"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
04/09/2020 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, planes you've (probably) never heard of, Planelopnik
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"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
04/09/2020 at 12:35 • Filed to: wingspan, planes you've (probably) never heard of, Planelopnik | 6
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In a system of sequential numbering that began with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1924, the Air Force designated each successive fighter design with the next number in order. When they reached 100 with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the fighters designated F-100 through F-106 became famous as the Century Series and, once the Air Force reached reached the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the numbering of production fighters started over with the uniform numbering system in use today (with one significant exception). But there were a handful of aircraft that received 1xx designations that either never made production or even made it off the drawing board, along with some which weren’t US Air Force fighters at all.
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Republic XF-103
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An artist’s impression of the proposed XF-103 interceptor. (US Air Force)
In the early days of the Cold War, before the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the US feared that hordes of long-range Soviet bombers might attack America, most likely by flying over the North Pole. In order to meet the threat, the Air Force sought a high-speed interceptor that could reach the bomber fleets long before the bombers would reach the United States. Two of the proposals received by the Air Force did eventually became successful interceptors (the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ), but one of Convair’s entries was a truly radical aircraft powered by a combination turbojet-ramjet designed to reach speeds of Mach 4. The turbojet, with afterburner, would be used for takeoff, then once airborne, air would be fed directly to the afterburner to make it a pure ramjet. After reaching the target, the XF-103 would return to base on turbojet power alone.
The mockup of the XF-103. The placement of the large air intake behind the nose wheel led to serious concerns about foreign object debris getting sucked into the engine. (US Air Force)
To handle all of this engine and fuel, along with weapons and a powerful radar, the XF-103 ended up being a very, very large aircraft. With all the titanium and stainless steel used to ward off the heat of supersonic flight, the interceptor weighed in at a whopping 20 tons. In an effort to reduce drag, a traditional cockpit was replaced with windows in the bullet-shaped nose, and the pilot was given a retractable periscope to look forward. To down Soviet bombers, the XF-103 was to be armed with six Aim 4 Falcon air-to-air missiles or four Falcons and two nuclear-tipped missiles, along with 36 Mighty Mouse FEAR rockets in an internal bomb bay. Nine years of development led to a single massive mockup before the project was canceled due to concerns over underpowered turbojets and a potential lack of performance.
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North American F-107
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(US Air Force)
Not all the Air Force 100s outside of the Century Series were vaporware. North American became famous early in the jet era with their remarkable !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and followed that with the larger and more powerful !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the aircraft that kicked off the Century Series and was the first US fighter capable of supersonic speeds in level flight. While the F-100 was an eventual success, the Air Force still needed a tactical fighter-bomber. So North American took the Super Sabre and developed it into just such an aircraft, one that might be referred to as a Super-super Sabre or, less cheekily, the Ultra Sabre.
The third prototype North American XF-107 (55-5120) at Edwards AFB in 1959 (US Air Force)
The first thing the F-107 needed was a radar, so the nose air intake of the F-100 was moved to the top of the F-107, just behind the canopy. This large intake fed a Pratt & Whitney YJ75 turbojet that provided 24,000 pounds of thrust and a top speed of Mach 2+. While there were concerns that the F-107 had no rearward cockpit visibility, fighter doctrine of the time indicated that all future combat would take place with long range missiles rather than close-in dogfighting, so such a lack of view was unimportant. More important to the pilot, though, would be the thought of ejecting with a giant, knife-edge intake, nicknamed the “Man-eater,” behind him. However, North American assured pilots that they would be shot well clear of the aircraft. Fortunately, nobody ever had to find out.
All of the stencils. A detail of the XF-107 on display at the USAF Museum seems to indicate that North American printed the pilot’s manual on the side of the aircraft. (Tim Shaffer)
The F-107 competed against another Century Series aircraft, the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and the Thud emerged the victor. Of the three F-107s were built, one was damaged in an accident and subsequently destroyed, one is in the collection of the Pima Air & Space Museum, while the third is on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio.
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North American F-108 Rapier
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At a time when speed was ultimate aim of bomber design, North American tried to outdo everybody with the development of the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a massive six-engine bomber capable of speeds in excess of Mach 3. But just like the bombers of WWII, the the Valkyrie would need an escort on its long-range missions to attack (presumably) the Soviet Union, so North American undertook development of a smaller two-engine escort fighter with similar performance, in essence a baby Valkyrie.
An artist’s impression shows one of the delta wing configurations considered for the Rapier. Another was a classic delta wing. (Author unknown)
With its delta wing and long nose, the Rapier did in fact resemble the Valkyrie, though with a single tail, cranked delta plan, and no forward canards. The engines were the same General Electric J93 afterburning turbojets that propelled the XB-70, and the pair would have pushed the Rapier to a planned top speed of Mach 3. The cutting edge of the Rapier would be provided by three Hughes GAR-9A (later Falcon) air-to-air missiles housed in an internal rotary weapons bay.
Wooden mockup of the F-108 Rapier (US Air Force)
Though the XB-70 progressed to the completion of two prototypes, the loss of one in a crash, along with the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, meant that the role for the Rapier had essentially evaporated. There was talk of converting it into a long-range reconnaissance asset, but with a proposed cost of $35 billion to develop the fleet it was simply too much money, and the Rapier never progressed past a wooden mockup. All of the effort put into the F-108 was not in vain, however. Much of the design work and many of the components from the Rapier project found their way into the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , a supersonic carrier-based reconnaissance aircraft built for the US Navy which bears a striking resemblance to its Rapier forbear.
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Bell XF-109 (D-188A)
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(National Archives)
By the middle of the 1950s, it had only been eight years since Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , and supersonic flight had become the norm rather than the exception. However, getting big fighters laden with fuel and weapons into the air required lengthy and improved runways, and the Air Force and Navy wanted a supersonic fighter that could land and take off vertically, either from short rough fields or the deck of a carrier (the Navy had found its first true supersonic fighter in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 1951).
The mockup of the XF-109 on display at Bell Aircraft (Bell)
At the request of the Navy and Air Force, the Bell company began work on a radical new fighter with no less than eight General Electric J85 turbojet engines. Two engines were mounted on each wingtip in a rotating nacelle, while two more were mounted in the fuselage behind the cockpit to augment vertical lift. The remaining two engines were placed in the rear. The wingtip and aft engines were fitted with afterburners that provided 3,850 pounds of thrust, and the wingtip engine nacelles could also be rotated to 10 degrees beyond vertical to allow the XF-109 to move backwards in hover. All six vertical engines were needed to lift the nearly 24,000-pound fighter off the ground. Bell projected a top speed of Mach 2.3, and armament would have been provided by four 20mm cannons and a mix of rockets and bombs. Though the number XF-109 was never officially assigned (it was referred to by Bell’s internal designation D-188A), the project failed to advance beyond the construction of a mockup.
Though the XF-109 never made it into the air, German manufacturer Entwicklungsring Süd (EWR) did create a very similar jet fighter to the Bell XF-109 in the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . The VJ 101 had four jets in rotating wingtip pods, and two behind the cockpit mounted vertically. Unlike the XF-109, the VJ 101 didn’t have rear-mounted jet engines. EWR made two aircraft, labeled X-1 and X-2, and test flights transitioned from hover to forward flight, and even broke the sound barrier. However, like the XF-109, the project was not adopted.
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McDonnell Douglas F-110A Spectre
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(US Air Force)
The use of the number F-110 was short-lived, and it was the original (unofficial) designation of the F-4 Phantom II in Air Force service. Since the Phantom II was originally designated F4J in Navy service, the Air Force would have used their own designation, but with the United States !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! implemented in 1962, the Phantom became the F-4 in Air Force, Navy and US Marine Corps service. Since F-110 was never used officially, the Air Force was free to use it for a different, clandestine project later.
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Project Constant Peg
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MiG-21 Fished E, known to the USAF as the YF-110 (US Air Force)
With the F-110 overlapping with the reset of aircraft numbering, the numbers 111 and above were free to use for different projects. From the beginning of the Cold War through 1990, the United States Air Force !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , based at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada, flew captured Soviet- or Chinese-built fighters to determine their capabilities, test them in flight against US fighters, and develop tactics to counter them. In order to mask the true identities of these aircraft in Air Force inventories, they were given pre-production YF designations rather than their original Soviet designations.
A MiG 23MS (“YF-113C”) belonging to the 4477th Test and Evaluation Squadron leads a pair of US A-10 attack planes painted in European green livery (US Air Force)
YF-110B: Soviet
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YF-110C: Chinese
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(MiG-21F-13 variant)
YF-110D: Soviet MiG-21MF
YF-112: Soviet
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YF-113B: Soviet
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YF-113E: Soviet MiG-23MS
YF-114C: Soviet
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YF-114D: Soviet MiG-17PF
YF-115: Skipped?
