Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star
The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star is the first jet fighter used operationally by the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Designed and built by Lockheed in 1943 and delivered just 143 days from the start of design, two pre-production models saw limited service in Italy just before the end of World War II but no combat. Designed with straight wings, the type saw extensive combat in Korea with the United States Air Force as the F-80.
America's first successful turbojet-powered combat aircraft, it was soon outclassed with the appearance of the swept-wing transonic MiG-15 and was quickly replaced in the air superiority role by the transonic F-86 Sabre. The F-94 Starfire, an all-weather interceptor using the same airframe, also saw Korean War service. The closely related T-33 Shooting Star trainer remained in service with the U.S. Air Force and Navy well into the 1980s, with the last NT-33 variant not retired until April 1997.
Design and development
The XP-80 had a conventional all-metal airframe, with a slim low wing and tricycle landing gear. Like most early jets designed during World War II—and before the Allies captured German research data that confirmed the speed advantages of swept-wings—the XP-80 had straight wings, similar to previous propeller-driven fighters. It was the first operational jet fighter to have its engine buried in the fuselage, a format previously used in the pioneering German Heinkel He 178 V1 of 1939, and the later British Gloster E.28/39 demonstrator of 1941. Other early jets generally had two engines because of their limited power, these being mounted in external nacelles for easier maintenance. With the advent of more powerful British jet engines, a single fuselage-mounted engine configuration was possible.Lockheed was the first American aircraft company to start work on a jet-powered aircraft, beginning work on the L-133 in 1939. The L-133 eventually developed into an extremely advanced design, including futuristic features such as canard forewings and a blended wing body, but when Lockheed presented the design to the Army Air Force, it was rejected as being technologically unfeasible. Instead the USAAF concentrated development around the much less radical Bell P-59 Airacomet, which first flew in October 1942. It quickly became obvious, however, that the P-59's performance was only marginally superior to current piston engined fighters. Bell performed preliminary work revising the P-59 with a low wing and a single fuselage-mounted engine, to be designated XP-59B, but by this time the Bell factory was swamped with other work so the USAAF transferred the project to Lockheed.
The impetus for development of the P-80 was the discovery by Allied intelligence of the Me 262 in spring 1943, which had made only test flights of its own first quartet of design prototypes at that time, all fitted with retracting tailwheel landing gear. After receiving documents and blueprints comprising years of British jet aircraft research, the commanding General of the Army Air Force, Henry H. Arnold, believed an airframe developed to accept the British-made Halford H-1 B "Goblin" jet engine could provide the superior performance to match the new German jets, and the Materiel Command's Wright Field research and development division tasked Lockheed to design the aircraft based on their experience with the L-133. Concept work began on the XP-80 in May 1943. Since the British turbojet was not yet delivered, Lockheed obtained its blueprint dimensions from Bell as ordered by the USAAF. Lockheed's team of 128 engineers was led by Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson in a makeshift building used for the design and assembly of the prototype. The building was remote and secure, built from pallets and packing crates around an existing shack, the whole of which was covered by a rented circus tent. The tent area became known as Skunk Works—the first explicit usage of the term to refer to an elite engineering project.
With the Germans and British clearly far ahead in development, Lockheed was pressed to develop a comparable jet as quickly as possible. Kelly Johnson submitted a design proposal in mid-June and promised that the prototype would be ready for testing in 150 days. The Skunk Works team, beginning 26 June 1943, produced the airframe in 143 days, delivering it to Muroc Army Airfield on 16 November.
The project was so secret that only five of the more than 130 people working on it knew that they were developing a jet aircraft, and the British engineer who delivered the Halford H1 engine was detained by the police because Lockheed officials could not vouch for him. After the engine had been mated to the airframe, foreign object damage during the first run-up destroyed the engine. The British engineer who had delivered the engine had warned Lockheed that the skin of the inlet ducts was too thin but the American engineers ignored this warning and both ducts collapsed and were sucked into the engine when at full throttle. This delayed the first flight until a second engine could be delivered from Britain, de Havilland generously donating the engine intended for the prototype Vampire.
The first prototype was nicknamed Lulu-Belle. Powered by the replacement Halford H1 taken from the prototype de Havilland Vampire jet fighter, it first flew on 8 January 1944, with Lockheed test pilot Milo Burcham at the controls. Following this flight, Johnson said, "It was a magnificent demonstration, our plane was a success – such a complete success that it had overcome the temporary advantage the Germans had gained from years of preliminary development on jet planes." The donated British jet engine and program data had no doubt proved invaluable. In test flights, the XP-80 eventually reached a top speed of at, making it the first turbojet-powered USAAF aircraft to exceed in level flight, following the August 1944 record flight of by a special high-speed variant of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Contemporary pilots, when transitioning to pioneering jets like the Shooting Star, were unused to flying at high speed without a loud reciprocating engine and had to learn to rely on the airspeed indicator.
