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F-94 “Starfire”

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Formation of three F-94Cs (S/N 51-5642, 50-1063 and 51-5549) of the 354th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Oxnard Air Force Base, Calif.,
Formation of three F-94Cs (S/N 51-5642, 50-1063 and 51-5549) of the 354th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Oxnard Air Force Base, Calif.
The F-94 came about during a time of rapid change in the aviation world, but it had an eventful, if short, life.

By the end of World War II, air forces around the world were aware that a new age of aviation was dawning: The Jet Age. In 1948, the newly-formed United States Air Force called out to designers for a radar-equipped jet interceptor to replace the piston-engine F-81 and F-82. The threat of war with the Soviet Union was already very real, and their Tupolev Tu-4 (a copy of the American B-29) was an intercontinental threat, in and of itself.

The Air Force needed a fast interceptor, that could fly at night and be able to detect incoming bombers on its own. Curtiss-Wright designed the XF-87 “Blackhawk” to fill this role, but it was scrapped for poor performance. Lockheed was asked to submit a design on an emergency basis, so the company took aspects of its successful TF-80C jet trainer. The TF-80, later called the T-33 “Shooting Star” was a two-seat training version of the F-80 “Shooting Star,” and the prototype plane they would give birth to would share 75 percent of the original TF-80’s parts. Notably, the engine was upgraded from the J-33 turbojet seen on the T-33 to the Allison J-33-A-33 afterburning turbojet. The extra power was required due to the added weight of electronic equipment, including the radar and the Sperry A-1C gunsight.

This made the F-94 the first American production jet that used an afterburner.

The first production F-94, the F-94A variant was armed by four .50 in. M3 Browning machine guns in the fuselage. Its two wingtip fuel tanks could be replaced by 1,000 bombs, making the F-94 a versatile fighter-bomber. in 1951, the F-94B version entered service with upgraded electronics, engine, and an Instrument Landing System.

The F-94C was the first variant to bear the “Starfire” name, but when it went into service, the entire F-94 family adopted the moniker. The “C” was a very different airplane, so different that Air Force officially were originally going to call it the F-97. The F-94C had its guns replaced with rockets, wings thinned out, and tail surface swept back. The engine was swapped out for a Pratt & Whitney J48, which gave a big increase in power, especially when the afterburner was fired up.

In March 1951, the Air Force sent F-94Bs into combat over Korea. During the Conflict, an F-94 was credited with the world’s first jet-versus-jet air combat victory, when it defeated a MiG-15 with guns. Only one F-94 was officially lost in combat, though a few others crashed during the deployment.

Despite its combat successes, the F-94 was retired from USAF service in 1959, as a flurry of new and more advanced jet fighters came into production. They remained in Air National Guard service until 1960.

Specifications

General (F-94C)

Crew: 2
Length: 44 ft 6 in
Wingspan: 42 ft 5 in
Height: 14 ft 11 in
Empty weight: 12,708 lb
Engine One Pratt & Whitney J48-P-5 turbojet, putting out 6,350 lbf (8,750 lbf with afterburner)

Performance (F-94C)

Maximum speed: 640 mph
Combat Range: 805 mi
Ferry range: 1,275 mi
Ceiling: 51,400 ft
Thrust/weight: 0.48

Armament

F-94A/B: Four .50 in. M3 Browning machine guns
F-94C: 24 or 48 2.75 in (70 mm) Folding-Fin aerial Rockets

Wingtip fuel tanks could be replaced with 1,000 lb. bombs.

F-94 “Starfire” Photo Gallery

Lockheed EF-94C recon variant test aircraft
Lockheed F-94B Starfire (S/N 50-930) in flight.
F-94A of the 449 FIS
Lockheed YF-94 (S/N 48-373). This was the second aircraft built (from TF-80C)
A U.S. Air Force Lockheed F-94A-5-LO Starfire (s/n 49-2586) from the 190th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Idaho Air National Guard.
F-94C Starfire being armed with 2.75 in FFARs (Mk 4 Folding-Fin Aerial Rocket)
Lockheed F-94A Starfire in the Modern Flight Gallery at the National Museum of the United States Air Force
F-94 on display the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.
F-94 cockpit
Formation of three F-94Cs (S/N 51-5642, 50-1063 and 51-5549) of the 354th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, Oxnard Air Force Base, Calif.
Formation of two F-94Cs.
Lockheed F-94C (S/N 50-1034) landing with drag chute deployed.
Several F-94s in flight
F-94 with pilot from the 178th FIS North Dakota Air National Guard

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AN602 “Tsar Bomba”

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The Tsar Bomba mushroom cloud seen from 100 miles away
The Tsar Bomba mushroom cloud seen from 100 miles away

They only needed one, and it was enough to bring about the worldwide end of airborne and surface nuclear bomb testing.

Tsar Bomba, the Soviet Union’s AN602 hydrogen bomb, was and remains the most powerful nuclear weapon ever made and its test was and remains the most powerful man-made explosion in world history.

At the 1960 United Nations General Assembly, Nikita Khrushchev promised to show the United States a “Kuz’kina Mat” — which sort of translates to “we’ll show you!” in Russian. Khrushchev showed the world in 1961 when the only Tsar Bomba ever built was dropped by a Tu-95 “Bear” bomber flown by Major Andrei Durnovtsev over the Mityushikha Bay nuclear testing range in the Arctic, over the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

Here are some numbers: The bomb weighed 27 metric tons. It was 26 feet long and 6.6 feet around. It was so big that the Tu-95V that dropped it had to have its bomb bar doors and body fuel tanks removed to accommodate it. It was attached to a parachute that, itself, weighed over 12,000 lbs. This gave the “Bear” and observing Tu-16 plane time to fly about 30 miles away before the detonation, which was still so strong that it made the massive Tu-95 drop more than half a mile in altitude due to the shock wave caused by the bomb.

The bomb detonated at 11:32 Moscow time on October 30, 1961 and created a fireball that rose up for miles and could be seen from more than 600 miles away. The mushroom cloud that resulted rose 57 miles up, which is seven times higher than Mount Everest — it’s also in the mesosphere, above the earth’s stratosphere.

The bomb was capable of a mind-boggling 100 megatons of yield, but the Soviet testers deliberately scaled this back to 57 megatons for the test. Still, at 50 mt., the bomb was the biggest ever detonated and expelled 1,400 times power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, and yielded TEN TIMES the firepower of all of the ordinance expended throughout World War II.

When the bomb exploded, it leveled the surface of the testing range and melted the rocks on the ground. Thirty-four miles away, every building in the test range village of Severny was destroyed. Wooden structures 100 miles away were flattened. Radio communications were blocked for over an hour. Windows cracked 560 miles away.

The shock wave was so powerful that it circled the earth at least three times, according to measurements published in the journal Nature in February 1962. The shock wave was also so powerful that it prevented the bomb’s fireball from ever touching the ground, bouncing it up like a basketball.

All that, and we are told that there was very little nuclear fallout released by the bomb. Soviet leadership wisely decided to swap out fast-reacting uranium tampers with lead stoppers. This cut the 100 megaton yield down to 57 (Russia says 50, most experts agree that it was 50-60) but just as importantly removed 97 percent of the nuclear fallout from the bomb’s detonation.

The bomb also expelled a lot of its energy into space. This effectively limits the practical use of a weapon of this magnitude. Sure, a 50 megaton bomb will level a city, but so will a 1 megaton bomb. The bulky Tsar Bomba was merely a dangerous piece of agitprop for the Soviet Union.

Still, there was fallout from Tsar Bomba, and the many other nuclear tests conducted at Novaya Zemlya. Experts estimate the combined yield to be 273 megatons detonated there by the Soviets, and fallout is believed to have affected Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Norway. To this day, and for many years to come, plutonium isotopes will continue to pollute the Arctic seas thanks to nuclear testing, according to The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

A few years after the test, in 1963, the US, UK and USSR signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty forcing all nuclear tests to be conducted underground.

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Tsar Bomba Photo Gallery

The Tsar Bomba mushroom cloud seen from 100 miles away
Model of the “Tsar Bomba” in the Sarov atomic bomb museum.
The Tsar Bomba’s fireball, about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) in diameter, was prevented from touching the ground by the shock wave

Buccaneer

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Royal Air Force Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S2B (Media credit/Chris Lofting)
Royal Air Force Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S2B (Media credit/Chris Lofting)
The Royal Navy’s carrier strike fighter of the 60s and 70s, the Blackburn Buccaneer suffered a near-fatal mid-life crisis before seeing some of its only combat action as a Royal Air Force jet during the 1991 Gulf War.

The need for a carrier-capable strike fighter came from the rise of the Soviet Sverdlov-class cruiser. The Buccaneer was not a fancy airplane, but it filled that role nicely.

The Blackburn Buccaneer was later known as the Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer when Blackburn became a part of the Hawker Siddeley group in the early 1960s. It was a sub-sonic, low-level strike fighter that operated into the 1990s, despite a design, avionics, and electronics that were always very 1960s.

