Fast and agile, with a decent range, the Crusader carrier fighter enjoys a positive reputation as ‘The Last Gunfighter’. It has been described as.“..by far one of the greatest fighters of its era”; we even rated it the second-best fighter of 1969. This sleek Cold War aircraft even boasts the best kill-to-loss ratio of any US fighter aircraft in Vietnam. But, as we shall see, a great deal was wrong with the F-8. And there wasn’t a long wait to find this out, the first production F8U-1 was also the first to be lost, killing pilot Harry Brackett; a truly shocking number of incidents, many fatal, would follow. By the time the Crusader retired, there had been call to use the ejection seat over 500 times, the first in 1956 (a year before the type entered service) and the last in 1997 (in French service). Here are 10 things that sucked about the F-8 Crusader.
10. Missiles
The F-8 could carry a maximum of four air-to-air missiles, half that of the F-4 Phantom II. Even carrying four AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, proved draggy and made it harder for the Crusader to reach minimum landing weight if the weapons were not expended. Because of this, the F-8 most often went to war with only two missiles. This lack of missile persistence was a big deal, as the gun installation was terrible and the probability of kill of 1960s missiles was terrible.
Another reason for an often smaller weapon load was a shortage of AIM-9s, particularly in 1966 (and of AIM-9Ds in 1968). Each variant of the Sidewinder employed by the Crusader in Vietnam had its own limitations: the B was relatively slow, bad at turning with a small warhead; the radar-guided C was withdrawn before being used in combat due to maintenance problems; and the generally superior D had less reliable fuzing than the B.
9. Bang bang bad
Though famed as the ‘Last Gunfighter’, all but one of the F-8’s kills were with missiles. This was because of the many problems with the F-8’s gun installation. A major issue was the Colt Mk 12 cannon hated being fired above a rather conservative 3.5G (the M61 Vulcan used by other US fighters was rated up to 7.33G).
The guns’ rate of fire was unpredictable, sometimes even zero, and they suffered from pneumatic charging issues and ‘barrel whip’, which caused inaccurate fire. Up to 1966, the guns jammed in three out of eight engagements.
8. Engine
There are plenty of reasons you want a quick-responding engine in a carrier aircraft, as a delay can cost you your life. The two-second afterburner delay in early versions caused a lot of heartbreak; when pilot Tom Irwin tried to land his F-8C in 1965, it caught the fourth wire, but his arrestor hook point sheared from the shank, causing his aircraft to keep rolling rather than stopping on the deck. His only chance was to take off again, but his burner was too slow in response to get him to a safe minimum speed of 80 knots. Too slow to even eject, he flew into the sea, whereupon his afterburner ignited, causing the engine to explode. Miraculously he escaped his aircraft, manually, in record time and survived. In similar circumstances, four out of five pilots were killed.
7. Rockets
Early Crusaders carried internal rocket packs, that were opened before firing. To minimise frontal cross-section the magazines of sixteen rockets were mounted one behind the other. If one rocket failed to leave the launcher, it could be hit by a round from behind with potentially catastrophic consequences. If a round failed to clear the launcher it could mean the launcher could not retract, the extended launcher blocked the nose gear door making it impossible to extend the nose gear. If when the rockets did fire, they were comically inaccurate, “One study indicated that 128 rockets, four Crusaders’ worth, would have to be expended on one bomber for a 97% probability that it would be hit at least once.1”.
6. Inferiority to the F-4
In the first training dogfight sortie, an F-8 pilot would employ the type’s superior instantaneous turning performance to better the F-4, but a mere five engagements later, the F-4 pilots would learn how to use their superior power to better the F-8; a well-trained F-4 pilot could best the F-8. This is extremely significant as one of the few trump cards the F-8 has against the F-4 is its superior agility. The F-4 enjoys two to four times the missile load, over twice the bombload, superior situational awareness, superior radar, climb rate and critically, was far safer to operate from a carrier.
(Those accusing this of being an apples-to-oranges comparison should look at the role and real-world taskings, not the weight class. Likewise, though often described as different generations, both the first flight and service entry of the two types were only separated by around 1000 days.)
5. Bad situational awareness
Pilot George Wright noted in his description of a one-way mission in the Crusader, “The F-8’s cockpit visibility wasn’t the greatest, so you always raised your seat as much as you could. But you didn’t want it so high that you would have trouble grabbing the two yellow-and-black-striped handles above your helmet, the handles that fired your ejection seat.” He also singled out the absence of a HUD in the F-8H as a dangerous omission that contributed to his failure to pull out soon enough from a strafing run. So the view out was poor, there was no HUD, and as the type had been created as a day-only fighter, its radar was barely useful. The first radar was little more than a gun ranger, but even improved later radars were poor, the AN/APQ-83 was better but one of the first cadre of Top Gun Instructors Jim Alderink considered this ‘a piece of garbage’. The F-8 relied on guidance from an air and ground controller; the radar’s detection range for the MiG-17 was dangerously small. Conceived as a day-only fighter…
4. Juliet blues, the F-8J 
The initial J variant attempted to solve many of the Crusader’s shortcomings but, in doing so, added 2,000 lbs of weight and 1,000 lb of power lost to boundary layer control. There were also wing cracks and a lack of spares. The result was a dangerously underpowered machine with inferior manoeuvrability and greater maintenance requirements, requiring expensive remedies—and happening in a major war just when fighters were most needed.
