The Hunter was a great aicraft, but if only . . . - images.jpg

On Wed, 30 Mar 2016 19:46:36 -0500, "Byker" wrote:

On Wed, 30 Mar 2016 15:39:43 -0400, wrote:


Why should the US NOT have bought the Hunter? It's cost was only about
half that of the F100. That would have come to a $660-million saving
over the life of the aircraft, or about $6-billion in today's money.
Even if a decision to buy Hunters had been delayed until the F100 was
ready for service, the development cost of the Super Sabre
($23-million) would easily have been written off.

Then there was the F100's awful accident rate. 889 aircraft, or about
one-third of the total production, were lost to accidents, involving
the loss of 324 pilots.

Had Hunters served as many hours as the F-100, I would expect it to have
similar losses:
http://warships1discussionboards.yuk...6#.Vvxyr_krKUk

In wartime you can expect a lot of accidents (half the aircraft lost in WWII
were lost to accidents). From 1961 until their redeployment in 1971, the
F-100s were the longest serving U.S. jet fighter-bomber to fight in the
Vietnam War. Enemy fire and training accidents took their toll over ten
years.

Oh, and BTW, the F-105 Thunderchief became the dominant attack aircraft
early in the Vietnam War. The F-105 could carry more than twice the bomb
load farther and faster than the F-100, which was used mostly in South
Vietnam. Of the 833 F-105s built, a combined 395 F-105s were lost in
Southeast Asia, including 334 (296 F-105Ds and 38 two-seaters) lost to enemy
action and 61 lost in operational accidents.

OK, the F-100 was faster by about 25mph in level flight and ongoing US
developments called for somewhat different requirements.

Hey, you're catching on!

But this 25 mph comes right on the cusp of the speed of sound and, in
1955, the implications of operating in this transonic speed band were
just beginning to be understood. In particular is the loss of
longitudinal stability and resulting pitch-up encountered when
maneuvering. This may not be too bad when shooting off missiles but
would certainly make machine gun operation a bit of a problem, Then
there is the issue of wave drag and the resulting increase in fuel
consumption.

BTW: NASA was still investigating transonic maneuverability in 1976,
using the YF-17 Cobra which was later developed into the F/A-18.

So, to my mind, this extra 25 mph is really only good for "getting the
hell out of Dodge".