Wondering about the F-102...

In article ,
R. David Steele writes:
On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 00:32:37 -0500, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:
|For context, here are the rates for aircraft in service at about the
|same time:
|
|F-84: 52.86
|F-86: 44.18
|F-89: 24.54
|F-100: 21.22
|F-101: 14.65
|F-104: 30.63
|F-105: 17.83
|F-105: 9.47

^ That should be F-106, of course
|
|So, as you can see, over its career, the F-102 was safer than all of
|its contemporaries, other than the F-106 that was descended from it.

Why have pilots then stated, since this flap over GWB, that the
F-102 had a bad safety record? And how did it compare to
aircraft like the F-4, which was flying at the same time?

The numbers showed that it as half as safe as an F-4, and 1/3 as safe
as the "Sacandalous" F-16 (Lawn Dart).

A few words on making these comparisons - A single number is only a
vague indication, not a true notation on how the airplane's record
stacked up over its entire career. As with all statistics, context is
everything, and ignoring the context leads to a high likelihood of
misleading yourself about the true situation.

The earlier generation of subsonic/transonic jets, the F-80 through
F-94, all had extremely high accident rates. This was due to a number
of factors, both technological and procedural.
If you examine the raw data available from the Air Force Safety
Center, you'll also find that the overall numbers are skewed by
extremely high loss rates for some airplanes in their first few years
of service. The reasons for this are that there are inevetibly
teething troubles to be sorted out, many of them serious. - The F-100s
problems with stability & control & engine / inlet issues, and the
F-104's engine problems both pushed loss rates extremely high at the
beginning of their service careers. (More than 320 Class As per
100,000 flight hours, for the F-100, and, for one year, more than 700
class As per 100,000 flight hours, in th ecase of teh F-104A.)
These high surges in loss rates will skew the statistics throughout
the airplane's entire life.

One those initial troubles were worked out, the overall safety racords
were pretty much equivalant.

There can also be spikes at the end of an airplane's career, when
there aren't many of that type around, and they aren't flying many
hours. The loss of a single airplane can give a misleadingly high
accident rate, in that case.

But, at least here in rec.aviation.military, the statements weren't
that the F-102 was much less safe than its contemporaries - it was
that flying high performance jet fighters is much less safe than any
other flying. There's no doubt about that.
Here are a few other numbers for context, here.

Aircraft: Class A/100,000 Hrs
F-102: 13.69
C-130: 0.93
C-141: 0.32
C-135: 0.64
O-2: 2.82
B-52: 1.28

So, to put it bluntly, and slightly out of context, you're about 15
times more likely to kill yourself in an F-102 as you are in a C-130,
and nearly 50 times more likely than in a C-141.


--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster