Word: thunderjets
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...during the Suez crisis, Gallagher sat in the cockpit of an F-84 Thunderjet at England's Bentwaters Royal Air Force Base, an atom bomb fixed beneath his plane. On high alert, he waited for a single command to take off. His target was a Finnish airfield, presumably one the Soviets would otherwise use. "I don't think people realize how close we were ((to nuclear war))," he says. From 1958 to 1962, he was squadron commander of Outpost Mission, on call to rescue the President from nuclear attack; three years later he went to Mount Weather...
Once a leading and lucrative aircraft company, Republic turned out the P47 Thunderbolt in World War II, the F-84 Thunderjet for Korea and lately the F-105 interceptor-bomber. But the F-105 contract ends this year, and Republic has been groundspeed slow in diversifying into other defense and space areas. Its earnings last year were $3,600,000 on sales of $362 million; this year sales will be below $300 million-and losses are certain. "The first job," says Uhl, 46, "will be to cut Republic down to size." He intends to reduce personnel and plant to that...
...orders represent quite a victory for Republic and its president. Mundy Peale. Traditionally a one-plane company, Republic built 15,329 of its famed P47 Thunderbolts during World War II, went on to the jet age with another 7.883 of its F-84 Thunderjet series between 1947 and 1957. But when the Air Force budget turned missile-heavy, Republic lost out. Working on the F-105, it had virtually no production in 1958, delivered only 55 planes in 1959 and had no guarantee that the program would not be washed out altogether. Sales tumbled from $547.4 million...
...pilot of an F-84 Thunderjet reported a sense of "befuddlement" on his first five flights, and a "tendency to overshoot in reaching out rapidly with his arm." On the remaining 25 flights he learned to anticipate his troubles. But famed Air Force Test Pilot Charles Yeager,at much higher altitudes, reported "serious disorientation in his 13th second of weightlessness." Yeager, writes Major Simons, "got the impression that he was spinning around slowly in no particularly defined direction. After 15 seconds he became lost in space and pulled out [of his flight pattern]. With his returning weight his badly needed...
...trailer takeoff, an F-84 Thunderjet is equipped with a big "booster bottle" (solid propellant rocket) fixed under its tail. The plane is placed on the trailer and the pilot climbs aboard and buttons himself in. The trailer's arms unfold and tilt the nose upward. Then the pilot starts the jet engine. When it is turning at full power, an enormous flame and a cloud of smoke spurt out of the booster bottle. In a few seconds the plane is airborne. The exhausted rocket drops off, and the pilot proceeds. His sudden departure resembles a scene from...