Flying the Last F8 Crusaders

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[Webmaster's Note: Thanks to the "F8 Community blog" and Walt Quist, for the opportunity to post these great historical accounts.]

"As I recall, didn't Thunderbird Aviation have 2 F8's,one of which was airworthy? I believe the company went under a few years back and the birds were still there at that time. --Bill Faber





"There was a crusader restored. Hoss Pearson and Dudley Moore flew it. It belonged to Thunderbird Aviation in phx. I chased it on some hops in a T-33." --Jim {honker} White





"I believe it was 1994 when Thunderbird Aviation hosted a lunch for the Crusader reunion held in Phoenix. The highlight was to be a demo flight of one of their F-8s, to be flown by an experienced Crusader driver. The pilot was unable to attend. I recall an unending list of volunteers. Finally, the owner, somewhat timorously, strapped in, fired up, launched, did a flyby and landed. Not too spectacular but just the sound of that old bird jacked up the heart rate a bit.

I believe this same aircraft made a visit to San Diego for static display during a Crusader reunion. It was parked on the transient ramp at Miramar and I remember watching the crew of a two seat AF-18 (don't think it was designated FA yet) park their bird and head straight to the F-8 for a look see." --Wayne Skaggs





A few years back the association had it's annual party down in Deer Valley, AZ. We all went out to Thunderbird Aviation and watched while a F8 took off, made a low pass, landed and got hot brakes. We were told they had a contract for weapons drops. They also had some A7's and A3's. All the a/c had cameras mounted all over so they could film weapons drops. --Marv Garrison





The Thunderbird operation was run by Bill Hauprich (?), who flew the F-8 at the Deer Valley gathering. TBird also had a couple of A-3s including a dee-luxe machine with a saucer-like trailing antenna that reportedly was used in measuring RCS on new-generation aircraft. Quite a sight in the early-mid 90s: two 'saders and a coupla Whales. I never heard what happened to the latter but apparently both F8s went to Paul Allen's collection in Washington State. --Barrett Tillman





Some years ago at the El Toro Air Show A F8J participated in the show and it was from Thunderbird Aviation and what was impressive about the flight was a 360 turn staying inside the Field boundaries in Burner at about 150 feet . I don't know the airspeed or the G'S but, I would say some where around 350ks and sustained 6 G's. The Pilot was a retired Navy Capt and I believe a former CO of the Blue's. Really a great show.
--Pudge Parsons

It was Hoss Pearson in the TB [Thunderbird Aviation] F8 at the Yuma air Show. We made a deal with the Marines to swap a P420 they had in storage for the show. I flew the F8 into Miramar for the F8 reunion back in late 80s sometime I believe. Yes pictures were taken in the hangar. The TB F8s, parts and engines were bought by Paul Allen of MSF for his museum in Seattle, they are there on display now.

It is a really tricked out F-8 with fully functional zero zero Martin Baker and the cockpit is loaded with F16 stuff including all com/nav gear, gas O2 system, gyro (that abba jabba 3 thing, remember that baby?) Loran, VHF/UHF radios, special comm. Selector switch setup to receive on two radios and transmit on one at same time. However the best nav gear still remained EBN (eye ball nav) got to know all the freeways and railroad tracks all over the SW. All the com/nav gear was stacked in center of front console where gun sight used to be. The glass sight was cut up and used for camera ports because it is optically perfect glass. The gun switches were converted to camera on/off switches. Yeah all this stuff worked perfectly.

In case anybody is wondering how the F8 would stack up to modern stuff today, actually it did quite well. It would run a clean F15 out of gas like quick and at 800Kt's on the deck at 20' give or take it pulled away from an F16 chase most easily. Interestingly enough at that speed the engine started going into over speed, the egt started climbing into danger zone and the fuel gauge was going down faster than Paris Hilton's panties.

The most fun stuff was doing cluster bomb (CBU-87) lay downs for the AF. Once a month the AF would haul out two bombs for testing out of storage. One with prox fuse and one without. We dropped them in weapons test range at White Sands at 500Kt and 500 ft altitude. After the drops some guy would go out on the range and count the duds if any and blow them up to clean the range. There are 202 of these bomb lets in each bomb, nasty stuff as they will wipe out anything they hit. These bombs are what they used in Iraq to wipe out all that Soviet armor. Just one of the bomblets inside the bomb will take out the largest Soviet tank. They look something like a long Budweiser beer can.

Dudley Moore

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"...the mouths of the young F-14 jocks hanging open, with whispers of
'What the hell was THAT?' as the burner lit
...they were all in awe."




I guess it's time for me to post something about the Thunderbird F-8's. Bill Hauprich, the president of Thunderbird Aviation, called me after I retired to ask me if I wanted to fly the F-8 and I jumped at the chance.

Thunderbird bought 5 F-8's from DRMO at NAS Dallas that were left over from the Philippine F-8 program. From those, they built two good a/c, although only one ever flew. Thunderbird had several really good mech's, including one former USMC F-8 mech, Bruce Dickens, who forgot more about the F-8 than the rest of us ever knew. Bruce did most of the work on the a/c and made sure it was done right. Unfortunately, Bruce is no longer with us, but has graduated to God's squadron after a lengthy battle with cancer.

The flying F-8 was N19TB and was mostly a 'C' although was actually built from several a/c. It had a detuned J-57 P55 engine from a Canadian F-101 with something less than 16,000# of thrust in A/B. We installed a P420 later that we acquired in a trade with a museum and that made it a real "hotrod" with 1 to 1 thrust to weight with 5,000#'s of gas. Dudley Moore flew the first flights in the a/c and did most of the flying for the first couple of years. I was able to jump in there because Dudley had to go into training in his real job with Delta Airlines for a new a/c and Thunderbird had some project work for the a/c; lot acceptance testing of CBU's. This was a lot of fun, level release at 500 kt's and 500 ft on the White Sands Missile Range.

I checked my log book and I flew the a/c 91 times with probably a little over 100 hours. As Pudge mentioned, I flew airshows with it including the one he saw at El Toro. The amazing thing to me about it was that I was able to fly the same routine I had flown in the F-18 at VX-4 with a few subtle changes. For instance, in the Hornet I had about a 1,000 ft takeoff run and then went right into a half-cuban 8. The F-8 couldn't do that, so I did a low transition and accelerated to 300 kt's before going into the half-cuban. The low altitude 360 that Pudge mentioned was pretty easy with the P55, just plug in the burner and pull. However, when we installed the P420 it would accelerate all the way around and you'd run out G's, so I had to come out of burner and then relight it just before getting back to center point.

My first airshow practice flight after installing the P420 was interesting. I practiced at an abandoned airfield in the Luke MOA's working up for an airshow at Luke. With the old engine, I only had two power settings, MIL and A/B, so that's how I started the practice. I knew I was working a lot harder during the practice, but didn't know why. Towards the end of the routine, I made a dirty pass with gear and hook down and wing up and at center point, plugged in the burner, picked up gear and hook and did a wing up climb to 3,000 ft. Then push over, come out of burner and circle around behind the crowd for a "sneak" pass where I come in from behind and light the burner directly over the crowd and pull to vertical and do vertical rolls till I was out of airspeed. With the old engine, I'd be a little over 500 kts, but with the P420 it was a different story. I knew something was wrong and I was having a hard time turning in at my checkpoint; I came inside and checked my airspeed, I was doing 620. I then realized why I had been working so hard and would have to now manage my airspeed with power.

I wound up flying many airshows, a movie project and several test projects including a supersonic towed decoy program for Lockheed. It was a lot fun getting back into the F-8 and doing all this work, but it got harder and harder to maintain and the test work went away. My understanding is that Paul Allen eventually bought the two F-8's and they are at his museum in Seattle and also understand he did not want to make them flyable.

Another very memorable event was doing the fly over for Bug Roach's memorial service. Originally I was to be part of an F-14 formation and pitch out in the traditional missing man formation. Then AIRPAC decided a civilian F-8 should not fly with the F-14's. So I took off from Deer Valley, flew to Miramar and held on Vance "Star" Parkers wing for over an hour while Rabbit Campbell delivered a very good, but lengthy eulogy.

It was getting late in the day and as always at Miramar, the haze and visibility got worse before Star detached me to do my fly over with the F-14's following. I had my Blue Angel overhead photo in the cockpit and had my route all planned out: fly over the reserve center, the theater, McDonald's and then over the chapel.