YF-116: Soviet
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YF-118: Soviet
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Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk
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(US Air Force)
With the numbers 110-118 taken up by Soviet aircraft, one number is notably absent from the list: 117. That number was given to the super secret F-117 Nighthawk, which came to symbolize the air war during the first Gulf War. While the Nighthawk is certainly well known, and a total of 65 were built and saw combat in Central America and the Middle East, many wonder why this tactical bomber received a fighter designation. Like the Soviet aircraft of Constant Peg, the Nighthawk was originally called the YF-117 to disguise its true mission, and over time the number stuck. The F designation stuck too, perhaps as a canard to mislead prying eyes, or as a means to attract top Air Force pilots who didn’t want to fly an attack jet or bomber.
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For more stories about aviation, aviation history, and aviators, visit !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . For more aircraft oddities, visit !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .
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SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 12:41 |
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Wow. Great post! Incredible.
I had no idea they were using those “test designations 110- ” for, ahem, liberated aircraft out at Tonopah. What great trivia.
Thanks again!
For Sweden
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 12:42 |
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ttyymmnn
> SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
04/09/2020 at 12:50 |
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Glad you enjoyed it! I’ve got another one coming next week that I found particularly interesting. Not a major history post, just an interesting USAF factoid that I just learned about.
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SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 13:05 |
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Yeah, this is FAR more interesting than anything posted “over on the other place” in the last month...
Thanks for taking the time to compile them. It’s laborious, I’m sure.
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ttyymmnn
> SBA Thanks You For All The Fish
04/09/2020 at 13:14 |
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Laborious? Perhaps, but it is a labor of love.
benn454
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 13:31 |
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“Let’s stop training out pilots how to dogfight. With these new SUPER RELIABLE missiles, that’s a thing of the past! Hell, let’s not even put a gun on our new multi service frontline fighter! That will never come back to bite us!”
The 50s must have been a strange time.
user314
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 13:44 |
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It’s not been confirmed yet, but semi-informed speculation says that the USAF “acquired” an Su-7 ‘ Fitter-A ’ (likely Egyptian via Israel or from India), which received the YF-115 designation.
Nicked this list from Secret Project’s forum, which has some additional info and some unconfirmed additions:
YF-110B MiG-21-F13 HAVE DOUGHNUT (tail number 80695, later 007) ex-Iraqi AF, 1968; HAVE GLIB, HAVE IDEA
YF-110B MiG-21-F13 HAVE GLIB, HAVE IDEA (tail number 004), ex-Indonesian AF, built from parts, 1972-????
YF-110B MiG-21-F13 HAVE GLIB, HAVE IDEA (tail number 010), ex-Indonesian AF, built from parts, 1972-????
YF-110C MiG-21-F13/J-7B CONSTANT PEG (various tail numbers), ex-Indonesian AF, built from parts
YF-110D MiG-21MF HAVE COAT and CONSTANT PEG (?), 1980-1988
YF-110E Classified aircraft, HAVE PHOENIX, stores carriage and separation, circa 1991
YF-110L Classified aircraft, HAVE PHOENIX, stores carriage and separation, circa 1986-1992
YF-110M Classified aircraft, HAVE PHOENIX, stores carriage, separation, envelope expansion, circa 1986-1993
YF-112C Possibly Su-17 HAVE UP, 1979 [unconfirmed]
YF-113A MiG-17F/Lim-5M HAVE DRILL (tail number 055), ex-Syrian AF
YF-113B MiG-23BN HAVE PAD, ex-Egyptian AF, 1978
YF-113C MiG-17F/J-5 HAVE PRIVILEGE (tail number 1024), Chinese-built, Cambodian Khmer AF, 1970
YF-113C Classified aircraft tested circa 1992 as part of HAVE PHOENIX
YF-113E MiG-23MS HAVE PAD, ex-Egyptian AF, 1978-1987
YF-113G Classified prototype aircraft, flying qualities, avionics, circa 1993-1995, possibly a FME (foreign materiel evaluation ) program
YF-113H Classified aircraft tested circa 1987-1988 as part of HAVE PHOENIX
YF-114C MiG-17F/Lim-5M HAVE FERRY (tail number 002), ex-Syrian AF, HAVE GLIB, and CONSTANT PEG
YF-114D MiG-17PF (tail number 008), HAVE GLIB, HAVE IDEA, circa 1972
YF-116A Classified aircraft (HAVE LOAN ?), HAVE PHOENIX, performance, envelope expansion, avionics, propulsion, circa 1991-1992
YF-117A Lockheed SENIOR TREND FSD aircraft (tail numbers 780 through 784), 1981-2008
F-117A SENIOR TREND production aircraft (tail numbers 785 through 843), 1982-2008
YF-117D Northrop TACIT BLUE stealth technology demonstrator, 1982-1985
YF-118G Boeing Bird of Prey stealth technology demonstrator. 1996-1999
YF-24A Classified prototype aircraft, circa 1997
YF-43B Classified prototype aircraft, circa ????