The Buccaneer had to get a few lucky breaks to even exist as a military airplane. The cancellation of the supersonic British Aircraft Corporation TSR-2 and the fantastic failure of the General Dynamics F-111K meant that the less advanced (and cheaper) Buccaneer would be given a go.

Early first-generation Buccaneers suffered a series of crashes due to what was seen as a lack of engine power. The S.2 upgrade came with a pair of punchier Rolls-Royce Spey engines.

The South African Air Force emerged as an export partner very early on, and 16 aircraft were delivered under the Buccaneer S.50 name. They were exactly the same was the Buccaneer S.2 except for added armor in the undercarriage, manual-folded wings, better wheel brakes, and the addition of the Bristol Siddeley BS.605 rocket engines that added additional thrust on African battlefields. The plane saw most of its actual combat service in the South African Border War, flying strike sorties against guerrillas in Angola and Namibia. During the Border War, the Buccaneer proved itself a versatile and effective attacker, engaging everything from ships, to tanks, to vehicles. It was also useful in a defensive role, providing close air support and cover missions for South African soldiers.

A Buccaneer landing on HMS Eagle circa 1971
A Buccaneer landing on HMS Eagle circa 1971
A United Nations Embargo against South Africa put a stop to the British export of further aircraft, and it was in South Africa that the Buccaneer became its own chapter in the Cold War Era nuclear arms race. In the 90s, the world learned that South Africa had developed air-to-ground nuclear weapons with an estimated yield of up to 18 kilotons. The nuclear weapons were designed to be delivered by the Buccaneer or the English Electric Canberra bomber, which South Africa also purchased pre-embargo.

The Buccaneer never garnered any other export interest. The United States Navy developed the A-6 “Intruder” for its own needs, and Lockheed had engaged in a series of bribes from the late 1950s to the 1970s, which led to several countries purchasing its F-104 “Starfighter” for ground attack use.

In 1980, during Red Flag drills, a British Buccaneer lost one of its wings mid-flight and crashed, killing the crew. The RAF immediately grounded its fleet and determined that metal fatigue was a problem on several Buccaneers. The RAF upgraded 60 of the planes and scraped the rest.

Reaching the end of its lifespan, the Buccaneer finally saw combat for the Crown in 1991 during the first Gulf War. At least 20 roadway bridges in Iraq were successfully attacked by Buccaneers using laser-guided bombs. On Feb. 21, 1991, a pair of Buccaneers even got credited for aircraft kills when they destroyed a pair of Iraqi transport planes on the ground at the Shayka Mazhar airfield.

When the Buccaneer was retired, it was replaced with the V/STOL British Aerospace Sea Harrier in the Royal Navy and the Panavia Tornado in the RAF.

It is believed that three airworthy Buccaneers remain in South Africa, and one is undergoing restoration to airworthy condition in the United Kingdom. About two dozen of the planes are on display, mostly in the United Kingdom.

Specifications

General

A Royal Air Force Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S.2B aircraft in flight during "Air Fete '88", a NATO aircraft display hosted by the U.S. Air Force 513th Airborne Command and Control Wing at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk (UK), on 28 May 1988.
A Royal Air Force Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S.2B aircraft in flight during “Air Fete ’88”, a NATO aircraft display hosted by the U.S. Air Force 513th Airborne Command and Control Wing at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk (UK), on 28 May 1988.
Crew: 2
Length: 63 ft 5 in
Wingspan: 44 ft
Height: 16 ft 3 in
Empty weight: 30,000 lb
Loaded weight: 62,000 lb
Engine: Two Rolls-Royce Spey Mk 101 turbofans, 11,100 lbf each

Performance

Maximum speed: 667 mpg
Range: 2,300
Ceiling: 40,000 ft
Thrust/weight: 0.36

Armament

Guns: None
Hardpoints: 4 under-wing pylons and one internal rotating bomb bay. Total of 12,000 lbs. of ordinance can be carried including:

  • Rockets
  • AIM-9 “Sidewinders”
  • AS-37 “Martel” air-to-ground missiles
  • Sea Eagle air-to-ship missiles
  • Iron bombs, laser-guided bombs, and Red Beard or WE.177 tactical nuclear bombs
  • Drop tanks for extended range

