 fly but I hope it’s soon-I’m getting old. Why the Blue Angels didn’t use them after the F-11 Tiger is a mystery to me.
What an awesome demo, thanks for posting. Growing up in 80s/90s in States we never got to see the F-8 in action. The last handful of RF-8s were retired in 1987, superseded by F-14 TARPS. What a glorious thing it would be to see an F-8E or F-8J restored to flying conditions. Maybe even swap the J-57 turbojet with an F100 or F110 turbofan. The F-8 was the Mig Master
That literally doesnt even make sense. You are calling missiles "knives" vs the F-8s guns, even though the missile is able to kill at a much longer range than cannons, and ALL of the F-8s OPPONENTS carried cannon, usually more powerful and reliable than the F-8's so the F-8 is hardly the only one showing up with them. Its more like missiles are rifles: the Sparrow is an M-14, the AIM-9 is an auto pistol, and cannons are a bowie knife. Therefore the F-4 is a guy with an M-14 and a pistol, and the F-8, his teammate, is carrying an pistol and a KaBar. But his KaBar's blade is really dull, because he only brought it for opening ration tins, not expecting to have to use it in combat (like the F-8s cannons, which were only included for strafing ground targets, and which therefore were not designed for firing during high G air combat maneuvers, which made them jam, frequently. The team's opponents are the nimble and fast MiG-21 with a pistol and bowie knife (in most versions), and the slower but even more agile MiG-17, which carries a big, razor sharp 12 bowie knife and nothing else. This is why the F-4 and F-8 made almost all of their kills with their rifle and pistols, because the missiles ARE the Guns At The Knife Fight. The MiG, being limited to just a pistol had to ambush attack the US jets to kill them, and it was even worse for the 17, with nothing but a autocannon "knife". By leaping down out from the trees onto an F-8s back and slitting its throat, it could, and did, get a few kills, but as you would expect, this failed mroe often than it worked, and the F-8 just turned around and popped him with his pistol like Indiana Jones did the dude with the swords. The F-8 was not the only jets with guns, nor did they actually give it much real advantage. They werent even inteneded for use in air combat. Just that the military decided it WAS good to give their jets a big combat knife, , just like the soldiers: mostly for openin cans and probing for mines, but also available for those rare occasions when you need to sneak up and slit someones throat. But they dont issue them as primary arms to anyone, because that would be stupid.
Excellent performance from a jet which dated from the 1950's... There was a Marine Reserve F-8 squadron at NAS Atlanta that flew them into the middle 1970's...but not as well as that..
Does anyone have video of the RF-8 doing its vertical loop at an airshow while firing photo flash canisters? Anyone else ever see that? That was an impressive performance…and loud!!
First flew in 1955, and the pilot took it supersonic on that first flight. It went on to be a world beater, with the best kill ratio of all fighters in Vietnam--even including the enemy planes. In fact, Thunderbird Aviation put two flyable Crusaders together in the 1990s, though they only flew one. They had a detuned engine for it, and when they were able to get a proper J57-P420 installed, it would accelerate cleanly away from an F-16 even at low level, and it would also run a clean F-15 out of gas. The pilots were long time US Navy Crusader jocks and apparently this old jet could still more than hold its own in the early 90s against current USAF fighters.
This SUPERSONIC US Navy Aircraft existed and set records beating the Air Force Speed records and LONG BEFORE the USAF's F-16 Aircraft was designed. US Naval Aviation Standards.
Even the Soviets considered it to be the best US fighter of the late 50s. This plane had the same engine as the USAF's F-100---the J-57---yet, it did everything better than the F-100 could. Faster, higher, further, quicker, shorter takeoff roll, shorter landing roll...It turned better too.
oh que si ... plusieurs accidents ... mais cela reste un des avions les meilleurs de cette génération... j'en même vu un dans la fin des années 80 faire un "dog fight" avec un F18 canadien ... et en moins de 50 secondes le F18 a été virtuellement abattu .. il faut dire que lepilote du "Cruze" c'était le pilote le plus qualifié sur la machine .. un as
Heard a different story from French navy officers. Off the record, they would complain the thing would be a gas and spare parts guzzler and a servicing nightmare-on top of being able of only one sort of mission-interception. They were relieved when the Cruse was phased out and replaced by the more flexible Rafale : multi missions and twice the range for less weight, not to mention the in flight refuelling capacity.
I mean this is 1950s aircraft that was considered outdated after Vietnam. Look at an even later aircraft the F-14 and it was a maintenance as well. You can't compare an aircraft that first flew in the mid 1950s to an aircraft that first flew in the later 1980s.