No idea what HAVE PHOENIX could be, most references on Google just go back to lists like this. Interesting that the TACIT BLUE and the Bird of Prey both received designations too.
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ttyymmnn
> benn454
04/09/2020 at 13:45 |
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Actually, they were a strange time. Technological advances came so fast they could barely keep up, and military doctrine changed just as fast. Now, they are talking about how close we are to not needing pilots. We’ll see if that comes back to bite us in the butt.
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ttyymmnn
> user314
04/09/2020 at 13:56 |
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I debated whether or not to include YF-118. Since I couldn’t find much in the way of official corroboration, I chose not to include it.
InFierority Complex
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 14:13 |
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Yeah, even the Air Force Museum that has it on display just refers to it as the Boeing Bird of Prey. Seems like the only source that calls it YF-118G is a globalsecurity.org page.
Don’t know how designations work but maybe it never got one because it seems it was just a Boeing funded test and not a contract?
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ttyymmnn
> InFierority Complex
04/09/2020 at 14:19 |
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I think Global Security is generally reliable, but I always want to find independent confirmation of stuff like that. I found it odd that an experimental in-house project would receive a designation.
facw
> benn454
04/09/2020 at 14:25 |
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True, though it’s worth pointing out that just because it was true then doesn’t mean it’s necessarily still true now, half a century after the V ietnam war.
f86sabre
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 17:55 |
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I enjoyed this. Thanks! Maybe someday when I grow up I can be Super.
I would love to hear about the Soviets getting their hands on o ur stuff and testing it. Beyond the WWII stuff.
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ttyymmnn
> f86sabre
04/09/2020 at 17:58 |
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!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
My pleasure! Thanks for reading.
I would love to hear about the Soviets getting their hands on our stuff and testing it.
It shows my own bias, I suppose, but I never thought about this. There’s no doubt that they did the same thing. I’ll have to look into it.
John Norris (AngryDrifter)
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 20:45 |
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Wow, so much for me thinking I knew a lot .
Educational and entertaining, every time !
You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much
> benn454
04/09/2020 at 21:18 |
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And history repeats itself with the F-35B and C variants not having internal guns . Just like the F-4 in Vietnam, they’ve developed an external gun pod that works “ just as good” as an internal gun.
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ttyymmnn
> John Norris (AngryDrifter)
04/09/2020 at 22:10 |
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Thanks! I like trying to find more obscure stuff.
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f86sabre
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 22:33 |
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Imagine a Vietnam era Thud or Phantom with the red star!
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ttyymmnn
> f86sabre
04/09/2020 at 22:38 |
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There are plenty of photos from WWII of Allied gear in Axis markings. I’ll have to look into this.
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ttyymmnn
> f86sabre
04/09/2020 at 22:41 |
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f86sabre
> ttyymmnn
04/09/2020 at 22:47 |
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Just found the same post!
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ttyymmnn
> f86sabre
04/09/2020 at 22:51 |
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And that’s about all I could find in a quick search. I’ve been reading The Aviationist for years. I like it. Cencinotti has kind of been overshadowed by Tyler and the War Zone, and he has taken to quoting WZ more often these days. But he also has some good inside contacts in the fighter piloting world.
Darkbrador
> ttyymmnn
04/17/2020 at 09:40 |
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ttyymmnn
> Darkbrador
04/17/2020 at 09:42 |
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That’s cool. But why not put them in order?
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Darkbrador
> ttyymmnn
04/17/2020 at 09:48 |
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The author would be the one to ask, there is no credit for this picture. I guess it’s a piece of art, not journalism, doesn’t have to make sense.
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ttyymmnn
> Darkbrador
04/17/2020 at 09:56 |
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Almost certainly not an actual photo.