XF-108 Rapier - Mach 3 Interceptor
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- čas přidán 7. 02. 2022
- In 1954, as the world lay covered by a veil of impending nuclear doom, the US military rushed to develop protective technology to shield the nation in case the Soviet Union decided to unleash their nuclear arsenal on them.
One of the most significant fears that the US authorities had was in regards to Russian long-range nuclear bombers. Thus, they hastily approved hundreds of aircraft designs to provide the country with a wide array of long-range interceptors and contain a possible Soviet air attack.
The North American XF-108 Rapier was one of the models intended to protect US territory from a nuclear onslaught. The aircraft was specifically designed to intercept incoming bombers while they were still hundreds of miles away from US shorelines. For this purpose, the fighter had to showcase unprecedented speed and range capabilities.
However, even when the urgency couldn't be more pressing, the Rapier would take years to perfect, and time was quickly running out.
By February 15, 1954, a renowned aviation magazine published an article describing new Soviet jet bombers capable of delivering a nuclear warhead from their bases to the US without a need for refuel. Then, in a Soviet aircraft demonstration, 28 bombers named Myasishchev M-4 were presented to the world. American tacticians calculated that if the USSR could produce 28 of them in such a reduced window of time, they would have over 800 bombers by 1960.
By then, there would be no force on Earth capable of stopping such an amount of nuclear-armed bombers, and the US Air Force hoped projects like the North American XF-108 Rapier could be developed in time to stand a chance against such an assault.
But unbeknownst to the US commanders, the North American XF-108 Rapier was doomed from the start…
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The XB-70 Valkyrie is so dang good looking. It's such a shame it never went into full production. At least the remaining prototype is on display for everyone to admire.
Money better spent elsewhere.
@@WALTERBROADDUS ICBMs
I live in Cincinnati, about 50 miles from USAF Museum where there is an XB-70 Valkyrie. It is HUGE and awesome looking
@@leonswan6733 right now I would trade bridges in Pittsburgh for icbms. But long-term, they've proven to be more useful than the f108.
The mission that it, and the B-58, were designed for, simply failed to materialize. Changing technology negated the advantages that they possessed. When they had to change ti low level penetration missions, they faired no better than the BUFF. Their speed advantage was lost at low level. So, it was all about money. Why spend the money for systems that were no better than what already were in service. Money better spent elsewhere on ICBMs, SLBMs, and cruise missles.
Never heard of the XF-108 until now. And that's exactly why I love aviation; there's always something to learn.
Oh sure their squadron was VF 69 "THE RAPISTS"
Oh sure their squadron was VF 69 "THE RAPISTS"
@@bradjames6748 Nice One!
Lol join the semiconductor business....
True
My late friend, Len Cormier, was the chief design engineer for the XF-108.
They should of had a limited production of the F-108s for intercepting up in Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland ,Faroes islands and Bear island off Norwegian waters. Its better to have 2 engines over all that water than one in a F-102 104 106 Saab Draken and more speed to get to farther distance than a F-101 and F-4. Also the Canadians should of stopped being cheap and built a limited production of there Avro Arrow to QRA scramble up in there artic north Islands airspace. My opinion.
Was he from Canada?
so he was a war monger.. never solved any conflict,or advanced human brain cells..
@@harrywalker5836 obviously no one has advanced any of your brain cells.
Thing is, the whole ordeal that the Bison set in motion pivoted the whole scene of superpower arms race. While the traditional route would have been to develop an aircraft to counter another, behind the curtains Clarence Johson had been for a while developing a revolutionary solution for intelligence needs, and the fear raised by the Bisons finally set the program in full motion. In less than a year the U-2 took flight, and quite soon it was able to provide the U.S. with accurate intelligence on the airpower of the Soviet Union, and disproving the estimates of the number of the Bisons. In a sense, the XF-108 was shot down byt the U-2...
I'd be smelling that infor. on "no need for the Russians to re-fuel".........unless the idea was like the Japanese: no need to make it back home!! Bison bull crap.
