AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 41 / 57

Plate 41 of 57 · Early jet age · Fighter-bomber

North American F-100 Super Sabre

F-100D Super Sabre, painted as 54-2174, an F-100D Super Sabre that flew with the French Air Force under the Military Assistance Program, came back to American charge and was stored at RAF Sculthorpe before going to the Midland Air Museum: USAF South-East Asia camouflage of dark green, medium green and tan over light grey, the rear fuselage and afterburner section in bare heat-tinted metal, the white tail code ‘SM’ of the 55th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 20th Tactical Fighter Wing, RAF Wethersfield, the tail number ‘174’ beneath a small ‘AF 0-54’, star-and-bar insignia, the name ‘Mary Jane’ in white script on the port nose and two 275-gallon drop tanks, as it is displayed outdoors at the Midland Air Museum, Coventry.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 54-2174, an F-100D Super Sabre that flew with the French Air Force under the Military Assistance Program, came back to American charge and was stored at RAF Sculthorpe before going to the Midland Air Museum: USAF South-East Asia camouflage of dark green, medium green and tan over light grey, the rear fuselage and afterburner section in bare heat-tinted metal, the white tail code ‘SM’ of the 55th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 20th Tactical Fighter Wing, RAF Wethersfield, the tail number ‘174’ beneath a small ‘AF 0-54’, star-and-bar insignia, the name ‘Mary Jane’ in white script on the port nose and two 275-gallon drop tanks, as it is displayed outdoors at the Midland Air Museum, Coventry. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (948 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the F-100D Super Sabre modelled here.

History

The Super Sabre

The Super Sabre was the first fighter in service that could fly faster than sound in level flight. North American began it as a swept-wing development of the Sabre, with a 45-degree wing, a low tailplane and a Pratt & Whitney J57 fed through a flattened oval nose intake. George Welch took the YF-100A supersonic on its first flight on 25 May 1953, and that October Frank “Pete” Everest set a world air speed record of 755 mph in it over the Salton Sea, the last such record flown at low level.

The F-100A reached the USAF in September 1954 and was grounded within weeks after a run of fatal crashes, Welch’s among them, caused by inertia coupling: the short-finned, short-span fighter would tumble out of a roll. A taller fin and a wider wing cured it. The F-100C added a fighter-bomber’s stores pylons and a refuelling probe, and the F-100D of 1956, with landing flaps, an autopilot and a still bigger fin, became the definitive version; 1,274 of them were built out of 2,294 Super Sabres in all, with the two-seat F-100F the last. In the United Kingdom the 20th Tactical Fighter Wing flew F-100s from Wethersfield from 1957 to 1970 and the 48th from Lakenheath from 1960 to 1972, both standing nuclear alert.

Pilots called it the Hun. It went to Vietnam in 1964 and became the workhorse of close air support over South Vietnam, flying more sorties than any other type in the war and pioneering the “Misty” fast forward-air-control and Wild Weasel radar-hunting roles before the last squadrons left in 1971. The Thunderbirds flew it for twelve seasons, and it served France, Denmark, Turkey and Taiwan. The Air National Guard retired the last American Super Sabres in 1979; Turkey flew them into the 1980s.

This airframe

F-100D 54-2174

54-2174The airframe modelled

F-100D 54-2174 was one of the many Super Sabres passed to the French Air Force under the Military Assistance Program. Returned to American charge when France gave up the type, it was stored at RAF Sculthorpe in Norfolk with a batch of other ex-French Huns that were shared out among British museums, and it is still owned by the National Museum of the United States Air Force. At the Midland Air Museum at Coventry Airport it is displayed outdoors on its wheels, painted as a 20th Tactical Fighter Wing aircraft of the 55th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Wethersfield, and the model shows it as it stands there: South-East Asia camouflage of dark green, medium green and tan over light grey undersides, the rear fuselage and afterburner section in bare, heat-tinted metal, white “SM” tail code with the tail number “174” beneath a small “AF 0-54”, star-and-bar insignia, the name “Mary Jane” in white script on the port nose and two 275-gallon drop tanks on the inboard pylons.

See it at Midland Air Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Super Sabre in 4 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 57 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.