As I detached, I pushed the power up to MIL and started my descent. I flew over the reserve center, but never saw the theater or the adjacent NEX parking lot and all of a sudden I was over McDonald's, made a quick jink to the right and flew over the chapel at a very low altitude and about 600 kts. I pulled vertical and hit the burner right over the chapel (over stressing the a/c and buckling a brand new baggage pod the mech's had built for me to carry my golf clubs in). My wife attended the service, and was on the chapel lawn with the rest of the congregation. She was amused to watch the mouths of the young F-14 jocks hanging open, with whispers of "What he hell was THAT?" as the burner lit and she said they were all in awe. It was a great way for me to say good-bye and pay my respects to my good friend and shipmate Bug.

My last flight in the F-8 was in April 1998 at the Luke airshow. Great times!! With the opportunity to fly the F-8 again, in T&E projects and airshows, my aviation career came full circle.

Hoss Pearson.

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The reply from Hoss brought back a flood of memories about the early days of the TB F8. Will get around to recount some of them in the future. I would like to add my memory of that fantastic flyover for Bug's funeral. The weather was terrible with thick low ceilings and did not expect a flyover to work. We were all standing outside the chapel after the service when all of a sudden here comes Hoss in a boom zoom up into the clouds burner going. The noise was startling due to the altitude and he was gone in a flash.

As the noise from the engine subsided, you could hear the rush of the wind whirling around sort of cyclone like as it swirled around and around and seemed to follow the F8 upwards..You could actually hear the whipping noise it made and then it seemed to recede in the distance until it stopped, then total dead silence. The whole thing was just surreal and so perfect a send off for such a great man. The silence was just deafening and there was not a dry eye in the crowd and there were some real hard cases there.

This was your finest moment Hoss I don't care what else you did in your career nothing beat that.

Dudley Moore





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How to Burn Down an Airport With a Crusader.

"it really is a Crusader...no s..."

When we first put together the TB [Thunderbird Aviation] F8, (1984-85 or so) I flew it about 6-7 times at Deer Valley apt to get all the bugs out and there were lots of them. Finally it was fit to fly over to Goodyear airport for a burner checkout. Goodyear had a concrete pad on the north side of the airport with a tie down and sort of a blast deflector. We took the tail off as there was no heat blanket and chained it down. Now the airport had a large growth of dead mesquite and dead grass that was about 4-5 tall and covered the airport between the north end and south end where the tower, hangars, admin buildings were. The stuff was dead like it hadn't rained in about 200 years, that dead.

Bruce Dickens was in the back with a big spray can of some kind of lube and what looked like a small sledge hammer. Bill stood next to the cockpit and gave me signals to run up the engine and go into burner. Nothing happened for the first 6 tries, then on the 7th burner cycle, it happened. I felt this thump and heard a kerwhump and the F8 lurched forward against the tie down. The egt [exit gas temperature] went instantly up to 1000 degs and I thought wow just like the simulator as I shut down the engine and killed the generator. A fast cockpit exit then I saw the unbelievable. The engine sticking out of the fuselage looked like one of those old civil war cannons that had just fired a big load of grape shot. A fan shaped load of black round melted turbine blades was sprayed all over the concrete ramp and the fire was just starting to roar from the engine blast into the dried stuff. In an instant it was huge and spreading rapidly about as fast as a flame thrower shot into a load of napalm.

Bill shrugged and said, "well time for #2 engine"..quite right, time for #2 I thought. I reached down and scooped up a handful of melted blades and put them into a flight suit pocket to put on the home book case with the rest of the Crusader wreckage. By now the flames were huge about 10-15' tall and racing across the field toward the tower. Fire trucks were starting to move as I saw their twirling lights. They were moving all around spraying water everywhere. Nothing to do but watch the show so I went over to one of the two wash tubs full of iced beer and soda pop pulled one out and popped the top. More fire trucks showed up and now it was really going good. Never did find out if they abandoned the tower or not but I am sure it was close.

About three weeks later we had #2 engine installed, burner checked out and ready to go. Did a burner go out of Goodyear climbed out to about 15,000 or so got a EBN lock on interstate 8 and headed toward El Paso enroute to Holloman at White Sands. Along the way I started to relax for the first time in this thing and looked around the cockpit listened to all the noises then rapped my knuckles on the canopy seal and said to myself, "it really is a Crusader...no s..."

Dudley Moore

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