@@thedwightguy My Theory in the aircrews situations after there bomb drop in WW3 is:
Americans, The idea was if they did put the XB-70 into production was that is was so fast ( after a over the north pole mid mission slow down to Mach 0.5 in-flight re-fueling from a Boeing 2707 derived Mach 3 tanker maybe ) after a Mach 3 dash over CCCP/USSR airspace, the chalks not close to western Europe, Scandinavia and back to Alaska would continue to land at a friendly or neutral to U.S. country. Countries like Turkey, India, Pakistan, Iran ( until 1979 ) , Burma , Thailand, S Korea, Japan since doing a U turn back over the N pole was not practical. If the B-52s did not have that range to make it to those countries it was a bailout and if you was not pitchforked hammered and sickled to death on the spot, your a POW.
Soviets, If they did get to complete there bomb runs over USA soil, its either making it to Mexico which was kind of communist sympathizing back then ( Fidel Castro`s invasion of Cuba from Mexico ) and played both sides of the fence to the two waring factions. And then there's making it to Cuba. If you could not reach them and shot down over USA soil well its either a bullet from a .45 1911, .38spl /.357 revolver, .30 M1 carbine or your a POW.
I don't think it would of been " High Hopes " for any of those bomber aircrews. ICBMs was the way to go.
I know it's an experimental plane, but I find it hard to believe that there's only one single picture available of the XF-108, but that's what we get here. A ten minute video, and one drawing of the intended subject.
Yepp, thin soup..😆
The Avro Arrow CF-105 looks a lot like what the XF-108 was🤔
There is more pictures there’s a one of the cockpit, missile bay, and side views of the aircraft
The XF 108 never made it past one sided mock up Stage, with some kind of cockpit non functional display.
Not too mention as I understand it, the XF 108, was meant to Escort the XB 70
@@bretthoffman2128 it was meant to intercept aircraft not escort them
American aircraft designs at that time just looked so clean and sleek. I really like it.
Same with Canadian ones.
Same with everyone else's. They were focused on speed and not much else because no one had fought a war with supersonic jets yet. It turned out that jets still needed to turn and carry guns, they still needed to carry iron bombs and provide CAS and that the sort of nuclear war that was envisioned wasn't the war they'd end up being asked to fight.
A few designs mostly got things right (Dassault Mirage 3, MiG 21, F-4), a few got things right because they bucked trends (F-5) and a bunch basically represented the military industrial complex getting paid for the wrong tools for the wrong job.
@@TheWolfsnackcanadian one is F8 crusader looking F106
The Soviets had a long history of taking units, tanks and aircraft from the front of a parade and after passing the reviewing stand turn around rejoining the parade at the state point. They would also quickly paste on new markings to appear to be from different units.
This is how the Soviets got the US and its allies to make defenses for a bomber threat that was not as much as they made appear
President Reagan did this with his nonexistent Star Wars defense system to trick the soviets to expend resources countering a nonexistent threat. This meant even more money removed from civilian programs contributing to the collapse of Communism in the USSR.
Russia won the cold war.
Wasn't it general Patton that drove the trucks around the mountain top over and over knowing the Germans were watching?
@@johnhenke6475 Perhaps, I don't recall. That is a very old tactic. It was Washington that had set up logs to look like cannons when he had no artillery.
@@stingingmetal9648 That is why we all speak Russian now.
That is why over 300,000 (2019 pre covid) Russians try to get Visa's to the US every year and they now do it through lottery..I dont know of anyone, who said..I think I am going to move to Russia from USA, and said, "what a great place to be"..
That XF-108 story sounds very familiar. Anyone down there remember the AVRO Arrow? The two aircraft even look similar. I find that very interesting. And yes. The XB-70 was awesome. At least you kept a prototype.
Good catch the Avro does look a lot like XF-108. To bad it never made it into production. The Avro was sidelined by pressure from the US to go with the Phantom.
@@Wideoval73 Not to be "that guy" but I think it was the CF-101 Voodoo the U.S. was pressuring us to buy.
Yes I was thinking about that as well.
@@Wideoval73 And the irony is that it was a Conservative government. Canada STILL gets calls from Wash. and London on what the country is going to be "allowed" to do, even with oil refineries.
@@Wideoval73 CF-101 Voodoo, not F4s. Your point remains; we moved away from Avro to rely upon US aircraft almost exclusively ever since.
This bears a striking resemblance to the A-5 Vigilante, which was one of the most beautiful aircraft to ever fly.
