Crusader to the Rescue

For the U.S. Navy and its planemakers, supersonic air war poses a tough question: how to build a jet hot enough to fight all comers yet cool enough to land on short carrier flight decks. Last week the Navy thought it had an answer. Off San Diego, a slim, stub-winged fighter swung in behind the carrier U.S.S. Bon Homme Richard and eased gracefully onto the canted flight deck. The plane was Chance Vought's supersonic F8U Crusader. The new jet had already landed successfully on the supercarrier Forrestal's big 1,036-ft. deck; now it proved that it could also nest on the standard 876-ft. deck length of Essex-Oriskany-class carriers. Exulted one airman: "This baby takes us out of the third row and puts us right up front."

Mach 2. By any standard the Crusader is a hot plane. It packs missiles and fast-firing 20-mm. cannons, has a 1,000 mi. combat range, a service ceiling of 55,000 ft. Its top speed with a Pratt & Whitney J57 engine (more than 15,000 Ibs. of thrust with afterburner) is close to Mach 2 (1,320 m.p.h. at 30,000 ft.) in level flight. What helps make such speed possible for a carrier plane is the Crusader's stubby, sharply swept wings: they are ingeniously hinged, can be tilted upwards to act as enormous flaps on landing, increase lift and slow the plane to around 115 m.p.h. for carrier landings.

If it lives up to its early promise, the Crusader will be as big a boon to Chance Vought as to the Navy. Splitting off from parent United Aircraft Corp. two years ago, Chance Vought and President Frederick 0. Detweiler, 44, have been through a difficult first solo. The last of C. V.'s famed prop-driven F4U Corsairs came off the line in 1953; bugs and engine trouble held back the Corsair's successor, the big twin-jet F7U Cutlass fighter, with production scheduled to end in late 1955. Though C. V. was also producing the Navy Regulus guided missile, had a development contract for a new supersonic missile and subcontracts from other planemakers, it needed a new plane to keep its 2.3 million-sq. ft. Dallas plant and 12,000-man force busy. As it was, first-quarter 1955 sales slumped to $26.9 million, down $8.4 million from 1954's first quarter.

Plastics & Ramjets. Gambling on the new Crusader, Detweiler threw most of his 2,000-man engineering force into the project. Though the first designs were approved by the Navy in May 1953, while C. V. was still under United's wing, the company had to build the plane on its own, used every trick to make sure the Crusader lived up to specifications, developed some of its own, e.g., transparent plastic fuel tanks and pipes to test the fuel flow in every conceivable position in advance. Within 22 months from the time C. V. won the design competition, the Crusader slipped neatly through the sound barrier on its first test flight.

Last week C. V. was in full production on an initial $275 million (about 275 planes) production order, expects to deliver the first operational Crusaders to fleet units by the end of this year. C. V. hopes it is just the first of many orders, that its plane will be a Navy front-line day fighter for at least five years.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.