Wondering about the F-102...

"WaltBJ" wrote in message
om...
I logged almost 1500 hours in the F102A and its ugly brother the TF.
It was a delightful airplane to fly, light on the controls, and was a
good formation bird. It had great performance compared with the
F94/F86D/F89 group. It could reach about .93 in military and 1.3 in AB
properly maintained the radar was every bit as good as the F4's. -
when new. Later on it lost some performance due to tired engines. It
had good range even clean - 950 miles clean, 1300 with wing tanks. Now
for the bad points. 1 - couldn't see back - 60 degree blind cone to
rear. 2 - fuel was in two sets of wing tanks - an equalizer was
supposed to make sure you ran dry simultaneously. Often it didn't and
you had to juggle the boost pumps to keep an equal amount in both
wings. Get too busy and you could flame out due to an air bubble from
the empty side. 3 - the canopy had to go before you could eject - its
metal top precluded ejecting through it. 4 - No guns, not even one. 5
- wrong engine. The J57 was a good engine but the first engine, the
Gyron, never made it into service. The second one was the Olympus but
it was way delayed. There was about a foot space between the J57 and
the inside fuselage . . . 6 - weak gear, limit touchdown at typical
landing weights was 540 feet per minute. 7 - no internal air
compressor. It used HP air to launch missiles and rockets, start the
engine if no 3000 psi Joy unit was around, brakes, and emergency gear
extension. The F84F had a compressor, why not the Deuce? 8 - No AIM9
rails - why not? 9- the Deeuce was skinned with 7075ST which was not
Alclad and therefore the bird had to be painted to rpevent
(alleviate?) corrosion. This added weight and in later days drag from
touched up paint jobs.
As for a real continental air defense mission - our conclusion was you
weren't coming back. Either the prompt radiation from a TNW was going
to get you or you were going to have to stop the bomber no matter
what. BTW a 20 MT going off 60 miles away from a fighter at 40000
gives the crew something like 3000 rad right now. Air up there is too
skinny to soak up the gammas.
The delta configuration can be treacherous if you don't watch out. The
Deuce could develop one hell of a sink rate if you got too slow. Just
pulling the nose up and adding a little bit of power results in a
higher sink rate. Getting careless on final approach was dangerous. It
could just hold level flight at 115 KIAS and full afterburner with
about a 35 degree angle of attack. Getting out of that state required
lowering the nose and losing altitude) to reduce the induced drag to
where the bird could accelerate. This was insidious because the bird
was controllable in all three axes. Pulling power to idle at 115 left
you in apparent 'level' flight but the vertical velocity indicator was
pegged - downward. Pulling G - it could develop about 6 1/2 G at 300
KIAs - but stay there too long and all your airspeed disappeared real
quick. It could fly a tighter overhead pattern than any other century
series fighter - pull too many G and the downwind would be in so close
it'd take a ninety degree bank to make the base turn. WingCos got
red-faced when they saw that. BTW its absolute altitude was 59,000
plus, subsonic in full AB. Got up there once after completing a test
hop - had read Jackie Cochrane had set a level flight altitude record
in a T38 of something like 54000 and I thought the Deuce could top
that. It did, handily. FWIW it was good XC bird and had lots of carry
room. There was the main electronic bay behind the cockpit where two
guys coudl get in there and close the hatch. I have it on good
authority that eight cases of Crown Royal would fit in there. We
genrally used the missile bay because we normally didn't take the
missiles on cross countries. Some bases (SAC) got huffy if you had
ordnance aboard.
That's about it - cheers, Walt BJ

WOW,
I stand corrected.
Thank you!

Harley