The engineering and the fuselage design of the XF-108 went into designing and making the A-5 Vigilante. Its both North American Aviation. There was a on paper design Air Force intended 3 engine ( they put a 3rd GE J79 in the hole where the butt plug extra tanks and NUKE warhead would of been ) interceptor Variant of the Vigilante numbered "349" which had 6 AIM-47 missiles under the fuselage. They even took the same general airframe of the A-5 and made a twin vertical fin tail fighter that looks a lot like a MD F-15 Eagle but almost 10 years before the XF-15 was on paper. its model number was " 237 ". NAA was a leader of military ACFT back in the day, they even designed and built the Space Shuttle Orbiters for NASA.
100% agree!
Which raises the question… any relationship to the MiG-25?
@@Justanotherconsumer It would have been a possibility some spy or traitor engineer sold the plans of NAA " 237 " to the Russians. The Mig-25 " Foxbat " looks a lot different than a NAA " 237 " Just like a F-15 looks similar in layout of a Mig-25 but is different. I cant say that it was a influence in the basic design of a Mig-25.
I also think the Mig-25 is a awesome example of a flying machine myself. amazing plane and engines.
@@leonswan6733 given the differences of the early versions of the MiG-25 to the A-5 I’ve always considered those theories a bit suspect - convergent evolution rather than copying seems more likely.
Still, the capabilities of the XF-108 and the MiG-25 are too similar to not compare them - the MiG-25 basically is what the XF-108 could have been, albeit with a much shorter range.
I remember there always being talk of an XB-70 based interceptor while the Valkyrie was being built. That would have been one hell of an aircraft. Macnamara put an end to all that. They would have been a gruesome twosome until SAM technology caught up with the plane's upgrades.
NAA was possibly the greatest aerospace company of all time. P 51, X 15, Apollo command module to name a few.
Imagine a fly off between a Lockheed F 12 and a North American F 108, that would a great show! You can see that much of the work from the Rapier went into the A 5 Vigilante.
I think the F-12 " Archangel " ( Weaponized SR-71 ) would of edged out in front of a F-108 Rapier and keep going past it when the Rapier had to slow down for a in-flight refuel or land for out of fuel. The SR-71 / F-12 is a bigger plane for a reason, it did fly 3,000 miles on one tank of gas from L.A. to NYC in 1 hour. But i don't think the F-12 would of been good on a QRA ( Quick Reaction Alert ) standby especially with that leaking lots of fuel from filled tanks in its hanger. The F-108 would of been better for that.
The F-12 would of been better at deep penetration escort for the B-70s into USSR/CCCP airspace if they did put them into production. Its the only fighter that can keep up and overtake a B-70 to get in front of it and be a linebacker for the quarterback. I think that's why they are parked next to each other at AF Museum Dayton OH.
I also believe President Kennedy and the U.S. Government help financed the American SST ( Super Sonic Transport ) like the Boeing 2707 jet airliner research to side develop a Mach 2+ capable aerial re-fueling tanker to keep up with the B-70s and F-12s at Mach 3 cruise speeds to slow down and mid mission refuel them before they entered the USSR at Mach 3+.. Kind of how Boeing developed the -80 to be the KC-135 stratotanker and the 707 stratoliner together.
ICBMs is the better option.
Other way around. The A-5 (nee A3J) design start predated the F-108 by several years. Both planes had long conceptual and preliminary design phases that overlapped.
Also, the F-108 design effort was conducted at the El Segundo facility (shown in the video), while the A3J design was conducted at the Columbus facility (nee Curtis Wright).
And then Concord flew past them followed by the English Electric Lightning lol
@@ianmuir6784 Jokes aside The Concord was not going to fly past a F-108 Rapier or a F-12 Archangel in a 85,000+ feet altitude Mach 3+ race. If the Concord put in 4 bigger engines under the cowl like 4 GE4 engines which was to power the Boeing 2707 then maybe it would qualify for the race but i don't think the Concord was designed for the heat from air friction moving thru the air at Mach 3+ ..
@@leonswan6733 Just pulling your leg buddy
The Valkyrie just takes my breath away! Such a shame that that project came to such s sad end.
If you ever get a shot to go to the Air Force museum in Dayton, OH, they have one there you can see in person.
Unfortunately, beautiful though it was, it was made obsolete by ICBM's before it was even finished. To continue with it would have been a huge waste of money and resources.
It's not a shame, it's a good thing.
@@somewhatchewy Thanks for the pointer! It's only half a planet away but to see that beautiful aircraft in person would be well worth the airfare.
