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Vought F-8 Crusader: Last of the Gunfighters

Dabbs forgot to mention a few things.

The F-8 Crusader has a sleek fuselage that's also very long (as per the profile pics) in comparison to its wingspan. While the higher angle of attack of the wing helped provide more lift for take-off and landing it was also necessary to address the long fuselage length.

The angle of attack refers to the wing, not the fuselage. The reason the wing was raised was to level the fuselage at approach speed so the tailpipe wouldn’t hit the deck when the F-8 landed. Having the fuselage as level as possible makes landing much better.

Also, accident rates were high for all aircraft of that era due to the early tech.

This sentence... The wingtips also folded for storage aboard ship. should have been the lead-in for the paragraph below the John Glenn picture.

The Mk 12 20mm cannon were prone to jamming during high-G maneuvers.

The Brits figured out how to better land the F4U than the US since they used the F4 U on carriers earlier, and the Corsair had to make some changes to it's landing gear. And if was so difficult to land why was the F4U regularly operated on very small escort carrier during Korea.

And with the same the F8 Crusader was operated more, and lastly, on the small improved Essex-Class carriers.

And the designers of the F-8 did not design it to rectify issues with the F4U Corsair. Two different designs.

Some additional information on the French operating the F8 Crusader would have fleshed out the article better.

My .02
 
The French F-8 was a different/new model, the F-8E(FN), based on the F-8E with substantial modifications, & the Philippines F-8s were left over USN/USMC F-8Hs which were remanufactured F-8Ds.






 
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The story of the F-8 Crusader "wings folded" flight


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BTW - It happened to an F-4 Phantom too.

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And an Israeli F-15 flew with half of its wing.

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As someone who flew the F-4, I was underwhelmed by the F'8. It was going away by the time I finished flight training in 1972.
The F-8 was basically a Day VFR fighter. The F-4 was an all weather Intercepter that could be used as a fighter bomber.
 
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