F20 Tigershark

Here is a video of Chuck Yeager testing the Tigershark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO5Ko3s_Aig

And the F-20 crashing in S. Korea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWtpdsfwq3w

 

If I recall it was designed primarily for foriegn sale and despite Yeagers stamp of approval it was a sales flop. Seems if it ain't good enough for the USAF no one else wanted it.

I also recall Jimmy Carter had a lot to do with it.

 

what a gorgeous airplane! I was always a huge fan of the F-5 Freedom Fighter. Such a small yet quick little plane.

 

I was there and watched the entire event.

The scene with it just falling out of the sky is heart-breaking to watch, just as it was back then.

It was an amazing aircraft.

 

F-20 had no US sales, as Brian said, and therefore no US logistics base, so ordering spare parts or getting US help (military aid) on logistics was impossible.

Incidentally, the F-20 never competed with the YF-16, that was the YF-17 aircraft that eventually became the F/A-18. Both were huge commercial successes. The F-16 was not suitable for carrier ops because of the hydrazine system used to provide power if the engine flamed out.

F-20 was unsupportable logistically, therefore no sales. Plus it had no legs at all. Great aircraft for a Battle of Britain scenario, not for much else.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Terry, I thought I remembered that it came about because there was resistance to selling more F16's abroad so the White House conned, cajoled, whatever a contractor to, with their own money only, develop a fighter for export and assured the contractor the WH would push the product to client countries but our President never followed through and left Northrup holding an expensive bag.

Any of that ring a bell?

 

What happened?

It looked like the canopy was still in place?

 

I cannot find an accident report but IIRC it was quite similar to the accident that happened in Canada while Northrop was preparing for the Paris Air Show.

http://www.f20a.com/f20crash.htm

This is all i could find about the S. Korea crash.

 

There are a bunch of neat paintings of F-20 in Pakistani colors that are hanging in the base ops building in Islamabad. According to the placards on the walls they did a bunch of demos for the Pak AF out at Edwards.

 

I viewed this last night and was thinking that some had been delivered to a small nation or two. Pakistan was the place I thought I remembered.

The Pilot had no GLC (a term I had been unfamiliar with) training. That plane wasn't being controlled.

It also looks as if the F20 kind of lost the coke bottle fuselage of the T38. Still a rakish looking fighter.

 

Brian- I had not heard of White House involvement in F-20 development, but it would not surprise me.

When I first saw the tape of the Korea crash, my first thought was G-LOC ("g" loss of consciousness) and I am relatively certain that is what happened. One of the symptoms of the disease for which he was being treated is lowered blood pressure, which directly affects the ability to pull "g"s. In general, the big number of your blood pressure divided by 20 is the amount of "g" you can pull without help from a "g" suit or extensive straining of certain muscles. 110 would be 5.5 "g"s and 148 would be 7.4 "g"s, quite a difference. Blood pressure of 150/90 or higher gets you grounded.

Because low blood pressure directly affects "g" performance, pilots of fighters are usually prohibited from running more than three miles three times a week. More can lower blood pressure sufficiently to adversely affect "g" performance and lead more easily to G-LOC. Pilots are asked to concentrate more on upper body and leg strength, because these improve the body's ability to push blood into the brain under high "g" loads.

So the perfect fighter jock is probably a short, stocky female with moderately elevated blood pressure. I am not female, but fit the bill otherwise and my blood pressure was usually in the 140s over the 80s. As such, the F-16 and F-15 pilots with whom I flew were surprised to see I could easily talk at 7.5-9 "g"s with no problems.

Paying for it now with high blood pressure, however.


Taz
Terry Phillips

 

The more that I engage myself in this forum the more I realize how educational it is. I value the solid information that can be gleaned from many of the contributors such as the above.
Switches

 

I’m not too sure it was GLC:

Although I am not a pilot, I do know a fair amount about aviation and aerodynamics.

While entering the Half Cuban Eight (#6) the pilot deployed the landing gear and flaps, chopping the throttles. Amazingly, the aircraft maneuvered as if it had vectored thrust. Becoming inverted, the tail literally slid up and out, briefly stalling the airframe. During this point, the pilot immediately retracted the gear/flaps, setting the throttle to max and continued with the demo.

Then, when it seemed as if the demonstration was over, the pilot either continued or restarted the performance. The second Half Cuban Eight was even more extreme than the first with the airframe becoming totally stalled. By totally, I mean inverted, gear/flaps retracting, throttle at min and essentially zero forward airspeed. The aircraft was just hanging there, appearing motionless for a few seconds.

Then the aircraft slowly began to fall. A few seconds later you could hear the engine scream as it was set to max power. There was a slight forward momentum but he was too low. My view had an ammo bunker blocking the last 20 or 30 feet of the fall. The pilot was still in the cockpit.

A co-worker, well known for his skill with a camera (it was also Camera Day on the flightline), was tasked as the on-scene photographer for the accident investigation. He took photos of the crash scene from every angle imaginable. With the ejection sequence initiated, the pilot impacted the ground, inverted. The crash site occurred just outside of the Base’s perimeter wall in the recently harvested and drained rice patties (thick but firm mud).

Overall, the damage was minimal; aircraft broke in two about mid fuselage, tail broke off, nose section collapsed, cockpit appeared relatively intact. In fact, impacting on firmer ground would have snapped off the wings, but here, this wasn’t the case.

As per the Goose Bay crash investigation report…

“The absence of discrete voluntary actions involving critical conscious timing, such as afterburner deselection, landing gear lowering or efforts to save his own life by initiation of the ejection sequence, confirms that the pilot was incapacitated at least to some degree.”

At Suwon there wasn’t any appearance of GLC, too many things continued to work. Granted, a second or two of GLC could have made a difference between success and failure. Ultimately, there wasn’t enough airspeed or altitude.
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Wade- I do not think there was anybody flying the aircraft for quite a few seconds. Recovery from G-LOC is not instantaneous and judgement is seriously deteriorated during recovery from the black-out, onset of which is very sudden. Look at some film of pilots in centrifuges if you are not a believer. We have lost a lot of very healthy, very young pilots of F-16s and other high performance aircraft to G-LOC, none of whom had low blood pressure as a symptom of an ailment for which they were being treated.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

I know but I saw him retract the gear/flaps just before the aircraft stalled and heard him advance the throttle afterwards.

 

Wade- Could be you are correct, then. I would have thought he would have had enough roll authority to roll upright and eject, but maybe not. I believe he had an Aces II seat.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Taz, I guess we'll never know.

Here's another beautiful picture of the F-20, not sure where's it was taken or where I got it.

BTW (o/t), is that an "in-flight" simulator for the F-117 (the black A-7) in the background?
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