And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
The F-102 may have been "optimized for speed," but it wasn't fast. They couldn't even get it through the Mach. It remained for aerodynamicist Richard Whitcomb to come up with Area Rule, which produced the nearly identical-looking F-106. The -106 turned out to be a Mach 2 aircraft and set a world speed record (at the time).
Area ruling was used on the F-102A production version and it exceeded mach 1.2. It was only the original YF-102s that were subsonic. A redesign produced the YF-102A which eventually went into production.
I grew and lived (still do) in Sault Ste. Marie, MI and Kincheloe AFB was about 15 miles south of us, a SAC (B-52) and ADC (F-102, F-106) base. In the late 50s and maybe early 60s we heard sonic booms almost EVERY day.
F-102. This is the plane G W flew in the Air National Guard. Optimized for speed, it was a bitch to land, and he had trouble more than once.
ReplyDeleteThe F-102 and F-106 (and F-104) were the ready alert aircraft in the US for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteThe F-102 may have been "optimized for speed," but it wasn't fast. They couldn't even get it through the Mach. It remained for aerodynamicist Richard Whitcomb to come up with Area Rule, which produced the nearly identical-looking F-106. The -106 turned out to be a Mach 2 aircraft and set a world speed record (at the time).
ReplyDeleteArea ruling was used on the F-102A production version and it exceeded mach 1.2. It was only the original YF-102s that were subsonic. A redesign produced the YF-102A which eventually went into production.
DeleteThis is one of the two original YF-102 prototypes built without the area-ruled fuselage.
ReplyDeleteI grew and lived (still do) in Sault Ste. Marie, MI and Kincheloe AFB was about 15 miles south of us, a SAC (B-52) and ADC (F-102, F-106) base. In the late 50s and maybe early 60s we heard sonic booms almost EVERY day.
ReplyDelete