Sea Sabres; The North American FJ Furys 

Keeping it simple

The skyraider was such a great little bomb-truck. What a legend. External hardpoints for up to 8,000 lbs of ordinance. For reference, that is the B-17's max internal bombload. Succeeded by the douglas A-4 skyhawk, which managed to fill the comically large shoes that the A-1 left, and then some.

yes. many WW2 aircraft survived the war and soldiered on for years longer (C-47, P-51, F4U, A-1, A-26, etc.). Then you had this short era of rapid development following WW2 in which aircraft service lives were sometimes shorter than their WW2 ancestors. Lots of designs, lots of failures and some successes. And then coming out of the late 50s and into the 60s we got a series of aircraft that just won't die. A-4, U-2, C-130, B-52, and many more. we went from aircraft lasting 6-30yrs, to lasting 1-3yrs, to lasting decades.

@@NikeaTiber Good call! Many people fail to give the A-4 due diligence. It was small and easy to store in a carrier hanger or conduct deck ops. It wasn’t a supersonic monster just a capable little bomber that kept doing its job, just ask the Brits/Argentines at the Falklands. The A-4 was the Toyota Tacoma of bomb trucks. 😂

​@@damndirtyrandy7721 correction: Toyota Hilux

If the designers were required to make the initial flights then poorly thought out planes like the F7U would never have been proposed.

Those F8 known for noshing on deck crew.

@@rosiehawtrey He never carrier qual'd with one...but on the flight deck and in the air they were intimidating. Check out the videos of 60s flight ops... amazing.

@@rosiehawtrey In the late 1960s I worked on F8 Crusader avionics systems before and after test flights. When that plane engages its afterburner it soared like a rocket.

My dad flew the FJ-4 and FJ-4B in 1966, by then redesignated F1-E and AF1-E. Though technically not a supersonic jet, he said that he also broke the sound barrier in a dive, glad to get confirmation that that’s possible. He flew 29 different planes in his 10 years in the Navy and the Fury was one of his favorites. He said “it LOOKS like a jet!”

Curtis LeMay was quoted as saying that while the Soviet Air Force was the rival of the US Air Force, the Navy was the enemy of the US Air Force.

I think someone's pulling your leg. The Migs at the time had no radar, so a radar receiver would not have been necessary.

​@@memonk11 didn't the F-86 have a small rearward facing radar to warn pilots about enemys on their tail? Actualy, I am pritty sure that even late war P-51s had that feature.

@@jakobc.2558 Not that I'm aware of. And a radar warning on a P-51 would have been inconceivable.

@@memonk11 You should educate yourself a bit before stating things so matter-of-factly. The AN/APS-13 tail warning radar system was deployed mainly on the P-47 but also on many mid- to late-model P-51s. They were withdrawn from service in mid-1944 after the Germans deployed the FuG 227 passive radar reciever, which allowed the Luftwaffe to easily locate flights of escort fighters. The TWR system - just to clarify on this as you seem confused, judging by your statement regarding the MiG’s lack of radar - was not a receiver system. As in, it didn’t pick-up on other radar signals in any way. All it did was alert the pilot when it’s own ‘beam’ was interrupted (ostensibly by an aircraft approaching from the rear). This warning took the form of a chiming alarm and the AN/APS-13 could be toggled on and off by the pilot, in case they were flying in-formation and didn’t care to listen to alarm bells. I’m sure a TWR was considered for the F-86, but I’m sure the line of thinking was that if the Luftwaffe could ‘hack’ the system, so could the Soviets.

@@memonk11 No, the radar was thought to be in the tail of the Sabre. My source was the Smithsonian Aviation magazine which I think is a good source.

Arguably the best of the breed...

@Yulis You can call it imperial, but it's not a matter of ego. Both the Canadian and Australian Sabre outperformed the US original thanks to better engines. The latter also swapped the obsolete machine guns for autocannon.

Maybe the Navy had better shots and didn't need the rate of fire that the Air Force did? 😜

The filthy trail of exhaust coming out the back of a Sabre was one giveaway.

@@jimdavis8391 Disnt Mig-15 have a horizontal stabilizer mounted on the top of the vertical??Another clue… but agree that to the majority of people you couldn’t be 💯 at distance..

With a little practice, recognition is pretty easy. Wing sweep angle, the size of the vertical stabilizer, the position of the horizontal stabilizer, the placement fore and aft of the wing. I'm sure the pilots at the time could differentiate a Sabre from a MiG at a couple of miles range in a split second. Recognition is an EXTREMELY powerful feature of the human brain. Think of how you can pick a familiar face out of a crowd. It's only been very recently that computers have come close to a human's recognition ability.

Also, the Canadair Sabre. The mark 6 generally considered to be the ultimate Sabre version.

Later export versions of the Sabre Dog (the F-86K) resolved these issues and saw good service with foreign air arms (the French used them for sure)

I was about to say I tended to agree but had second thoughts & did some checking. Turns out 'though both F9F & FJ4 were fairly similar in performance although the FJ4 edged it in all parameters in range / flight endurance the FJ4 seems far superior. So, I think its the other way around the Cougar wasn't as good as the Fury. BUT - and this is IMPORTANT - Kevin Bloody Wilson has a *great song about a Cougar* 😋

​@@babboon5764you're probably right, I just mean probably the general ruggedness of the Cougar probably made it perfectly fine for shipboard use, and it already came in its earliest versions standard with the four 20mm cannon like the Panther. I just assumed maybe the Fury would have bad sea legs like the Seafire.