3. Out-turned by the MiG-17
As it could with every other US fighter, the veteran MiG-17 could outturn the Crusader at 300-350 Knots Indicated Airspeed (KIAS). It was superior training and missiles that enabled the Crusader to better the MiG-17. In fighting the MiG-21 in Vietnam, the Crusader did not have a distinct performance advantage. The MiG-21 had superior acceleration above Mach 1.1, and superior instantaneous G below 400 KIAS
2. Vietnam
That it took part in the horror of the Vietnam War itself sucks. But we shall not dwell on the many horrors inflicted by air power in the war, but instead, look at the Crusader’s survivability. A total of 118 total were lost, 57 in combat.
(*some sources put this as 170 in total)
1. Dangerous as hell!
The primary requirement of an aircraft is to keep the crew safe, and on this most important quality, the Crusader cannot be judged in a rosy light. This was perhaps not surprising as it was just one in a line of ‘hot’ aircraft created by Vought. Their best, the famous Corsair of World War II, had nastier handling than the Hellcat, and the jet-powered Cutlass was a disaster. The Crusader’s safety record, even for the notoriously dangerous class of late 1950s carrier aircraft was abysmal. Professor Michael Weaver notes, “In 1966… F-8s suffered an accident rate of 3.26 per 10,000 flying hours. Only the A-4E Skyhawk approached that rate, and the rate for the F-4 was only 2.72.”
The Crusader was a handful, which was painfully apparent when it came to landing, a terrible quality in a carrier aircraft. There is an entire page devoted to Crusader crashes here.
“By the time the Crusader retired, pilots had made 493 ejections from all models of the F-8. Overall, 517 of the 1261 Crusaders had been built had been lost, a loss rate of 41 per cent”, Peter Mersky notes. Considering the number of aircraft built, 737 entries in the Aviation Safety Network database is clearly atrocious.
According to Peter E. Davies, “Four carrier-bourne evaluation cruises showed that Crusader was hard to keep on “speed’ for carrier landings. Without the angled deck and mirror landing and mirrored landing system added to World War II-vintage SCB-27C Essex- and Midway-class carriers, the aircraft might never have reached the required safety standards.”
The high approach speed of 147 knots was a big issue on smaller carriers such as the Essex-class. Consistent speed was also important. To help, an autothrottle (Approach Power Compensator) was added in 1964, but even this caused problems as over-reliance on the APC was equally dangerous. Another peculiarity of the F-8 was its odd relationship between nose attitude and sink rate caused by its oddest design feature, on landing the wing stayed at the same angle of attack as the fuselage tilted (the wing was mounted on mechanism). Things were particularly counter-intuitive for the pilot in the final approach stages, which again required attention.
The Crusader, fine in many ways, sucked unforgivably badly in some of the most significant categories.
Postscript
“I flew the Crusader for 7 years from ’67-’73, and the Phantom for one year. Like every ‘Sader driver, I loved that bird. It was the sports car of the fleet. So smooth and responsive, and a damn good fighter. But you’re right about its practical weak spots. It was certainly one of the Navy’s most dangerous aircraft. I can add a couple more gripes: 1. Inflight refueling could be a nightmare. With the probe next to the pilot’s head off the port side of the cockpit, you couldn’t see the basket while you were plugging. If the basket was dancing, which it did in that placement, it could impact the cockpit, and it has happened that it broke the plexiglass. 2. The relatively low max legal G load of 6.4 should have been higher. Of course, when it’s for real you take what the bird will give you, but the wings were constantly getting overstressed, even in practice hops. 3. At high G load and slow speed, the ‘Sader had a very short temper. That is, you had to be nibbling at the edge of moderate buffet to get max turn rate, but if you pull an extra tenth of a G or sneak in some rudder to help the turn, the a/c would suddenly depart, not into a predictable spin but an irregular violent “falling leaf†maneuver with the nose oscillating from 70 deg up to 70 deg down, hard to get out of. This made my transition to the Phantom in my last year hard to get used to. In the F-4, when you’re pulling G’s in a hassle, you’re in heavy buffet all the time. The Phantom’s violent shaking of the a/c under a heavy G load is just normal. The ‘Sader would be spread in pieces all over the ground if you subjected it to that, but the F-4’s powerful J-79’s kept it plowing right through the heavy buffet. But the Phantom’s not an a/c I fell in love with. That’s reserved for the ‘Sader – or the Gator, as we also called it. A great bird with a some warts.”
Sources
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F-8 Crusader, Vietnam 1963-1973, Peter E Davies
An Examination of the F-8 Crusader through Archival Sources – Professor Michael Weaver
USN F-8 training manual
https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-brief-history-of-f8u-crusader-armament.html
https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2008/12/missed-it-by-that-much-ii.html
Vought F-8 Crusader Peter Mersky
Support The Hush-Kit Book of Warplanes Vol 3 here.
