10 things that sucked about the F-8 Crusader
10 flaws of Vought's Ensign Killer Fighter Aircraft
Fast and agile, with a decent range, the Crusader carrier fighter enjoys a positive reputation as 'The Last Gunfighter'. It has been described as."..by far one of the greatest fighters of its era"; we even rated it the second-best fighter of 1969. This sleek Cold War aircraft even boasts the best kill-to-loss ratio of any US fighter aircraft in Vietnam. But, as we shall see, a great deal was wrong with the F-8. And there wasn't a long wait to find this out, the first production F8U-1 was also the first to be lost, killing pilot Harry Brackett; a truly shocking number of incidents, many fatal, would follow. By the time the Crusader retired, there had been call to use the ejection seat over 500 times, the first in 1956 (a year before the type entered service) and the last in 1997 (in French service). Here are 10 things that sucked about the F-8 Crusader.
10. Missiles
The F-8 could carry a maximum of four air-to-air missiles, half that of the F-4 Phantom II. Even carrying four AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, proved draggy and made it harder for the Crusader to reach minimum landing weight if the weapons were not expended. Because of this, the F-8 most often went to war with only two missiles. This lack of missile persistence was a big deal, as the gun installation was terrible and the probability of kill of 1960s missiles was terrible.
Another reason for an often smaller weapon load was a shortage of AIM-9s, particularly in 1966 (and of AIM-9Ds in 1968). Each variant of the Sidewinder employed by the Crusader in Vietnam had its own limitations: the B was relatively slow, bad at turning with a small warhead; the radar-guided C was withdrawn before being used in combat due to maintenance problems; and the generally superior D had less reliable fuzing than the B.
9. Bang bang bad
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Though famed as the 'Last Gunfighter', all but one of the F-8's kills were with missiles. This was because of the many problems with the F-8's gun installation. A major issue was the Colt Mk 12 cannon hated being fired above a rather conservative 3.5G (the M61 Vulcan used by other US fighters was rated up to 7.33G).
The guns' rate of fire was unpredictable, sometimes even zero, and they suffered from pneumatic charging issues and 'barrel whip', which caused inaccurate fire. Up to 1966, the guns jammed in three out of eight engagements.
8. Engine
There are plenty of reasons you want a quick-responding engine in a carrier aircraft, as a delay can cost you your life. The two-second afterburner delay in early versions caused a lot of heartbreak; when pilot Tom Irwin tried to land his F-8C in 1965, it caught the fourth wire, but his arrestor hook point sheared from the shank, causing his aircraft to keep rolling rather than stopping on the deck. His only chance was to take off again, but his burner was too slow in response to get him to a safe minimum speed of 80 knots. Too slow to even eject, he flew into the sea, whereupon his afterburner ignited, causing the engine to explode. Miraculously he escaped his aircraft, manually, in record time and survived. In similar circumstances, four out of five pilots were killed.
7. Rockets
Early Crusaders carried internal rocket packs, that were opened before firing. To minimise frontal cross-section the magazines of sixteen rockets were mounted one behind the other. If one rocket failed to leave the launcher, it could be hit by a round from behind with potentially catastrophic consequences. If a round failed to clear the launcher it could mean the launcher could not retract, the extended launcher blocked the nose gear door making it impossible to extend the nose gear. If when the rockets did fire, they were comically inaccurate, "One study indicated that 128 rockets, four Crusaders' worth, would have to be expended on one bomber for a 97% probability that it would be hit at least once.1".
5. Inferiority to the F-4
In the first training dogfight sortie, an F-8 pilot would employ the type's superior instantaneous turning performance to better the F-4, but a mere five engagements later, the F-4 pilots would learn how to use their superior power to better the F-8; a well-trained F-4 pilot could best the F-8. This is extremely significant as one of the few trump cards the F-8 has against the F-4 is its superior agility. The F-4 enjoys two to four times the missile load, over twice the bombload, superior situational awareness, superior radar, climb rate and critically, was far safer to operate from a carrier.
(Those accusing this of being an apples-to-oranges comparison should look at the role and real-world taskings, not the weight class. Likewise, though often described as different generations, both the first flight and service entry of the two types were only separated by around 1000 days.)
