- Hi, I'm Chuck Stout,
curator at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum.
Today we're gonna go "Behind the Wings"
of the Republic RF-84K Thunderflash.
A 1950s reconnaissance airplane
that was carried as a parasite under a larger airplane
to its distant destinations.
This one's gonna be cool.
- [Announcer] It's time to go "Behind the Wings."
- Here at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum,
we have over 70 iconic aircraft
and spacecraft in our collection,
housed in this beautiful World War II era hangar.
And one of them is the Republic RF-84K.
The Republic RF-84K is the parasite version
of the RF-84F Thunderflash.
This is one of only three left in the world
of the 25 that were built.
Now, our restorations team has done a magnificent job
of bringing this back from oblivion.
Let's take a closer look.
Now we called this airplane a parasite.
To understand exactly what that means,
we'll have to go back to the beginning of the Cold War
in the mid 1950s and the inception of Project Ficon.
- [Narrator] The ultimate goal
of this project is to provide a means
of combining the high performance of an RF-84
with the long range capability of an RB-36
for bomb damage assessment missions.
- So as the Cold War gained momentum,
the United States needed
factual aerial reconnaissance information
on the Soviet Union's military power.
In particular,
their nuclear weapons programs,
the quantity and types of their aircraft,
and their rocket and missile research.
But the large reconnaissance airplanes
with the range to fly to the Soviet Union and back
were relatively slow and easy for the Soviets
to track and shoot down.
So small fast reconnaissance jets had the speed,
but they couldn't fly the long distances.
Aerial refueling wasn't really practical yet.
The enormous Convair B-36 bomber had the range
and it also had the ability to lift
and carry a speedy Republic RF-84 jet.
What if the B-36 could carry the RF-84 most
of the distance to the Soviet Union,
then release the jet to dash in and get the pictures?
Then the RF-84 could fly back to the waiting B-36,
hook onto a trapeze frame hanging
below the belly of the bomber,
and be raised back up for the long ride home
to the United States.
These trips were about 10 hours each way.
The jet wouldn't fit inside the B-36,
but if the horizontal tail was modified to angle downward,
enough of the F-84 would fit up inside the B-36
to reduce drag and allow the F-84 pilot
to ride home in the B-36,
which was a little bit more comfortable.
The RF-84K was a reconnaissance airplane
and therefore it carried cameras.
Now, this was before the digital age,
so these were film cameras.
They would have to carry the film
in these big camera cartridges on the back.
The cartridges would be taken off when the airplane landed,
taken to a film processing place,
and then interpreted by photo interpreters.
The cameras themselves are very large as you can see,
long focal length, big lenses,
because they were taking pictures over dozens,
sometimes hundreds of miles.
The airplane didn't carry cameras behind every window,
but it has 10 different windows that cameras can use
and it usually carried several on each mission.
Different cameras for different missions.
Now, the reconnaissance F-84s,
the RF-84s were developed from the fighter version,
the F-84, and they retained some armament.
They had four 50 caliber machine guns buried
in the wing route here.
The machine guns came back about here
and carried their ammunition in cans inboard from that.
The F-84 could also carry a Mark 7 nuclear bomb.
As the experimental program progressed,
the Air Force activated
the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron in 1955.
Unfortunately, the process of disconnecting
and hooking back onto the trapeze
under the B-36 was very difficult,
due to the turbulence under the bomber
and the sensitive handling of the RF-84K.
Although experienced test pilots could manage to do it
in daylight and in nice weather,
the reality of operating at night,
in difficult weather, near enemy territory,
maybe with people shooting at you,
was probably not practical for regular Air Force pilots.
So the Ficon project was developed
because they didn't yet have reliable air-to-air refueling.
But after the Ficon project ended,
this airplane was retrofitted
with a air-to-air refueling receptacle.
So it rejoined the ranks as a airplane
that was capable of being refueled in mid-air.
But that's probably enough about Project Ficon for now.
Let's talk about this particular airplane
and how our restorations team brought it back
from a terrible state.
They put in hundreds of hours.
They're incredibly talented.
Well, let's go talk to one.
This is a museum, this airplane will never fly again.
So you guys are trying to bring it back
to how it would've looked in service
and that means that you're looking at historic documents,
you're looking at old pictures.
- A lot of research went into the paint
that we have applied to this airplane.
As you can see, the red paint,
the black paint that was used when this project was live.
A lot of the problem was the black and white photographs.
So trying to determine whether it was red or blue,
a lot of times was kind of tough to do,
and that's what it took in order
to get this airplane looking like it did in the 1950s.
This airplane arrived in 1993.
When it got here, the entire airplane was painted gray.
They stripped all the paint off
and we ended up with a very dull silver airplane
with a lot of leftover paint that made it look pretty messy.
The only way to do it is
with aluminum wool and elbow grease.
So that's what we started
and it took us four and a half years
to get the shine that we have on it.
- [Chuck] A few square inches at at a time.
- I tried the power tool trick and it didn't work.
So it was wax on, wax off.
- Really looks great.
Tell us about all the the stencil work.
- The interesting thing
about the stenciling is we know it's accurate
because after that paint was all stripped off,
it left a ghosted image of all the text on the metal.
So all we're doing is tracing right over the top of it.
- Seeing an airplane with all
of those stencils restored is breathtaking.
I understand that when the airplane came
to Wings Over the Rockies, it had been outdoors,
it was a gate guard,
and the cockpit had been completely stripped.
Why don't we go take a look,
see what it looks like now? - Let's do that.
- So now we're at the cockpit.
Wow, it looks absolutely wonderful in there.
Steve, tell us how you did this.
- Okay, a lot of work was involved in this cockpit.
When we got it, it was completely gutted.
The only thing we really had was a control stick
and the ejection seat, but they were really in rough shape.
So it took nearly five years for these guys
to create or clean the correct instruments for this cockpit.
This aircraft was improved,
restored with labor of love from all the volunteers
and staff member involved here.
The cockpit especially,
just because of all the detail work that was done,
the scope here,
he added the map on there to give it a little realism,
and it's almost ready for display,
and that's what we're headed for.
- So thanks, Steve, for being the spokesperson
for the whole restorations team.
I know that dozens of people have worked
on this over the years,
and thanks for bringing this airplane back
to what it looked like in 1955.
- I appreciate that, thank you.
- So Project Ficon wound down in 1956
and all of the RF-84Ks were either scrapped
or turned back into RF-84Fs,
except for this one and two others.
The role that was fulfilled
by the RF-84Ks was later taken over
by the Lockheed U-2 spy plane.
A very famous aircraft,
long skinny wings like a sail plane, jet engine,
flew high enough to evade Soviet air defenses
until 1960 when they shot one down,
creating a huge international incident.
But that's a story for another time.
Now, this is a fascinating airplane
and we didn't have time to cover everything.
So if you have questions or comments,
please leave them under the video
and we'll get to them as much as we can.
In the meantime, come to the museum
and see all the wonderful aircraft that we have here.
And if you've seen something in the background
that you're curious about, let us know.
Maybe we'll do a "Behind the Wings" on it.
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I have to get back to work now, bye.
(upbeat music)