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Old 01-13-2020, 11:34 PM
hyair hyair is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Rehovot - Israel
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F7u-3M The big Promice and reality

The Cutlass was in many ways a unique plane and had many firsts with the navy:
first plane to release loads at super sonic speed
first to carry load of 5000 lb
first with 2 after burners
first with hydraulic system of 3000psi
first to carry 4 radar sparrow missiles with VA-83
deployment to Mediterranean sea with the 6th fleet in 1956
top speed of mach 0.94 in level flight
15000 feet per min initial climb rate
Look was futuristic compare to other types
So, what went wrong ?
The J46 of Westinghouse along with the J40 were both expected
to give the Cutlass , Demon f3h and F4D Skyray top performance.
In reality these engines were a big failure and Westinghouse went out of
engine manufacturing as a consequence.
The Demon adapted the J71 engine instead
The Skyray adapted the J57 engine instead
The cutlass had to stay with the J46 because the frame that was
designed for two engines couldn't get another engine at the time.
The J46 was expected to deliver a thrust of 10000 lb in afterburner-
something that could have made the Cutlass one of the most formidable
planes of the mid 50's.
In reality the power was de-rated to 6000 lb in order to avoid too frequent
replacements of engines due to low MTBF ( mean time between failure).
The development of the f7u-3 was very complicated due to all the new
features added to the design.
The Cutlass was without doubt the most advanced design at the time sharing
no resemblance to any other fighter of the time.
In the next chapter I will describe the service with the navy of this unique
aircraft and it's 3 versions.
In the images here I added the photo version with elongated nose in plastic model of 1:72.

Yair
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