It'd still be bitter / sweet though mate!
@@WALTERBROADDUS A good thing? That NASA Chief Test Pilot Joe Walker (F-104 pilot) and Carl Cross (XB-70 co-pilot) were killed?
I think you'd do well to keep those opinions to yourself! This ain't the place to be dancing on the graves of those pilots Walter.
I think an adjustment of your moral compass is in order.
I'm not religious. Never have been & never will be. I'm still the same atheist i was when i was born.
But saying the death of those pilots is a good thing says more about you than them.
the XF-108 is one of my all time favorite designs alongside the F-15, F-106, the B-70 and B-1.
YF-23 for me all day.
The Blackjack is not bad and on paper, better overall. Just sayin’
It's weird that we actually used to live in such times. It's even weirder that we might have to live in them again. In the 80's, I worked for NORAD, doing intercept missions on Soviet Union bombers off the coast of Georgia and Florida (on their way to Cuba). Never thought we might see those times again, albeit in a different form, but still dealing with Russia.
A fake super power that can't even defeat Ukraine and doesn't even have the economic power of the UK. Not even close to the US in any field of conventual warfare - its a very second rate military power with a massive nuclear force (and ballistic subs that have to always hide in port to avoid detection/tracking.)
Your background music choice and volume thereof is now just right. Thanks. Great episode as always.
Between the music and the demise of the 108, I'm left down and wanting a good cry... Good work!
Sounds very much like the AVRO Arrow story here in Canada. A lot of good developments took place at that time, but with no planes to show for it. Others that followed did benefit from the experience.
It became the A-5 Vigilante, which became the F-15,
thus the strike-eagle is its ultimate incarnation, now in the new EX version.
Not to mention the radar and missile combo evolved into the AWG 9 and AIM-54 Phoenix which provided decades of solid fleet defense.
Too bad the F15 doesn't fly at Mach 3 also. It's still a bad ass jet.
@@dextermorgan1
It doesn't need to though, and by sacrificing that ability they improve it's abilities in other areas. If you have to incorporate more steel and titanium into an airframe it drives up the cost and also the weight of the completed project. The added weight impacts manoeuvrability. A fighter like an F-15 or Su-27 is overall a better fighter than something like a MiG 31 (or some hypothetical American equal to it) because the extra speed is likely less useful in most scenarios than what you're trading off to gain the extra speed.
It not like you can fight at top speed, it really just allows you to cover ground quickly (like for recon or interception) or to break/avoid contact but so far Eagles have dominated Foxbats when they've made contact, despite the -25s being faster.
@@dextermorgan1 Missiles do the top-speeds these days, while the jet fighters are left to maneuver in milder speeds.
Great video. Never knew of the XF-108. New information ,thanks
I've visited Wright Patterson AFB and viewed the magnificent XB-70. It's profound.
A bomber gap, then a missile gap, & a possible mineshaft gap. Next, we'll have folks attempting to fight in the war-room.
Just so you know , the late 60's cartoon Jonny Quest has a pair Rapier scarmmable into flight. The only show to see them. My favorite show ever
Thank you very much for the work you do. :>)
Love your vids, great sense of history and drama from the world theater. Thanks OP
Thank you for making this. When I watched your video over the XB-70, I mentioned this airplane. It is a shame it was never built.
They should of had a limited production of the F-108s for intercepting up in Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland and Faroes islands off Norwegian waters. Its better to have 2 engines over all that water than one in a F-106 in my opinion.
@@leonswan6733 Like the XB-70, they should have at least made a small handful of flyable prototypes to at least test out concepts that the Air Force wanted.
@@aerobear109 For the XB-70s case ICBM development was a better way to get NUKEs over to bomb the USSR/CCCP.
As for the F-108 they should have made a limited production like i said in my original comment. That would of made sense of spending tax payers dollars. They still would of been needed on alerts to intercept RADAR contacts which would be Russian/ soviet bombers and surveillance intelligence aircraft probing NATO airspace up in the North oceans during peace times.
Footage or photos of the XF-108 being hard to come by, apparently.
It was never actually built, only mockups.
you really hitted it with the music!
Thanks for this 👍
Great videos , thanks!!
It was a curious parallel to the Canadian AVRO CF-105 Arrow which was designed with a similar purpose and performance, and actually did fly about a year earlier. Despite being an excellent aircraft, it too was cancelled as attention shifted to missile and anti-missile technology.