Photo Gallery

A Royal Navy Blackburn Buccaneer S2B (XV157) on display at the 1966 Farnborough Airshow. (Imperial War Museum)
Blackburn Buccaneers Fleet Air Arm Jubilee Review Yeovilton 1964
Non-flying preserved S.2B in 1991 Gulf War colours at Kemble Airport, England
Blackburn Buccaneer S.50 (retired) at South African National Museum of Military History.
U.S. Navy exchange pilot Lt. W.W. Foote (right) and his Royal Navy observer Lt. D.J. Allen in front of a Royal Navy Blackburn Buccaneer S.1 of No. 700Z squadron at “HMS Fulmar”, the RN airbase at Lossiemouth, Scotland (UK), ca. 1961.
A Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S.2B of No. 12 Squadron, Royal Air Force, performing a touch and go landing at the U.S. Navy Naval Weapons Center at China Lake, California (USA), during an air show of USN test and evaluation squadron VX-5 on 16 September 1981.
Blackburn Buccaneer S.1 XN929 at the SBAC show Farnborough 8 September 1962. (Wikimedia)
A Royal Air Force Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S.2B aircraft in flight during “Air Fete ’88”, a NATO aircraft display hosted by the U.S. Air Force 513th Airborne Command and Control Wing at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk (UK), on 28 May 1988.
A Buccaneer landing on HMS Eagle circa 1971
Royal Air Force Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer S2B (Media credit/Chris Lofting)

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MiG-3

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A restored MiG-3 at an airshow - Mochishche Airfield, Novosibirsk Oblast. (Wikimedia)
A restored MiG-3 at an airshow – Mochishche Airfield, Novosibirsk Oblast. (Wikimedia)
Failure is not the right word to describe the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3. You’ll, almost exclusively, hear about the airplane’s failures in a WWII air combat documentary. It was hard to fly. It was not a capable fighter at low altitudes. It was a poor fighter bomber. All true, but none of these things are the fault of the first mass produced MiG.

The MiG-3 was born out of design problems with the MiG-1 experimental fighter. It was faster than its contemporaries, and it was meant to fight at high altitudes, where its speed would be vital. In this sense, it can be compared to the fast interceptor jets would arise during the cold war, including the American F-106 “Delta Dart” and the Soviet MiG-25.

It is similar in another sense: All three of these aircraft were built to fight a war that would never come. The F-106 and MiG-25 were designed to be extremely fast, climb extremely high, and take out enemy nuclear-capable bombers before they could wipe out entire cities back home. This, of course, never came to fruition.

Similarly, the MiG-3 was designed to fly at high altitudes and engage the enemy, using speed as its weapon. The the war that came to the Eastern Front was a low-altitude war. It was a grittier, less streamlined role that the MiG found itself pressed into service for in 1941, and the airplane was ill-equipped to dogfight at low altitude. The Soviets also tried, and failed, to convert the MiG-3 into a fighter-bomber. The MiG-3 was an interceptor, and it was at a serious disadvantage against Germany’s rough and tumble Messerschmitt Bf 109.

The MiG-3 was designed, on paper and in wind tunnels, to be an improvement over the MiG-1. Changes included improved cooling, more ordinance, a second oil tank under the engine, streamlined supercharged air intakes, an armored cockpit, improved instrument layout, upgraded gunsight, and underwing hardpoints that added nearly 500 lbs. of increased ordinance carrying ability. On paper, it was a vast improvement. In reality, the MiG-3 was 500 lbs. heavier than the MiG-1, and safety oversights led to inferior airplanes being delivered to Red Army Air Forces units.

In service in WWII, the MiG-3 was difficult for veteran pilots to tame and deadly in the hands of an inexperienced pilot. It also faced a primary opponent in the Bf 109 that was faster at low altitude, more maneuverable, and more than 1,300 lbs. lighter.

The MiG-3 entered service just before the German Invasion, but the state of war that existed during this time meant that Soviet fighter pilots did not have time to properly train on the new, heavier fighter. VVS pilots were accustomed to the Polikarpov I-16, a light, highly maneuverable fighter. While it could turn on par with a Bf 109, it was older and had less engine power, reducing its rate of climb, dive, and top speed compared to the German fighter. None of that would soon matter, anyway. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, the Luftwaffe focused its attention on I-16 bases. Roughly 1/3 of the Red Army Air Forces’ 4,226 aircraft just prior to Operation Barbarossa were I-16’s. Within 48 hours of the Luftwaffe assault on their bases, more than half of all Soviet I-16s were destroyed on the ground or in the air.

The world got just the slightest taste of the MiG-3’s potential in June 1941, just prior to Operation Barbarossa. Pilots from the VVS’s 4th Fighter Regiment shot down three German high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, but this was about the extent of high-altitude combat.

The MiG would be retired before the end of WWII, largely supplanted by the Yakovlev Yak-1, which was much better suited for low-altitude combat.

Few MiG-3 survivors exist today. Some have been restored and are in private collections and museums. Some are flown in airshows all over the world.

