North American F-107A first prototype 55-5118 during trials in 1956
Posted by jacksmachiningreveng@reddit | WeirdWings | View on Reddit | 41 comments
Posted by jacksmachiningreveng@reddit | WeirdWings | View on Reddit | 41 comments
zevonyumaxray@reddit
Just a dozen years earlier, the highest tech aircraft were the Me-262 and Gloster Meteor.
xerberos@reddit
1945-55 feels like 30 years in aviation.
Just the fact that the little A-4 could carry twice the bomb load for twice the distance compared to the B-17 always blows my mind.
duga404@reddit
During WW2 a decent chunk of scientists thought that going past the speed of sound was physically impossible, and less than a decade later planes were going TWICE the speed of sound.
anafuckboi@reddit
And in World War I people thought pilots would have the air sucked out of their lungs by the wind and before that people thought railways would be lethal. It’s always been a thing.
duga404@reddit
Literally days before the Wright Brothers flew in 1903, there was a newspaper article claiming that it was impossible for humans to fly.
mcmiller1111@reddit
And a few years later, one of the brothers predicted that we would be able to fly across the Atlantic in 1-10 million years
LordofSpheres@reddit
It probably shouldn't, because it's not true. A B-17G with 10k lbs of bombs had a 1500nmi range - an A-4F with 3600lbs of bombs and a 300 gallon tank only had a 700nmi range. None of the A-4s could even match the most-produced B-17 variants for max payload, nevermind lb-miles delivered.
Raguleader@reddit
Are you sure about those numbers? Because B-17s rarely carried close to that much bomb-wise.
LordofSpheres@reddit
Absolutely. They come straight from the B-17G Standard Aircraft Characteristics document and are backed up against a pilot's manual.
The B-17 more typically flew with a 4,000lb to 6,000lb bomb load because that enabled those much deeper penetration missions and was also simply a more 'useful' load in the thinking of the USAAF at the time, because it represented more, smaller bombs that were more easily produced and could be handled on the ground at any airfield, whereas the larger bomb loads required better airstrips with more advanced ground handling equipment.
Raguleader@reddit
Do you have a link where I could find those documents? They sound neat.
LordofSpheres@reddit
ww2aircraftperformance.org has a pretty wide array of documentation on planes, and Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles also publishes quite a few manuals he uses for his videos on his patreon (not affiliated, just like the channel). There's also Avialogs, which has an absolute shit ton of available materials online, they're just annoying to access without an account.
Busy_Outlandishness5@reddit
The plane which proved that in an analog world, there was only so much a single pilot could do. It's said the amount of action, reaction and critical data monitoring required for a simulated combat mission overwhelmed even the highly experienced test pilots that flew it. It's also said they never knew how fast the prototype could go, because the cockpit canopy started melting long before the 107 reached its limit.
Or so I have been told.
the_friendly_one@reddit
Ejection seems... risky.
ThaddeusJP@reddit
Iirc it would clear the intakes
the_friendly_one@reddit
lol at first glance, I thought those two rails or whatever hanging off the bottom of the canopy were the test dummy's legs. I was like, "holy shit, they Goose'd him!"
Thanks for the link. I always appreciate it when people learn me stuff.
Hattix@reddit
I know the engineers would have accounted for it (hopefully) but having that intake directly above and behind the cockpit must have played on the test pilots' minds when looking at the ejection handle.
Paul_The_Builder@reddit
Test pilots in the 50's had some fuckin balls man.
Tbone_Trapezius@reddit
The movie First Man does a good job showing how precarious those test flights were. I really like how they didn’t cover up all the questionable aircraft rattling sounds with music.
Stunning-Screen-9828@reddit
No more dangerous than any other decade.
Intelligent_League_1@reddit
Even if it is slightly more, it definitely is.
TheSweetestOfPotato@reddit
Very debatable.
xerberos@reddit
The vertical stabilizer is much more of a danger than that air intake. In the early days, with the relatively bad performance of the ejection seats, that was a big concern at high speeds. This is why the early F-104 ejection seats launched downwards.
duga404@reddit
I wonder why no one ever had the idea to just blow off the rudder during ejection like the canopy
mawzthefinn@reddit
The Do335 ejected the aft prop for that reason
Stunning-Screen-9828@reddit
A few single-engine seaplanes have those blades going near the cabin, too. I hate that.
jacksmachiningreveng@reddit (OP)
You definitely want to be extra careful when flicking out your cigarette butts.
Gmac513@reddit
Great camera work tooo
Taptrick@reddit
Seems like that would screw up the engine(s) at high AOA.
Viharabiliben@reddit
That high intake would be an advantage for rough field use.
Sketto70@reddit
When I saw this bird in Dayton, my jaw hit the floor.
archboy1971@reddit
The graphics on the sides are so rad!
joshuatx@reddit
That font choice is something else!
One-Internal4240@reddit
The 107's loss to the F-105 always confused me.
Lighter, with a higher ceiling and better RoC than the Thud, the 105's big difference in flight characteristics probably came down to it flying with the earlier variant of the PWJ75. And that doesn't seem like a reason to go with the Republic jet, by itself. Why go with Republic at all? They hadn't exactly mastered the jet age.
LordofSpheres@reddit
The F-105's ability to carry a nuke fully internally meant it was slicker, faster, and longer-ranged on what the USAF really wanted - a low-level nuclear strike fighter or reconnaissance plane that could get in and out, fast. The F-107 was mostly just a better F-100 with a bit of a hole for the semi-recessed nuke... Much less appealing, however capable it would have been.
duhchuy@reddit
The USAF had a lot of internal games with politics and preferences, as well as a desire to balance competing contracting firms. In 1955-56 when the F-107A and YF-105A flew against each other, Republic simply had the capacity (and needed the business) and NAA did not necessarily need more.
At NAA, they were producing FJ-4s and F-100Fs as well as working on the eventual T-2 and XF-108 programs. NAA had plants up with active production lines throughout the competition.
At Republic, work on the XF-103 had already been downgraded to research only with no hope of production contract, and production on F-84Fs was at the tail's end. With factories growing quiet, Republic was likely far more aggressive with the contract negotiation, even if the YF-105B came later than the F-107A and was less mature.
Acoustic_Rob@reddit
“Check six!” “How???”
Not that the Phantom or the Thud were any better. They really thought dogfighting was obsolete when they were designing those, didn’t they.
mawzthefinn@reddit
The 107 was designed for low altitude nuclear strike (ditto the Thud). They're only F designations because the USAF didn't assign an A designation to anything during this period. They were strike aircraft.
The Phantom was designed as the fleet's stand-off all-weather interceptor with a secondary strike role. The F-8 was the fleet dogfighter at that time, intended to engage anything that broke through the F-4's missile envelope. Forward escort/projection wasn't a mission for them until reality ensued.
Vast-Return-7197@reddit
Had a model of it when I was a kid
Intelligent_League_1@reddit
In my opinion one of the coolest looking planes, that long-thin cockpit with a narrow nose and that tail. The turbojet intake above the airframe is another +.
weird-oh@reddit
Man, that was an ugly plane. The only one that was worse was the X-32.
jacksmachiningreveng@reddit (OP)