4. Bad situational awareness
Pilot George Wright noted in his description of a one-way mission in the Crusader, "The F-8’s cockpit visibility wasn’t the greatest, so you always raised your seat as much as you could. But you didn’t want it so high that you would have trouble grabbing the two yellow-and-black-striped handles above your helmet, the handles that fired your ejection seat." He also singled out the absence of a HUD in the F-8H as a dangerous omission that contributed to his failure to pull out soon enough from a strafing run. So the view out was poor, there was no HUD, and as the type had been created as a day-only fighter, its radar was barely useful. The first radar was little more than a gun ranger, but even improved later radars were poor, the AN/APQ-83 was better but one of the first cadre of Top Gun Instructors Jim Alderink considered this 'a piece of garbage'. The F-8 relied on guidance from an air and ground controller; the radar's detection range for the MiG-17 was dangerously small. Conceived as a day-only fighter...
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3. Juliet blues, the F-8J
The initial J variant attempted to solve many of the Crusader's shortcomings but, in doing so, added 2,000 lbs of weight and 1,000 lb of power lost to boundary layer control. There were also wing cracks and a lack of spares. The result was a dangerously underpowered machine with inferior manoeuvrability and greater maintenance requirements, requiring expensive remedies—and happening in a major war just when fighters were most needed.
2. Out-turned by the MiG-17
As it could with every other US fighter, the veteran MiG-17 could outturn the Crusader at 300-350 Knots Indicated Airspeed (KIAS). It was superior training and missiles that enabled the Crusader to better the MiG-17. In fighting the MiG-21 in Vietnam, the Crusader did not have a distinct performance advantage. The MiG-21 had superior acceleration above Mach 1.1, and superior instantaneous G below 400 KIAS
Vietnam
That it took part in the horror of the Vietnam War itself sucks. But we shall not dwell on the many horrors inflicted by air power in the war, but instead, look at the Crusader's survivability. A total of 118 total were lost, 57 in combat.
(*some sources put this as 170 in total)
1. Dangerous as hell!
The primary requirement of an aircraft is to keep the crew safe, and on this most important quality, the Crusader cannot be judged in a rosy light. This was perhaps not surprising as it was just one in a line of 'hot' aircraft created by Vought. Their best, the famous Corsair of World War II, had nastier handling than the Hellcat, and the jet-powered Cutlass was a disaster. The Crusader's safety record, even for the notoriously dangerous class of late 1950s carrier aircraft was abysmal. Professor Michael Weaver notes, "In 1966... F-8s suffered an accident rate of 3.26 per 10,000 flying hours. Only the A-4E Skyhawk approached that rate, and the rate for the F-4 was only 2.72."
The Crusader was a handful, which was painfully apparent when it came to landing, a terrible quality in a carrier aircraft. There is an entire page devoted to Crusader crashes here.
"By the time the Crusader retired, pilots had made 493 ejections from all models of the F-8. Overall, 517 of the 1261 Crusaders had been built had been lost, a loss rate of 41 per cent", Peter Mersky notes. Considering the number of aircraft built, 737 entries in the Aviation Safety Network database is clearly atrocious.
According to Peter E. Davies, "Four carrier-bourne evaluation cruises showed that Crusader was hard to keep on "speed' for carrier landings. Without the angled deck and mirror landing and mirrored landing system added to World War II-vintage SCB-27C Essex- and Midway-class carriers, the aircraft might never have reached the required safety standards."
The high approach speed of 147 knots was a big issue on smaller carriers such as the Essex-class. Consistent speed was also important. To help, an autothrottle (Approach Power Compensator) was added in 1964, but even this caused problems as over-reliance on the APC was equally dangerous. Another peculiarity of the F-8 was its odd relationship between nose attitude and sink rate caused by its oddest design feature, on landing the wing stayed at the same angle of attack as the fuselage tilted (the wing was mounted on mechanism). Things were particularly counter-intuitive for the pilot in the final approach stages, which again required attention.
The Crusader, fine in many ways, sucked unforgivably badly in some of the most significant categories.
Sources
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F-8 Crusader, Vietnam 1963-1973, Peter E Davies
An Examination of the F-8 Crusader through Archival Sources - Professor Michael Weaver
USN F-8 training manual
https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-brief-history-of-f8u-crusader-armament.html
https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2008/12/missed-it-by-that-much-ii.html
Vought F-8 Crusader Peter Mersky
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