Cougar Portraits

Usually, when a manufacturer spends the time and money to do air-to-air photography, it's for a good reason...meaning that there's something significant about the subject aircraft. So far in my research, though, I've not been able to identify why either aircraft shown in today's two photos is significant. The first one, F9F-8 Cougar BuNo 141140, lies in the middle of the production run of 200 aircraft (BuNos 141030 to 141229), out of a total of 601 -8s built from 1954 to 1957. From what I can determine, somewhere in the middle of the production run, the design was modified so that the Cougar could carry four AIM-9 Sidewinders under the wing, which this aircraft clearly has. Might this be the flight test aircraft for that configuration? That would be photo-worthy, but it's also purely speculation on my part at this point. The lack of squadron markings, plus the fact that the AIM-9s are red in a color image that was taken a few seconds before this one (and available here on the web), indeed suggest a test role.

This looks like possibly the same aircraft (the BuNo isn't visible due to the angle)
on a day when it was been flown clean-winged.

The F9F Cougar was an update to the earlier F9F Panther, which had been out-classed by the MiG-15 in Korea, in which the Panther's straight wing and tail were replaced with swept wing and horizontal, giving the aircraft a higher critical Mach number, and thus a higher top speed (although it was still a sub-sonic aircraft). Initial production of the Cougar started with the F9F-6 in 1952. The -8 was the final mass-produced version, and incorporated an 8-inch fuselage stretch and wings with a larger chord and a cambered leading edge for better low-speed capabilities.

A Savage Feeding a Crusader

AJ-2 BuNo 1340xx refuels an F8U-1 Crusader BuNo 14378x while an F9F Cougar
flies cover.

One of the "forgotten" carrier birds of the post WWII era is one part of today's photo, the North American AJ Savage.

In the days after the end of the War, the Navy felt a bit left out, as they had no aircraft capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. The ability to lift heavy objects - such as atom bombs - was something that the in-development jet-powered aircraft had a lot of promise of, but the finer points of jet power were still several years away.

They Navy tried using JATO-equipped Lockheed P2V Neptunes, but while they could take off from an aircraft carrier, they couldn't land on one, leaving the crews to figure out where to go after they dropped the Bomb. So, in 1946, the Navy contracted with North American to develop the AJ, a composite-powered stop-gap solution. The main power came from two Pratt R2800 radial engines which were boosted by large turbochargers, so that they could maintain power to 42,000 feet. To assist in take-offs and to give a bit of dash speed, a single Allison J33 turbojet engine was embedded in the lower tail. At altitude, the aircraft was quite fast, capable of almost jet-like speeds of 460 mph.

With the advent of the Douglas A3D in 1952, the Savages were relegated to other duties, with some being converted to tankers, their bomb bays being fitted out with the refueling gear. Our photo shows a -2 model, which had a 100-hp power upgrade on the radials and a larger tail, which was operated by VAH-7. This squadron transitioned out of their Savages in November 1958. They had two deployments during this time period, on the USS Randolph (Det. 36) and on the USS Essex (Det. 45), plus their home port at NAS Sandford, Florida.

Meanwhile, the first Atlantic fleet deployments of F8U-1 Crusaders was aboard the USS Saratoga in late 1957 as a part of Carrier Air Wing 3 (tail code AC). On June 6, 1957, while President Dwight Eisenhower was on board the Saratoga for an inspection, two F8Us departed the USS Bon Homme Richard in the Pacific and flew across the country non-stop in 3 hours, 28 minutes, landing on the Saratoga; these would have been refueled in flight by Savages...so there exists the possibility that this photo might show one of those refuelings.

A fascinating series of photos of a Savage with an unretractable hose landing on a carrier can be seen here.