The end of World War II saw the elimination of fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan as world powers, but also resulted in a squaring off between the two principal victors of the struggle–the United States and the Soviet Union. One field that was stimulated by this ongoing international rivalry was jet aviation.

The emergence of the jet engine as a practical means of propulsion unlocked a Pandora’s box of new problems for aircraft designers to solve–new aerodynamic factors, new degrees of stress, and new forces with which propeller-driven aircraft previously had not had to contend, most notably the sound barrier. In order to explore these new realms, the airplane had to be redesigned, even reconceptualized.

In consequence, the first five years of the Cold War saw a titanic struggle taking place in the air, one in which the rival nations never fired a shot in anger, yet one in which their airmen faced mortal danger with every flight. The conflict’s aces were the test pilots, who regularly matched their flying skills against the hottest, most innovative, and in many cases the most horrendous aircraft that the design bureaus could create.

In regard to the aircraft themselves, the most noticeable trend during the five years following World War II was the transition from straight wings to swept wings. As early as 1935, Professor Adolf Büsemann of the German Luftfahrtforchungsamt (aeronautical research establishment) suggested that sweptback wings would reduce drag at the’sound barrier,’ the point at which an aircraft moves at the speed of sound, where the compression of the surrounding air would have dangerous effects on the controls of the plane.

During World War II, the Germans had tried to put those principles into practical use on such revolutionary aircraft as the Messerschmitt Me-163 rocket fighter (calculations on the center of gravity had dictated the use of sweptback wings on the Me-262 jet fighter; their aerodynamic benefits were realized later). Only after the war did the victorious Allied powers, having access to the fruits of German research, begin to adapt those principles to their own designs.

Great Britain emerged from World War II with a decided head start in jet technology, the only Allied power to have had a jet fighter operational in squadron strength before the German surrender on May 8, 1945. This was the Gloster Meteor, which first flew on March 5, 1943. On July 21, 1944, the first two production Meteors arrived at Culmhead and formed the nucleus of No. 616 Squadron, Royal Air Force (RAF). Appropriately, the Meteor’s first duty was to defend Britain from attacks by German V-1 pulse jet-powered guided bombs, of which they destroyed 13 by the end of the war. Meteor IIIs of No. 616 Squadron were committed to Continental Europe in the last months of the conflict, but they never got the opportunity to meet the Me-262A in battle.

Powered by two Rolls-Royce Welland I engines, generating 1,700 pounds of static thrust (lb.s.t.), the Meteor I was a pleasant plane to fly, and for the next 12 years, upgraded models would serve in the RAF and other air arms around the world.

A second wartime British fighter was the deHavilland DH-100 Vampire, whose design dated to 1941, but which did not become operational until 1946. Unlike the twin-engine Meteor, the Vampire had a single deHavilland Goblin 2 jet engine, rated at 3,100 lb.s.t., which was housed in the pilot’s nacelle, and its tail surfaces consisted of a twin-boom arrangement similar to that of the American Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Maximum speed was 540 mph. Six Vampire F.3s of No. 54 Squadron made the first crossing of the Atlantic by RAF jets in July 1948, and on December 3, 1945, a naval version, the Sea Vampire, became the first pure jet aircraft to operate from an aircraft carrier.

The first sweptwing jet to fly over Britain was the de Havilland DH-108, a tailless conversion of the Vampire that made its first flight on May 15, 1946. Unofficially known as the Swallow, the first DH-108, TG-283, was alleged to have suddenly jumped from Mach .98 to Mach 1.05 while being test-flown by John Derry on September 9, 1948. Derry’s passage through the sound barrier, which he stated occurred during an uncontrolled dive, remains unofficial, but his principal achievement was having survived, for the DH-108 proved to be dangerously unstable and tricky to fly. Three versions were built and all three crashed, killing their pilots–the first victim being Geoffrey de Havilland himself, killed on September 27, 1946, while flying the second prototype.

In November 1948, a sweptwing development of the Hawker Sea Hawk carrier-based jet fighter, the P.1052, made its first flight, followed on December 29 by the first flight of the Supermarine 10, a sweptwing version of the Supermarine Swift naval fighter. Both the Supermarine and Hawker designs were powered by the Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal-flow turbojet, an engine that would have as profound an effect on American and Soviet jet aircraft design in the late 1940s as it did on the British.

Undoubtedly the oddest British jet fighter of the 1940s was the Saunders-Roe SR.A/1, a single-seat flying boat powered by two Metropolitan-Vickers F.2/4 Beryl axial-flow turbojets mounted side by side within the hull (see the September 1990 Aviation Heritage, P. 10). Three prototypes were built, the first of which made its maiden flight on July 16, 1947. The ‘Squirt,’ as it was unofficially known around the factory, performed well, with a top speed of 500 mph. Range, however, was somewhat limited, and the requirement that had inspired its creation–to fly from island bases where no airfield could be built for land planes–proved to be superfluous. Although two of the SR.A/ls were lost in accidents, the first prototype, TG263, survives as part of the Imperial War Museum collection at Duxford.

