May I just add a small note here for all those who seem to think that life wouldn’t amount to much if it didn’t include an daily measure of anti-US angst?

There is still room for you in the land of endless opportunity.

No…I don’t mean anywhere other than the US. You know that. In fact, the whole world knows that.

So…please…fill out the necessary forms. Jump through all the necessary hoops. No…you won’t have to pay anything under the table as you would otherwise do in most of the rest of the world.

And when you get to the finish line, we will welcome you aboard as Americans.

You can then take a seat with the rest of the complainers that the glass is half empty.

We call them Democrats.

Regarding that F-104 picture I posted…

…We had two aircraft in the squadron whose markings and paint were kept looking like new…numbers #269 and #240. We often had requests for a F-104 to be a display at airshows, and these two were kept looking spiffy for that purpose. 269 had the tail numbers in red because of the squadron designation, 69th TFTS. You can also see the squadron’s nickname on the rudder…the Fighting 69th.

269 was the F-104 you saw in the movie, The Right Stuff…the red 69 was covered up.

I don’t know how to measure the extra drag penalty with external fuel tanks vs without them.

USAF flight manuals publish drag coefficient numbers for anything carried on the jet…pylons, external tanks, weapons and weapons racks. All of these would be added up and would then be one of the parameters used to compute range and endurance from the performance charts. The range of drag index values went from zero to as much as 120 or so.

For the F-4, for example, a wing external fuel tank had a coefficient of 6.4 as compared to the centerline fuel tank’s 9.6 or the pylon bomb rack without weapons of 6.8. Add 3 Mk-82LD to that rack would bring the total up to 10.1. Let’s look at the jet with two inboard bomb racks (20.2) and two external wing fuel tanks (12.8)…this was a typical load for my missions in Vietnam. The total drag coefficient would be 33. For a low altitude cruise at 10,000′ and 480KTAS, the external tanks added about 600lbs/hr to the total fuel flow…not a huge amount, but depending on mission length, something that could become a factor, particularly if the bingo fuel was a high number.

How about the A-10A, when in general your claim is correct.

Same for A-10s.

The point is that planners don’t tailor internal fuel loads for specific missions. Planners do add external tanks depending on mission requirements. It’s not unusual for pilots to go to the tanker after takeoff to “top off” prior to beginning the mission.

Whatever initial performance penalty that may be incurred with a full fuel load is more than offset by the range and endurance benefits that amount of fuel.

As much as it is physically possible, and that includes not just the onboard fuel, but also a top-off from a tanker right before entering the danger zone. The more, the better.

Might I say as someone who has actually had to do this that you are absolutely correct. I cannot remember any mission flown in my experience where anything less than a full internal fuel load plus whatever was needed in external fuel was put on the jet.

Not saying this fueling to less than capacity hasn’t happened of course…but in my time such a thought would be highly unusual. The only exceptions I can think of were record breaking attempts and airshows where fuel wasn’t critical. Normally, we thought that the only time we would have too much fuel was if we were on fire.

] For comparison, ISTR the F-104s rotated in and out of Viet Nam very fast, because the F-104s didn’t have chaff and flares?

Vietnam era USAF fighters did not have chaff or flare dispensers as aircraft do today. F-4s did carry external chaff dispenser pods that were used to lay chaff corridors for B-52s…but that isn’t what you are thinking of.

Crews did understand what chaff did and how to use it. Chaff was available in small packets…some F-4 crews would put these packets in the speed brake wells and use them if needed. Obviously, this was a one time only tactic, and we had to remember to not use the speed brake before it was needed for defense!

F-104s were used little in the Vietnam War because there wasn’t much need for them, at least in the mind of the decision makers. It had an A2G capability but could not carry much ordnance, nor did it have much station time capability. It was used as a MIGCAP and was supposed to have been reasonably successful in keeping the MiGs on the ground…but that has never been officially verified. All in all, the A and C models weren’t intended for that type of conflict and weren’t that effective in it.

Wasn’t the Super Sabre difficult enough to land and actually stop on an airfield, let alone a carrier?!
I take it this design was proposed before the ‘Sabre Dance’ and and keeping power on to avoid stalling became a big issue.

It all depends on what you mean by “difficult to land”…and “actually stop”.

Initial models of the F-100 lacked flaps. The resulting approach speeds were quite high for that time…as high as we flew in the F-104. Pilots transitioning to the F-100 from fighters such as the F-86 or F-84 had little experience in landing at those speeds…consequently, one might term their initial experience with landings as being “difficult”. It was a pilot learning issue, not an aircraft issue. The same problem existed in WW2 with pilots learning to land the Martin B-26. And we saw the same thing in USAF pilot training where some students could not adjust to the higher landing speeds of the T-38.

Most USAF airfields had 8000′ runways in those days. At the high approach speeds of the early F-100s, that wasn’t a lot of runway. Adequate, but not comfortable. With proper touchdown location and speed, proper braking and drag chute use, the jet wasn’t any more difficult to land than any other fighter of that era.

The “Sabre Dance” resulted from pilot error, not aircraft deficiencies. This accident was a classic case of an inexperienced pilot allowing his landing speed to get too slow…and then when he tried to go around, he over-rotated…into a “behind the power curve” situation as it is often called. At his slow speed, the jet couldn’t “power out” of his nose high attitude, and it eventually crashed. This wasn’t a rudder problem or a wing flap problem…it was a pilot error problem.