[3e] North American F-100 Super Sabre

[Phaelen Bleux]

North American F-100 Super Sabre
Developed from the F-86, the F-100 (or "Hun," as it was often called), was the world's first supersonic combat aircraft. Unfortunately, it's impressive flight record ends there. The F-100 exhibited a number of handling problems, including a yaw roll and stalling at high angles of attack. These problems (which became known as the "Sabre Dance") were often difficult to recover from, and a remarkable 889 of 2,294 aircraft constructed were lost to accidents, many of them fatal.
In Vietnam, the aircraft was primarily used in the bombing role. The F-100D was redesigned with this in mind, adding an autopilot, ECM, and a low-altitude bombing system for "toss bombing" with nuclear weapons. In addition to nuclear weapons, the F-100 also deployed Mk 80 and M117 bombs, napalm canisters, AGM-12 Bullpup air-to-ground missiles, and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. Although it was intended to carry two 200-gallon and two 275-gallon drop tanks, these again caused stability problems. As a result, two 450-gallon tanks were most often used. If these were unavailable, a pair of 335-gallon drop tanks could be carried. The -D was the most produced version, with 1,274 built. The F-100 was retired from the USAF after the Vietnam War in 1972, and from the ANG in 1980. F-100s were supplied to Denmark, France, Turkey, and Taiwan.
The F-100 has a crew of one. Combat range is 1,500 miles; the jet burns 527 gallons of jet furl per hour at routine usage. A full (internal) tank of fuel costs $3,567; ammo is $1,920 for 800 rounds. Ordnance cost varies by payload.

F-100D Super Sabre
Subassemblies: Body +4, High-Agility wings +2, 3 retractable wheels +0.
Powertrain: 11,700-lb. thrust turbojet with afterburner, 3,000-kWs lead-acid battery.
Fuel: 1,189 gallons jet fuel in self-sealing standard tanks (Fire 12) [Body and Wings]. Can carry an additional 900 gallons in drop tanks.
Occupancy: 1 NCS.
Cargo: None.

Armor
All: 4/30

Weaponry:
4x 20mm Autocannons/M39E [Body:F] (200 rounds each).*
7,500 lbs. of external stores [Body and Wings:U]
*Linked to fire in pairs or all at once.

Equipment:
Body: Very long range radio with scrambler (3,000-mile), autopilot, precision navigation instruments, IFF, targeting radar (15-mile), advanced bombsight, radar detector, flight recorder, arrestor hook, refueling probe, ejection seat, 30,000-lb. vehicular parachute, ¼ man-day limited life support, full stabilization for cannons, eight hardpoints.

Statistics:
Size: 49'x39'x16' Payload: 8.52 tons Lwt.: 19.0 tons
Volume: 320 cf. Maint.: 12 hours Price: $2,727,928

HT: 8. HPs: 843 Body, 577 each Wing, 76 each Wheel.

aSpeed: 812 aAccel: 6 aDecel: 29 aMR: 7 aSR: 3
Stall Speed: 148. With afterburner, aSpeed 864, aAccel 9.
gSpeed: 397 gAccel: 20 gDecel: 10 gMR: 0.25 gSR: 3
Ground Pressure Extremely High. No Off-Road speed.

Design Notes:
Body is 320 cf; wings are 64 cf each, wheels are 16 cf. Wing volume was reverse-engineered from actual wing area (385 sf). Structure is Heavy, Standard with Very Good Streamlining. Sealed. Armor is Expensive Metal (titanium). Mechanical controls. Design loaded weight is 37,342 lbs.; this was increased 2% to the maximum take-off weight. The design's turbojets produce 17,550 lbs. of thrust on afterburner; the real-world thrust of 16,950 lbs. was used for performance calculations. Design aSpeed with afterburners was 978 mph; the historical value is shown above. The historical unit cost was $679,029; many aircraft received up to $110,559 in upgrades.
The HT was reduced by 1 to reflect the aircraft's poor reliability.

Variants:
The F-100A (1953) featured a 15,000-lb. afterburning thrust engine. It was the first fighter capable of supersonic speeds in level flight. 230 built, with the last 36 having 16,000-lb. thrust engines.
The F-100B was a slightly improved version of the -A. Only 3 were built.
The F-100C (1956) added inflight refueling capability and eight hardpoints. 476 built.
The F-100F was a two-seat trainer. 339 built.