Thursday, May 21, 2020

Gorgeous


6 comments:

  1. North American FJ-2 Fury?

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    1. Navalized F-86. It didn't work well. I think the FJ-2 was a navalized Mustang. That didn't work well either.

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    2. I'd still strap my body into that bad boy and tour Northern California (buzz your house, CW) at treetop level. We'd need to sanitize it and remove the numbers first...

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    3. Land it at the Redding airport and Mrs. CW and I will take you out for a wonderful dinner.

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  2. they made great target drones.
    Anyone thinking that the design had room for the additional systems the Navy required should visit the USAF Museum in Dayton OH at Wright Patterson AFB. they have the engineering 'Naked Sabre' on display. That nose air intake was the cause of many sleepless nights and much coffee drank after others when home. In the era before CAD/CAM when slipsticks ruled and paper was the medium of choice in the engineering departments of the world of aviation, one look at the limited number of access panels on the fuselage and what the 'Naked Sabre' shows is beneath them will definitely raise an eyebrow or two.
    While others were using then the current centrifugal compressor engine designs, North American went with the axial flow design engine, the J-47; an engine with a smaller cross section and a real appetite for fuel and air.
    As an aside, a lot of the airframe technology of the Fury and Sabre went into the design of the NA-65 Sabreliner, another fine NAA product; though lacking guns or cannon. Those same engineers working under the logo of Rockwell, designed the bane of all Naval Aviators, the T-2 Buckeye. I wonder what legacy they left behind that inspired something as-to my eyes-beautiful as the B-1.

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  3. It is actually an FJ-4.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_FJ-4_Fury

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