The Arrow was not as fast as the F-108. It was Mach 2, about equivalent to the F-106.
@@i-love-space390 It would have been interesting to see how fast the Arrow would have got after the more powerful Orenda engines that were designed for it had been installed.
Knowing the real truth is paramount to avoid misunderstanding and have better results....
Thanks again for another great aviation video.
While we anxiously admired the Bison, there was no way the thing could have posed as supersonic. But even a one-way run @ NY was scary enough 2 keep us entertained.
Thank you for an awesome video
When talking about the Bison, which of course unbeknown to the West was as you eventually say actually a bit of a dud, most of the clips are in fact Blinders, Badgers and even the odd Backfire.
MAD doesn't mean that 'retaliation would mean utter destruction'. That implies you survive if you don't retaliate. What I guess you meant to say was that someone launching an attack in the first place would precipitate their own utter distruction regardless of what they might inflict on their enemy. Therefore a MAD scenario war is unwinnable, therefore any attack is pointless.
I see from your clip of the alleged '55 demo that the Soviets have pulled a blinder and shown off their Brewers. Ironic as not only are these not Bisons, but the Brewer didn't fly until 3 years later.
The supersonic interceptors the US is hastily developing at (3:58) appear to be Mig-25s? Again these aircraft aren't even from the right period, let alone on the right side.
One of your early XF-108 contenders appears to be a P-51? At least it was American, unlike the Mig-23 that follows it.
There is so much video of the XB-70 Bomber that anyone who doesn't know better would think that was indeed the XF-108 fighter.
I'm sorry? 'Two vertical stabilisers that protracted as the landing gear withdrew'? Did they stay longer than intended? What I think you meant to say when copying the script from Wiki was that there were a pair of 'ventral', ie under-belly, stabilisers that extended from the rear fuselage once the aircraft was clear of the ground.
The GAR-9 aka AIM-47 missile was not an air-to-ground weapon as you show being fired by F-4s in Vietnam. It was an active RF-guided AAM, ancestor to Phoenix.
The USAF didn't lose interest because the aircraft kept being modified. Rather it was the USAF asking for changes to reflect a changing strategic requirement.
The bomber gap as represented by the Bison was indeed just some maskirovka. Nevertheless, the Bison wasn't the only iron the Soviets were smelting in that fire and they would indeed come up with some impressive aircraft (eg Bear, Backfire and Blackjack) that could be equipped with long-range air-to-surface and anti-ship missiles to form a very real threat, as they do today. It's notable that Russia has just now restarted Backfire production.
I think I'd rather have seen the majority of this video being about the XF-108. We are 40% of the way through before you even mention the start of the program. That's a lot of intro! As usual far too much of the video is distractingly wrong, although that is I guess entertaining in its own right, but apart from some early sketches and an incorrect artist's impression there was not a single picture in the whole piece of the actual subject aircraft. I know it never got beyond the full-size mock-up stage but there are good pictures of that around.
How about taking a couple of minutes out of the intro and using it at the end to say what happened to the tech that was going to go into the 108? There's that radar (went to YF-12), the long-range AAM (also YF-12, and gave birth to Phoenix), the engines (became the GE4 that would have powered the American SST) and finally the whole fuselage/systems/weapons package of the XF-108 that would end up in the A-5 Vigilante.
So there is actually a sort of happy ending. Just as the 108 was coming up for cancellation a significant part of its design was flying for the first time in the Vigilante and would stay in service for another 20 years.
@Tim Gosling -- Thank you for this. About 10 seconds into this video my eyes were rolling into the back of my head and I had a hard time watching through to the end. This has to be their worst video extant. Literally no clip in it was correct.
I had to give the video a thumbs down. The selection of aircraft images is terrible. None matched the commentary. I couldn't watch to the end, it was too annoying.
@@simonminnesota -- Simon, you too have misspelled MinneSNOWta. Growing up in Duluth i, after much research, (looking out my window) determined that it had been misspelled and have since championed the correction.
I even saw a Bounder (M-50) in there.
Dark everything. I love these channels!
Speech cadence is good, thanks for slowing down.
"Talks about Bison...shows lots of blinder footage." Great info none the less just had me confused as I was sure I knew what a bison looked like. Had to double check.
