|
By coincidence,I bought a book on the F6U last month through Amazon.Its an old book from the "Naval Fighters"series (Number 9) by Richard Koehnen,printed in 1983.
There were 3 prototypes,followed by 30 production versions.According to the book,the combined total time for all of the production airplanes was 945 hours,or an average of 31.5 hours per aircraft.As the F6U had a number of insoluable design deficiencies,and newer and more capable fighters were being produced,the F6U's were largely expended as fixed surface targets on an aerial gunnery range near Socorro,New Mexico.
The major problems with the F6U were its lack of range,the fact that it was underpowered,even with a primitive afterburner,and it had viscious stall characteristics.Initially,there was no stall warning whatsoever.The airplane would roll inverteted with no warning if it got too slow on approach,which was not ideal for a carrier based fighter.After a number of fixes,the stall characteristics improved somewhat,but never gave much warning.
According to the book,F6U Buno 122479 was retrieved from the target range and in 1983 was in the Bradley Air Museum in storage
If you are interested,I believe that the book might still be available via Amazon.I think that my copy actually originated from Hobbies.com through Amazon and wasn't expensive.Its only 34 pages,but has some interesting information and a number of photos.If it helps,the reference number for this book is: ISBN 0-942612-09-4
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