Australian F86s had 4x 20mm canon. I'm not sure about missiles. Ours were called the CAC-27 as we built most of our own

@@sergeipohkerova7211 The Seafire's main problems were it's non adjustable flaps and the weakness and narrowness of their landing gear. Also the Seafire was better landed on it's mains with the tail somewhat low but not 3 point, with it's tailhook this dynamic meant that it was better to 3 point land it but you are deep into stall while bringing it in with the tail that low. Which the Panther shared none of these problems, their trike gear were wide enough and quite strong and the had a very effective set of flaps and airbrakes.

The F-6 was the post 1962 designation for the Douglas F4D Skyray. Post 1962 the FJ-3 became the F-1C, FJ-4 became the F-1E, and the FJ-4B became the AF-1E.

And the Indian's Folland Gnats nailed a few of the Pakistani Sabres That said - All 3 were excellent aircraft. The results reflect a combination of factors. Who saw who first, who had the height advantage, what their status (fuel load & armaments) were at the time etc..

This would be the basis for a great video !! Compare muzzle velocity, velocity drop at various distances, trajectories, projectile weight, rounds per second rate of fire of the system, gap between each round at the various distances, etc. One advantage of the six .50 MGs was the sheer number of projectiles in the stream . Less likelyhood of the target flying through a gap in the bullet stream. During WWI they discovered that upping the rate of fire dramatically increased hits.

10 F-86s were tested in Korea with four FMC T-160 20mm revolver cannon (which had a significantly higher ROF than the Navy's Colt Mk 12) instead of the usual six .50 cal. This was highly successful and the T-160 was adopted as the M39, which became the standard armament for the F-86H, along with the F-100 Super Sabre, F-101 Voodoo, and F-5 Freedom Fighter/Tiger II.

@@RedXlV GUNVAL ?? I would have to dig out my copy of Mig Alley although I don't remember the author detailing the higher ra te of fire aspect. Thanks !

@@truthboomertruthbomber5125 1,000 RPM for the Navy's Colt Mk.12, 1,500 for the T-160/M39.

@@RedXlV I dug out my copy of Mig Alley and found the pilot interview detailing GUNVAL. No mention of any technical details just a pilot interview of his mission flying one of the test aircraft and getting a Mig 15 kill. The 20mm hits were so effective that he was temporarily mesmerized and flew through the smoke and debris fortunately not hitting anything but getting oil on his canopy. He said the Mig appeared to stop. An issue that they were having was compressor stall and he ran into this and had a heck of a time recovering until he saw that the speed brake toggle sw handle was broken off in the ON position. He was able to get the nub pushed into the OFF position and teh brakes retracted and he was able to gain speed and come out of the compresssor stall.

It probably wasn't a drone. It was more likely a towed target. There were a couple of kinds, one looked like the just the fins of a big missile, four triangular wings in a "+" shape and no body. The other looked like a big bomb but was made from styrofoam or something like it. They reeled them out on a long cable a few hundred yards long and the attacking fighters could shoot at them with the towing aircraft still safe. They'd drop them before the towing aircraft landed.

That and they were basically indestructible. Did you ever see the picture of the Cougar trainer hanging by its tailhook from the deck edge safety nets on the carrier?

Sort of. About the only things in common they have is a general outline similarity and the number "18". Sort of like the similarities between the Tu-22 and the Tu-22M.

Including the kink in the leading edge root of the P-51 wing for the undercarriage.

@@birlyballop4704So the kink is actually larger on the FJ-1. Also the Mustang didn't have the kink until the D model. The wings were not exactly entirely from the Mustang, as they were tasked with holding two moderately sized tip tanks and had to be reinforced, were thicker and deeper in chord at the root, and had a heavier duty set of shorter, retractable main gears set further back from the wing's leading edge. Trike geared.

They did it again with the F-18 E/F…🧐

@@timgarrett203 but got it's own back with the Skyraider and Corsair 2

Well not really; earlier USN types were assigned the first several new numbers while the USAF stuff ran out the Century Series, and then the types that began development later slotted into the new "start over" low number range... F-1: FJ Fury F-2: F2H Banshee F-3: F3H Demon F-4: F4H Phantom II (initially F-110 in USAF) F-5: N156 Freedom Fighter F-6: F4D Skyray F-8: F8U Crusader F-9: F9F Panther/Cougar F-10: F6D Skyknight F-11: F11F Tiger F-12: interceptor variant of Blackbird Then the newer ones... F-14 Tomcat F-15 Eagle F-16 Falcon/Viper F-17 Cobra F-18 Hornet F-19 (Stealth project) F-20 Tigershark F-21 Kfir (borrowed IAI Mirage variant) F-22 Raptor F-23 Black Widow II Big gap exists above that, yes. This seems to be because the newest F series are an extension of the X series, not the original P/F series. Thus we have the Boeing X-32 followed by the F-35 Lightning II...

@@stevetournay6103 Good post👍, but....the Skyknight was the F3D, not F6D. You should also mention the gap between F-111 and F-117. Those spooky jets from Tonopah. Did you know that the original designation for the BOMARC missile was F-99?

No, it's just a British naming scheme.

well, Sea Fury was taken.