I love your content, no matter what Dark5 channel it is 👍🏻
This is my favorite cold war jet, I'm glad it got to see some love with this video.
Thankyou I enjoyed this video.
It's a shame at least one prototype wasn't built, it would've been nice to see one fly.
Excellent stuff bro
Nice video about XF- 108 rapier aircraft's shared by excellent specific channel thanks for sharing
Being curious I looked at "photos" of what the XF-108 would ve looked liked ,while it's sad it never went into production , it must've inspired the design of the F-15 Eagle.
No, F-15 design was heavily influenced by MiG25 Foxbat
@@rossinimauro the Mig 25, which was influenced by the A5 Vigilante
@@kentl7228 which was based in the basic design concepts of the f-108 which was based on the WS-202A concept from North American
The XF-108 was a gorgeous interceptor
I think it’s just great how early they tried delta wing technology, to get to perfect lift aircraft like the f22, so early in aviation!!
What an interesting video, thank you! Obviously this arms race was a 2 way street as Soviets produced aircraft such as the Mig 25 which also had the USA fooled into thinking it's capabilities were above what they actually were, much like the Bison. This aircraft would have been one heck of a technological achievement IMHO so it's such a shame it never came to fruition.
Like the CF-105 and a lot of others it was a cool idea that just didn’t keep up with the changing needs of the tactics and strategy.
At least we know what happened to the Arrow prototypes now.
Such a beautiful plane!
There was an interceptor designed and built for this purpose and it was flown. It was the Avro Arrow.
Awesome video
There's a definite design progression from A3J to XF108 to XB70.
yes. personal favorite
As a child of the 1950ies, I well recall over four decades of purported bomber, missile, tank, and all other mostly imagined gaps that financed ever costlier and more outlandish technology, culminating in Reagan's Star Wars - all of these projects of use only to the earnings for the military-industrial complex.
You'll never know the full extent of the contribution this arms race had on the technology you use today.
Yep, I love the tech and cool old machines, but each of them represents tens of thousands of people who didn't need to go hungry or struggle to find decent and reasonably priced housing, it represents the healthcare system that had my 22 year old friend concerned about bills while dying of leukemia, which was almost certainly inflicted on him by our own government (he was born on Guam) through the insane lack of oversight and disregard for the populations around our bases.
@@zinjanthropus322 Then let's give a hearty hip-hip-hurray to both world wars in the 20th. Nothing like some Zyklon B to show us how time and again humanity proved its mettle.
@@The_Irate_Penguin humanity didn't use zylon b. The Nazis did. Stop pushing your slighted moral equivalency
@@The_Irate_Penguin Those same chemical industries are the reason you're not starving right now. You don't have to celebrate it but the fact remains you're only able to talk to me through this medium because someone tried to kill someone else a long time ago.
My dad was on the team that built the xb70 and the design team that were trying to build XF 108 repair. It was a very good design and would have fulfilled its mission. North American Aviation has built some incredible equipment from the at6 to the b1b bomber. People that worked for North American Aviation were the best. If you look at just about every aircraft that company bill you will see new things they were never seen on other aircraft.
I love these planes that could have been. Makes you wonder if they ever kept any of them as one-off prototypes for special missions.
Best Chanel on CZcams
What is amazing is that the B-52 still is our primary bomber. Crazy that these play planes never made it out of the design room.
the XF 108 never got beyond mock up stage
What a beautiful jet...
I wish experimental planes can be still be flown but not for war but for air shows
Where would you get the parts for a 50 year old prototype engine? Even if some parts are shared with other engines made by the same company others will be bespoke and not available without having another one-off part made, possibly without having access to design work or the people who understood how it was made in the first place.
@@skaldlouiscyphre2453 i dont know maybe put them on the ground
Well dont fly them over towns.
I live near Shoreham, Sussex, UK where we had an avoidable air disaster.
@@Surv1ve_Thrive ok
Very nice design. Like it.
I guess the preleminary studies didn't go to waste. This thing looks very much like the later A-5 Vigilante. And it still amazes me that such a large plane operated regulary on an aircraft carrier... 😎👍
Because the USAF concentrated on designs such as the F-108 they didnt have fighters for the Vietnam War ,So they had go with the US Navy F-4 Phantom II .
Thanks from Texas Dark Dude
I never thought that hearing about what led to what canceled a plane program would make me so sad. It sounded like it had amazing potential just to be no longer needed... That's really depressing.
