I'm at Matthew Burchette, and this is Behind the Wings.
Somebody turn this thing off!
Okay, so silliness aside, this episode is actually
on the F-100 Super Sabre. Ours is a D model. Now, the F-100 first hit the Air
Force in 1954, and it was actually to be a replacement for the F-86 Sabre, which
had gained fame in the Korean War.
So, let's do a walk around on this baby and see what's what.
One of the reasons we really like our F-100 is because it's
just cool-looking. I love this green tail, and that
represents the 356th Tactical Fighter Squadron and the 354th Tactical Fighter
Wing, when they were based in Italy in 1960 during the Berlin Crisis. And our
aircraft actually was there, and it was painted just like this. But enough of
that. Let's go check out the cockpit. That's where the good stuff is.
So here we are in the front office, the main office, of the F-100, and, as you can see,
we've actually got quite a bit of the instruments left in here. Now one of the
really cool things that a lot of people don't know about the F-100 is that some
of them were equipped with what was known as LABS. And that stood for Low
Altitude Bombing System. And, at the time, that was a big deal, because it was
computerized, and it would work with your autopilot. Now what LABS was is that, if
you were going to deliver a nuclear weapon, you want to be out of there before that
thing goes off. Well, this guy wasn't fast enough to really get you out of there, so
LABS was a way for a pilot to come over the target at very low altitude, pull
straight up, launch the bomb, pull away and let that bomb come over an arc and
right back down on the target. So one of the other cool things
this little guy right here: drag chute. But, not only did we have a drag
chute, we had something even better.
What makes a Navy plane a Navy plane? BAM!
A tail hook. Wait, the F-100 is not a Navy plane, but it still has a tail hook.
Remember that little handle we saw on the cockpit for the drag shoot. Well, what if your drag
chute doesn't fully slow you down? This little guy sure will! So what this
is is it's actually a tail hook, just like a Navy plane, but this one is not
designed for use all the time. If you're screaming down the runway and your
brakes don't work and your drag chute isn't slowing you down and you're about
to hit that perimeter fence, this little baby will stop you real fast. So what
you do is you pull a handle. BAM! This comes flying down, hits the pavement and
drags along until you hit that arrestor wire. And then woof, you are stopped baby.
Now one of the cool things about the F-100, other than it looks just awesome, is
that it took part in what they called ZELL experiments. And ZELL stood for a
Zero Length Launch. They would strap a huge rocket right here, and the aircraft
would be put in a cradle and then the rocket would literally launch it off the
cradle. Now why do you do that? Well, in the 1950s, when this guy was was first
designed, we were really terrified by Soviet ICBMs and bombers. So the idea was
that, if you could put a bunch of fighter aircraft on a mobile launcher,
you didn't need a very vulnerable airfield. So you could station these
aircraft all around like a missile site or, say, a nuclear facility. And they could
get into the air much quicker with a ZELL than they could taking off from a runway
and having to get to speed and climb to altitude. And so the F-100 was
one of these aircraft that we actually tested. Never went any further really
than the testing phase, but it sure looks cool.
Alright, so here we are kind of at
the wing tip of the F-100's right wing. And you'll see off to my left here is
this kind of fence looking thing. Well guess what that's called? A wing fence.
No kidding. Now why on earth would this have this? Well, because the Saber actually has
a really bad tendency to pitch up and, as they would come in at a low speed and
sometimes even at a high speed, the air, instead of going from front to back over
and under the wing, would start to kind of move to the side and to the middle of
the aircraft. In fact, it was so bad it actually got its own name the Sabre
dance. Well, as engineers figured this out, they came up with this super
technical way to stop it: the wing fence. And all it does is act like a normal
fence, where the air hits it, stops and then it automatically goes to the back
again like a normal wing. And that's how they stopped the Sabre dance. Not bad.
Alright, so here we are at the wing again. But why are we at the wing again?
Because of this bad boy right here. How cool is this thing? Alright, well,
it's not that cool. But it's still cool. But what is it? It's called a
leading-edge extension, or LEX. And the F-100 had them, because it had a laminar
flow wing, which is great for going fast, not really good for going slow. So the
leading edge extension would deploy when you were landing
or taking off to give you more lift. That's pretty cool.
So you know how on Behind the Wings we like to show you guys stuff that nobody
else gets to see, that's what this is. This is a little-known modification to
the F-100D, which is what our plane is. This is a chin up bar for the pilot when
he was on alert. Alright, I'm lying. It's actually a pitot tube. Now what exactly
is a pitot tube? Well, in this case, just a really long tube that measures fluid velocity.
Alright, nerd alert. In this case, the fluid is air. Air is a fluid.
Don't believe me. Google that stuff. Anyway, why is this one so long? Well, you
want to get this thing way out in front of that giant hole behind me, which is
sucking in all that air, so you get undisturbed air, so you get a good
reading for your airspeed and all those other things
that are really super important to fly.
Wow, what an awesome episode.
Thanks for tuning in. Alright, if you've got questions or comments, make sure to post
them on our Facebook or our YouTube site, and we'll get to them.
And as always, we'll see you around.