The second prototype, designated XP-80A, was designed for the larger General Electric I-40 engine. Two aircraft were built. 44-83021 was nicknamed the Gray Ghost after its "pearl gray" paint scheme, while 83022, left unpainted for comparison of flight characteristics, became known as the Silver Ghost. The XP-80A's first test flight was unimpressive, but most of the problems with the design were soon addressed and corrected in the test program. Initial opinions of the XP-80A were not positive, with Lockheed Chief Engineering Test Pilot Milo Burcham commenting that an aircraft he very much enjoyed had now become a "dog." The XP-80As were primarily testbeds for larger, more powerful engines and air intake design, and consequently were larger and 25% heavier than the XP-80.
The P-80 testing program proved very dangerous. Burcham was killed on 20 October 1944 while flying the third YP-80A, 44–83025. The Gray Ghost was lost on a test flight on 20 March 1945, although pilot Tony LeVier escaped. Newly promoted to chief engineering test pilot to replace Burcham, LeVier bailed out when one of the engine's turbine blades broke, causing structural failure in the aircraft's tail. LeVier landed hard and broke his back, but returned to the test program after six months of recovery.
The top-scoring World War II USAAF ace Major Richard Bong was also killed on an acceptance flight of a production P-80 in the United States on 6 August 1945. Both Burcham and Bong crashed as a result of main fuel pump failure. Burcham's death was the result of a failure to brief him on a newly installed emergency fuel pump backup system, but the investigation of Bong's crash found that he had apparently forgotten to switch on this pump, which could have prevented the accident. He bailed out when the aircraft rolled inverted but was too close to the ground for his parachute to deploy.
After Bong's death, both the USAAF and Lockheed wanted to prove the reliability of the airplane. Robert E. Thacker from the Flight Test Division at Wright Field was ordered to select three other pilots, pick up 5 P-80s from Lockheed and fly them to Muroc Army Airbase, and fly each airplane there for 500 hours. Thacker tapped Chuck Yeager, plus two other pilots and they put 500 hours on each airplane without further incident.
After the war, the USAAF compared the P-80 and Me 262 concluding, "Despite a difference in gross weight of nearly, the Me 262 was superior to the P-80 in acceleration, speed and approximately the same in climb performance. The Me 262 apparently has a higher critical Mach number, from a drag standpoint, than any current Army Air Force fighter."
Operational history
The Shooting Star began to enter service in late 1944 with 12 pre-production YP-80As, one of which was destroyed in the accident in which Burcham was killed. A 13th YP-80A was modified to the sole F-14 photo reconnaissance model and lost in a December crash.Four were sent to Europe for operational testing, two to England and two to the 1st Fighter Group at Lesina Airfield, Italy, but when test pilot Major Frederic Borsodi was killed in a crash caused by an engine fire while demonstrating a YP-80A at RAF Burtonwood, Lancashire, England, on 28 January 1945, the YP-80A was temporarily grounded.
Before World War II ended, however, two American pre-production Lockheed YP-80A Shooting Star fighter jets saw limited service in Italy with the USAAF on reconnaissance, in February and March 1945. Because of delays in delivery of production aircraft, the Shooting Star saw no actual combat during the conflict.
The initial production order was for 344 P-80As after USAAF acceptance in February 1945. A total of 83 P-80s had been delivered by the end of July 1945 and 45 assigned to the 412th Fighter Group at Muroc Army Air Field. Production continued after the war, although wartime plans for 5,000 were quickly reduced to 2,000 at a little under $100,000 each. A total of 1,714 single-seat F-80A, F-80B, F-80C, and RF-80s were manufactured by the end of production in 1950, of which 927 were F-80Cs. However, the two-seat TF-80C, first flown on 22 March 1948, became the basis for the T-33 trainer, of which 6,557 were produced.
On 27 January 1946, Colonel William H. Councill flew a P-80 nonstop across the U.S. to make the first transcontinental jet flight. He completed the run between Long Beach and New York in 4:13:26 hrs at an average speed of, aided by the upper-level westerly winds, to set a Fédération Aéronautique Internationale record. The P-80B prototype, modified as a racer and designated P-80R, was piloted by Colonel Albert Boyd to a world air speed record of 623.73 mph on 19 June 1947.
The P-80C began production in 1948; on 11 June the newly formed United States Air Force redesignated the type as F-80C. The USAF Strategic Air Command had F-80 Shooting Stars in service from 1946 through 1948 with the 1st and 56th Fighter Groups. The first P-80s to serve in Europe joined the 55th Fighter Group at Giebelstadt, Germany, in 1946, remaining 18 months. When the Soviet Union blockaded Berlin, a squadron of the 56th FG led by Colonel David C. Schilling made the first west-to-east Atlantic crossing by single-engined jets in July, flying to Germany for 45 days in Operation Fox Able I. Replaced by the newly Shooting Star-equipped 36th Fighter Group at Fürstenfeldbruck, the 56th FG conducted Fox Able II in May 1949. That same year F-80s first equipped the 51st Fighter Group, based in Japan.
The 4th, 81st, and 57th Fighter Groups all acquired F-80s in 1948, as did interceptor squadrons of the Air Defense Command. The first Air National Guard unit to fly the F-80C was the 196th FS of the California ANG in June 1947.