Of course the Phantom was a ‘superior’ aircraft. As stated it had two crew, eight missiles vs two, BVR radar and two J-79’s vs one J-57. Still, the F-8 had the better numbers in air to air engagements during Vietnam. That came down to the aviators and how they trained. In comparing the two airplanes I think comparing the Century Series to the Phantom puts things in a better perspective. The Crusader is very much a Century Series jet in using the J-57, cannons, minimal missile armament and a single seat. In that context the F-8 is the better Century Series airplane. The F-4, entering the fleet almost 3 years after the Crusader is beyond the Century Series and is a later generation airplane.
A fair point. I would counter that the duration of the F-8’s combat career was concurrent with the F-4 and they performed in the same conflicts with the same operator and are fair and useful to compare. I would also add that there was around 1000 days in difference in the projects, not very long. It is worth asking whether much was learnt in that 1000 days or whether it was just a case of a better solution (informed in the F-4’s case by the limitations of the Phantom I and Demon). Additionally, as an aircraft matures it can change radically, so the generational terms are quite broad, for example an F-15 has its origins in the 1970s but in its latest variant has a vastly superior radar, and other equipment to 1990s aircraft like the Typhoon. I understand what you are saying, but these aircraft were operating at the same time and as such, are totally meaningful to compare.
Have flown both the Crusader and the Phantom. (as well as over 3,000 hours in the A-4 Skyhawk. )
Crusader, long legs at .92 mach very efficient at hi altitude. Great range. Good radar. Comfortable cockpit. Great turning airplane with agile slow flight capabilities by seasoned pilot. Guns, zuni rockets and sidewinders was our typical USMC load for fighter cap. It was a great close air support airplane again with seasoned pilot. Landing was not terribly difficult but you had to pay attentiong and throttle movements were huge.
Phantom: was a hog with tanks and would cruise around 30,000 with less range. Huge cockpit extremely comfortable. Very stable platform. Trailed smoke unless in burner. Great radar and with back seater became a viable fighter attack airplane. Stable in landing config. Fighting the crusader was dependant on the pilot. Good in vertical and had enough power to break away and depart. Carried a great combat load for close airsupport.
The Crusader was a pilot’s airplane and you needed to be a competent pilot.
The Phantom made poor pilots look good.
Loved them both and woule love to fly either or both again. SF, beaver
Hi Beaver!
This is Shu, Mofak`s friend from China. He might have mentioned me to you sometime, though I`m not sure. Only the Vestal Virgins could know these kind of things without being told by anybody~
I was looking up F-20 Tigershark today, as somebody asked me if I like the type and I would like to make my answer somewhat educated. The F-20 page then took me to this article and your comment. I never let any Sader lore escape, and what a small world.
It`s good to know that you are still alive and going strongï¼Also want to let you know that while reading and translating the TINS of you (with permission from Mofak), I contracted from you the taste for Chevy Corvette:P
Another thing to mention is that today I found that Mofak`s page is back online again. It had been down for a while as I checked earlier after his passsing, and my thought was that if after some time there`s still nobody tending the matter, I`ll try to obtain permission from his family and rent some stable economy class server space, as Mofak once sent me a USB stick containing the entire site in website format. I miss him so much.
Just stay healthy and happy, Beaver! You guys form the (or rather, another) greatest generation who are very capable of facing the reality of the world as it is and do the right things accordingly, with some principle.
All the Best, and (If I may)
Semper Fi.
Shu
I flew the Crusader for 7 years from ’67-’73, and the Phantom for one year. Like every ‘Sader driver, I loved that bird. It was the sports car of the fleet. So smooth and responsive, and a damn good fighter. But you’re right about its practical weak spots. It was certainly one of the Navy’s most dangerous aircraft. I can add a couple more gripes: 1. Inflight refueling could be a nightmare. With the probe next to the pilot’s head off the port side of the cockpit, you couldn’t see the basket while you were plugging. If the basket was dancing, which it did in that placement, it could impact the cockpit, and it has happened that it broke the plexiglass. 2. The relatively low max legal G load of 6.4 should have been higher. Of course, when it’s for real you take what the bird will give you, but the wings were constantly getting overstressed, even in practice hops. 3. At high G load and slow speed, the ‘Sader had a very short temper. That is, you had to be nibbling at the edge of moderate buffet to get max turn rate, but if you pull an extra tenth of a G or sneak in some rudder to help the turn, the a/c would suddenly depart, not into a predictable spin but an irregular violent “falling leaf” maneuver with the nose oscillating from 70 deg up to 70 deg down, hard to get out of. This made my transition to the Phantom in my last year hard to get used to. In the F-4, when you’re pulling G’s in a hassle, you’re in heavy buffet all the time. The Phantom’s violent shaking of the a/c under a heavy G load is just normal. The ‘Sader would be spread in pieces all over the ground if you subjected it to that, but the F-4’s powerful J-79’s kept it plowing right through the heavy buffet. But the Phantom’s not an a/c I fell in love with. That’s reserved for the ‘Sader – or the Gator, as we also called it. A great bird with a some warts.