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F-8J with external tanks image


carss

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So I was looking up the F-8J on Wikipedia and saw that the F-8J was a version that had external tanks. I've looked everywhere but couldn't find any image of it with external tanks. Does anyone have an image of this?

Also will this be included in the module?

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

 

 

Planes: FC3, P-51, F-86, F-5E, Mirage 2000, F/A-18, F-14, F-16, Mig-19P :joystick:

 

ED pls gib A-4 and F-4 :cry:

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2 hours ago, Bananabrai said:

Why was that F-8 config not operational?

Not 100% sure. I guess for many reasons, amongst them:

- the F-8J already had about 9000lbs of internal gas

- hence the wing-hardpoints were mostly used for bombs or not used in the first place*

- lots of F-4s available by the time the Juliet came around (~'69/70), so the Juliet was sidelined for most CAP missions

- the 300gal tanks most probably were more useful on the respective airwing's Scooters (A-6s and A-7s also rarely flew with tanks off Dixie or Yankee Station)

 

In any case, I haven't see a single picture of an operational Juliet with the 300gal bags so far.

___

*IIRC the underwing hardpoints were more of a USMC thing; the USN was more into the Zunis which could be mounted on the fuselage Sidewinder-stations, including the Y-stations that first appeared with the running F-8C production; exceptions to this observation may apply

===

Fun Fact: French F-8E(FN) / F-8P (P pour prolongé; not to be mixed up with the philippine F-8Ps, which were essentially F-8Hs) could also carry the Matra 530 on the fuselage-stations. The E(FN) also had BLC and the enlarged UHT (horizontal tail) - well, in fact it was carried over to the J from the E(FN).

 

BTW: You'll love this:

http://f8crusader.org/records.htm

 

Not neccessarily this (Juliet with the initial, P-20 motor, before the upgrade to the P-420):

Quote

The F-8J was, by most folks recollection, one of the worst Navair aircraft program fiascoes since the Cutlass.

The intent was to improve the F-8E with better radar, tail armament in the form of armor plate protection for the UHT actuators, better cruise and landing flight characteristics with 2-section leading edge droops and BLC, improved approach power compensator with a UHT rate input, improved ECM and wing pylon fuel drop tank capability. There were a few more things like new wiring, UHF radio and APR-30 RWR gear. The airplane was rushed to the fleet with only limited carrier suitability testing.

Squadrons on the Bon Homme Richard and Ticonderoga got to be the carrier suitability testers for the fleet by default.

The aircraft was woefully overweight by almost 2000 lbs. and underpowered. With BLC on you lost about 800 lbs of thrust. Flight control rigging was optimized to achieve the slowest approach speed with apparently little consideration for anything else. The result was a dangerous aircraft around the boat, especially at night. Although the approach speeds were down around the 120 knot range at max trap weight, you couldn't see over the nose and wave-off capability was pathetic. Squadrons tried various things to deal with the poor waveoff performance. The Tico played with "trim drag" by altering the C.G. of the aircraft through fuel management. They would intentionally leave fuel in the aft cluster for this purpose. The Bonny Dick placed limits on temperatures that we could fly using 90 degrees for day and 85 for night. (The ship promptly installed a thermometer that could be read in tenths and at 84.9 degrees at night we would launch.) We also were taught the "pulse technique" waveoff. For this you would rotate the aircraft to almost a stall while simultaneously applying full power. With the sink rate halted, you would then ease off and climb out. Imagine that maneuver at night.

To add to your worries, you could actually fly the airplane below the minimum speed required to operate the RAT (Marquardt emergency ram air turbine). The thought that you could be on final at night, operating off the RAT and then lose all electrical power was frightening to say the least.

Gradually during the cruise, Navair responded to the problems and sent teams to WestPac to begin incorporating the fixes. To relieve the weight problem the armor plate in the tail was removed and the ALQ-51 was re-installed to replace the newer, but heavier ALQ-100. The visibility over the nose was improved by changing the flight control rigging and increasing the approach speed to around 128 kts. The RATs were reworked to allow for safe operation at approach speeds. The wave-off capability was improved by incorporating a "war emergency thrust" throttle position. A spring was added to the leading edge of the throttle quadrant that would stop the throttle at the MRT position unless you pushed it further against the spring and into the WEP position. We were instructed to get used to using WEP by practicing during fouled deck waveoffs until the first engine hot section inspection showed that we were destroying the engine's burner cans. It seems that WEP was just intentionally allowing you to overspeed the engine for additional power and it played hell on the burner cans. The ultimate fix came with the improved J57-P400 series engines about a year later. Eventually, Navair made all the necessary mods and the J served well until its retirement.

 

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So ein Feuerball, JUNGE!

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  • 1 year later...

great post @Bremspropeller. using data from your F-8 link, I see that for the F-8E, it's empty weight was 19,200lbs, yet it's max trap weight was 22,000lbs. Whilst any drop tanks would be empty before landing, (300 gallons + 2500lbs! each), even an empty tank is weight thus eating into margins. I am obviously NOT an F-8 driver, but I have known some brits who served on the French carriers back in the 90's (not flying F-8s). I am told that the French F-8s needed to dump down to such a level that they literally had enough fuel for 2 looks at the deck before having to hit the tanker.  They also stated that on a 3 degree approach, in anything more than a sea state 4, the pitch of the deck could easily put the vertical distance between 1 & 4 wires outside a the "catch" of the hook, even if flown perfectly.  Essex class carriers are bigger, so perhaps ship vertical pitch is less of an issue, but flying to such tight margins is really sorting the men from the boys stuff.

(Whilst dumb bomb ordnance is clearly relatively cheaper, this trap weight limitation must explain the lack of any photos of F-8s returning to deck with any wing hardpoint bombs underneath? - Perhaps some ship's engineer might clarify, but even though steam powered, if you inject oil direct into the furness's, you can get a marginal boost of speed - does this explain the thick black smoke from the Essex's at flying stations??)

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  • 7 months later...

On the Essex 27C/ 125C boats, the normal hook-to-ramp for an F-8 was somewhere around 9.5 feet. And apparently they had a timeframe on Hancock, when the mirror was misrigged, putting the actual hook-to-ramp down to 7 (seven!) feet. They supposedly had a lot of ramp-strikes during that timeframe.

The story is buried somewhere in here:

https://f8crusader.org/gatrtalz.htm

This is an awesome info dump from the earlier days of the internet. Lots of the contributers have flown west in the meantime, unfortunately.

So ein Feuerball, JUNGE!

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