This looked a lot like the RA5-C Vigilante. I served in the Navy in the mid to late 70's in a Vigilante squadron.
Both my parents were in the RAF during the cold war; the Russians often circled planes or tanks (in this case they would quickly repaint the numbers) to make it look like they had more vehicles than they did.
Good info. Would've loved to have more references of the actual XF-108 though...
*Let the Sunshine In.*
Thank you
.
The USAF had the F-102 in service and the much improved F-106 on the way. The interceptor needs were covered. The F-108 never even made it to a flying prototype. What was left was technology and promises
The physical similarity to the A5 Vigilante is intriguing
Very cool looking plane.
This is an awesome video. You should do one on the Republic XF-103 Thunderwarrior
The F108 certainly was a good looking machine. Bet it would have been very effective. Such a shame it was cancelled. A lot of good aircraft such as the Avro Arrow and the TSR2 got cancelled and thats pretty galling especially when you look at some of the crap like the Javelin, Sea Vixen, F104 and F111 that were actually built.
Canada's AVRO Arrow CF-105 met the same fate for the same reasons at the same time, you don't need an interceptor for ICBMs. The AVRO Arrow at least was flying when the project was canceled.
We need deeper dives into these subjects. We need a dark channel that puts out 30 to 45 minute videos
My grandparents both worked for the skunkworks, not the eggheads but some of the actual builders, most women lost their jobs after WW2 but Nana was a badass, & she gave zero shits when it came to me asking what they were doing in the early 70’s, greatest generation hands down
What people forget about this type and the Avro Arrow was the need for bases. These would have needed long runways and those are hard to build and maintain in the north.
Something EVERYBODY forgets about the F108 - it's cancellation was about the time the Lockheed A12 was taking shape. The F108 was stillborn because a better bun was in the oven.
It would be great if there was more detail and images of the 108 , the XB 70 deserves it own very long video.
I thought this was going to be about the NAA F-108 Rapier, but instead we got NAA XB-70 Valkyrie re-runs. The XB-70 was a magnificent Project, but i wanted a bit more on the F-108 than what we got.
That's one bad thing about cancelling projects like these before they are mature: you never know what could have been and that knowledge could have been useful for other projects.
The wings look remanisant of the Tsr 2
It's amazing how advanced the aircraft were for that time while the cars were so "old fashioned" looking. I wonder if doing mach 3 in one of those jets was like doing 100 mph in a 57 Chevy. Like yeah it would go that fast but but it probably rattled and shook and was all over the sky probably fishtailing.
Very interesting documentarie 👍 👍
Projecting 800 bombers would be built in 5 years on the basis of seeing 28 at an air show ludicrous. The cold war was crazy.
Man I like this. It would be cool to see a smaller type full squad kickin ass
You get the AP mechanics the pilots and the engineers together and design a revision with less fasteners and minimum airframe parts to quell fab difficultys namely the money.
Would be awesome to have some videos on nuclear missiles, the development, yield, testing grounds, current countries arsenals.
Missile technology advancements killed a lot of plane designs from bombers to interceptors. It would be instructive to see a list of those planes and the missiles that made them obsolete before they ever flew, even if the missiles never flew in anger either (good thing, that).
I can’t help but see a resemblance between the Rapier and the Firefox piloted by Clint Eastwood in the eponymous film.
Just another project that never reached maturity. A shame really how many truly fascinating planes ended this way.
However this case also shows how efficient USSR was in counter-espionage and luring the enemy into wrong assumptions.
Exactly what Putin is up to right now with his recent show of military force in their missiles while we, as a world, try to celebrate peace through unified head to head competition. He wants to bastardize everything that is not of Russian origins.
The CF-105 Avro Arrow could have easily filled this void
Yes indeed, as could the TSR-2, or the English Electric Lighting.
What are the links for the music used in this video, absolutely amazing!
"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!" - General Buck Turgidson
Dark Skies ! Another well done video dealing with the history of the cold war.
6:26 - Wow, that wing bears a striking resemblance to an F-22 Raptor wing.
4:46 " Hey - what the F ! I'm still working in here, and you go shutting the door on me ! "
Thanks for making the vid ... I recently suggested this to you ... Or was it just a coincidence ? :)
Looked like one of Spectrum's Angel Intercepters