Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Wilfrid on June 24, 2004, 09:12:35 AM
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F8 Crusader (http://www.vectorsite.net/avcrus2.html#m6)
Interestin'
The operational history of the F-8 Crusader has an interesting distinction. In August 1960, a US Navy pilot took off from Naples, Italy, and climbed to about 1.5 kilometers. When he leveled off, he found he needed an unusual amount of pressure on the stick. Looking around for the cause, he discovered that he hadn't unfolded his wings!
The pilot was obviously cool-headed, since he decided to investigate how the aircraft handled in this configuration while he dumped what fuel he could. After about 24 minutes of flight he came back in for a landing, which was fast but otherwise uneventful. He reported no particular handling problems with the aircraft. Vought engineers were very pleased when they heard the story, though Navy brass was far from happy with the incident.
This is said to be the first case where an aircraft took off with folded wings and safely landed again, but Crusaders took off with folded wings at least seven more times afterward. Unsurprisingly, it usually happened at night. One pilot managed to waggle the aircraft and get the wings back down in flight. In response to the posting of an early version of this document on the Internet, the executive officer of the French Aeronavale squadron operating the Crusader, Antoine Guillot, said one of his pilots had pulled the same trick at an airshow in Belgium. At least under such circumstances the pilot might have been able to claim he did it intentionally as a stunt.