Specifications

General

Crew: One
Length: 27 ft. 1 in.
Wingspan: 33 ft. 5 in.
Height: 10 ft. 9 7/8 in.
Empty weight: 5,965 lbs.
Loaded weight: 7,415 lbs.
Engine: 1 × Mikulin AM-35A liquid-cooled V-12, 1,350 hp

Performance

Maximum speed: 398 mph at 25,600 ft
Maximum speed at sea level: 314 mph
Range: 510 mi
Ceiling: 39,400 ft

Armament

  • One 12.7 mm UBS machine gun
  • Two 7.62 mm ShKAS machine guns
  • Up to 220 lbs. of bombs, 2 spray containers for chemicals, gas or flammable liquids or 6 × 82 mm RS-82 rockets on wind hardpoints

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C-27 “Airbus” and “Aircruiser”

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Bellanca C-27C "Airbus"
Bellanca C-27C “Airbus”
Before the company, there was the C-27 “Airbus.”

Known as the P-100, P-200, and P-300 “Airbus” and upgraded to six variants of the “Bellanca Aircruiser” in the civilian world, the Bellanca C-27 was a limited production, high-wing workhorse designed with packages that could carry people or cargo and land on land, water, or snow.

The plane came out of a Golden Age of Flight desire to have a plane that could fly non-stop from New York to Rome. Designer Giuseppe Bellanca came up with a plane called the Model K, which never flew. But the distinctive design survived.

Curtiss-Wright R-1820 Cyclone Radial Engine -- a 9-cylinder, supercharged, air-cooled radial engine. A variant of this engine powered the C-27C and the B-17 "Flying Fortress)
Curtiss-Wright R-1820 Cyclone Radial Engine — a 9-cylinder, supercharged, air-cooled radial engine. A variant of this engine powered the C-27C and the B-17 “Flying Fortress)
The United States Army Air Corps used three variants of the C-27. The most popular was the “C” variant, with four built and nine C-27As re-engined with the powerful 750 hp Wright R-1820-25 air-cooled engine.

The plane was extremely efficient. The original P-100 could fly at a cost of around 8 cents per mile, in 1930 figures. It was also reliable and easily re-configurable, making it a popular “bush plane” for rough terrain and wilderness cargo and passenger hauls.

But the plane was doomed, from an American military or commercial standpoint, almost as soon as it came on the market. In 1934, U.S. federal regulations banned single-engined transports and passenger airliners. The plane gained a market in Canada, where it was used for carrying ore from and supplies to remote mines.

Only 23 planes were built, and only two are known to exist today. One famous civilian “Aircruiser,” known as the “Eldorado Radium Silver Express” crashed in Northern Ontario in 1947 after running out of fuel. The plane was beat up that its owner abandoned the plane to the elements. The Western Canada Aviation Museum in Winnipeg is working on a long-term restoration of the plane as of 2013. The museum posted, in 2011, a virtual cockpit tour of the plane.

Eldorado Radium Silver Express undergoing restoration in 2011 (Courtesy of the Western Canada Aviation Museum)
Eldorado Radium Silver Express undergoing restoration in 2011 (Courtesy of the Western Canada Aviation Museum)
The only intact plane, a 1938 “Aircruiser” is at the Tillamook Air Museum in Oregon.

This beautiful “Flying W” quite nearly became the most famous plane in the world, when Charles Lindbergh and his team came within a hair of purchasing the “Aircruiser” to attempt the famous new York to Paris Flight. Charles Levine, the chairman of Columbia Aircraft Corporation which was the firm brokering for Bellanca, offended Lindbergh when Levine insisted on choosing his own crew to make the historic flight. Lindbergh refused and went on to purchase the “Spirit of St. Louis,” a custom build from Ryan Airline Company.

Lindbergh made the flight, and “Spirit of St. Louis” became world-famous. The “Aircruiser” does have the distinction of being the first plane to fly from New York to Berlin and the first place to cross the Pacific ocean.

Live footage of the C-27 was used in the historic early television cartoon “Clutch Cargo.”

This C-27 should not be confused with the modern Aeritalia G.222/C-27A and Alenia C-27J “Spartan.”

Specifications

General

Crew: one, pilot
Capacity: 16 passengers (with passenger configuration)
Length: 43 ft 4 in
Wingspan: 65 ft 0 in
Height: 11 ft 6 in
Empty weight: 6,072 lb
Engines: One Wright R-1820 Cyclone 9 9-cylinder supercharged air-cooled radial engine, 710 hp

Performance

Maximum speed: 165 mph
Range: 700 miles
Ceiling: 22,000 ft

Armament

None.

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