Another country that, like Britain, found itself with its own jet technology when World War II ended was the newly liberated nation of Czechoslovakia. During the war, the Avia factory at Letnany, north of Prague, had been compelled by the Germans to subcontract Me-262 fuselages, while the Walter plant at Jinonice and CKD works in Prague were building Junkers Jumo 004 turbojet engines. After the war, the Czechs found themselves with the makings of a modern aviation industry when Soviet Marshal Ivan A. Konev handed over the jigs, tools and components for building the Me-262 to the restored Czechoslovak government. On August 27, 1946–15 months after Czechoslovakia’s revival as a nation–Avia test pilot Antonin Kraus took the unfamiliar controls of the Avia S-92.1, as the Czechs designated their version of the Me-262A, and lifted off from the airfield at Letnany. Production soon followed.

After the Communist coup in 1948, however, it became clear that an emphasis on the license-manufacture of Soviet aircraft would only be a matter of time. During the victory parade of May 9, 1951, six S-92s flew over Prague, symbolically followed by nine of 12 Yak-23s that had recently been delivered from the Soviet Union. In 1951, arrangements were concluded for license-manufacture of the MiG-15. From then on, indigenous Czech military jet aircraft designs were limited to trainers.

The United States was a relative latecomer to the jet age. But its emergence from World War II as the most powerful nation in the West, along with an economy that had not been devastated by the war, and the perceived Soviet threat, resulted in a mammoth American effort to develop jet aircraft. Although both American and Soviet jet designs were to get their greatest boost from the importation of British power plant and German sweptwing technology, it can safely be said that American designers, encouraged by generous financial support from the government, produced the most extensive and imaginative range of jet designs to fly during the 1940s.

The United States entered the jet age on October 2, 1942, when the Bell XP-59 made its first test flight from Muroc Dry Lake (now Edwards Air Force Base), but the new fighter’s performance proved to be too disappointing for it to be committed to combat. Bell tried to improve the basic design with a more refined and more powerful twin-engine escort fighter, the XP-83, which first flew on February 25, 1945. Although it did have better range than the P-59 and had admirable maneuverability, the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) had its eye on more promising designs that were waiting in the wings, and only two XP-83s were built.

One of those promising designs was the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, which would live up to its name in the decade to follow. Designed by Clarence L. ‘Kelly’ Johnson, William P. Ralston and Don Palmer around a de Havilland H.IB Goblin engine, the prototype XP-80 made its maiden flight on January 8, 1944, just 198 days after the USAAF approved its construction.

Production versions of this outstandingly clean fighter, powered by General Electric or Allison jet engines, would serve with distinction over Korea, where one of them would score the first jet-versus-jet victory over a Chinese-flown MiG-15 on November 7, 1950. A two-seat trainer version, the T-33A, would see even more extensive service long after the P-80 had been superseded by newer fighter designs. The T-33, in turn, led to a successful all-weather fighter, the F-94 Starfire, which made its flying debut on April 16, 1949.

A final descendant of the P-80, with a 35-degree wing sweep and a needle nose, the XF-90, made its first flight on June 3, 1949, but its performance proved to be disappointing and it was passed over in favor of the North American F-86A Sabre and the McDonnell XF-88 Voodoo. The latter, a twin-engine escort fighter that was first flown on October 20, 1948, could attain a speed of only 700 mph and was temporarily abandoned–only to be revived after the Korean War and attain production in an improved form as the F-101 Voodoo.

Hot on the P-80’s heels came a wide assortment of postwar jet fighters. The Republic design team, led by Alexander Kartveli, investigated the possibilities of mounting a jet engine in the airframe of its successful P-47 Thunderbolt, then wisely dropped the idea in favor of starting over from scratch. Republic’s concept, the XP-84, was the first American jet to have the air inlet for its General Electric J33-GE-7 turbojet engine located in the nose. First taking off from Muroc Dry Lake on February 28, 1946, with Major William A. Lein at the controls, the XP-84 Thunderjet was the first American jet to be test-flown since the end of World War II. On September 7, it set a world speed record of 611 mph–only to have it snatched away that very same day when British Group Captain E.M. Donaldson reached 616 mph in a Gloster Meteor.

In October 1947, the U.S. Army Air Forces became the U.S. Air Force (USAF). In mid-1948, this new, separate branch of the U.S. military redesignated all pursuit (P) aircraft as fighters (F). Consequently redesignated as the F-84, the Thunderjet went on to serve with distinction during the Korean War. The Thunderjet’s basic airframe got a new lease on life in 1950, when a sweptwing version, initially designated the XF-96A and later F-84F, was developed and put into production under the name of Thunderstreak.

More exotic spin-offs also emanated from the original F-84 concept: the turbine-propeller-driven, T-tailed XF-84H, unofficially called the ‘Thunderscreech,’ and the jet-and-rocket-powered XF-91 Thunderceptor (September 1992 Aviation Heritage, P.10), whose sweptback wings featured a unique inverse taper (being thicker and wider outboard from the wing root). In December 1951, an XF-91 became the first American airplane to exceed the speed of sound in level flight, but by that time it was clear that simpler, more conventional aircraft would soon be capable of the same feat, and only two prototypes of the Thunderceptor were built.

The most successful jet fighter in the USAAF/USAF during the 1940s traced its origins to an unsuccessful Navy fighter. On November 27, 1946, the straight-winged North American XFJ-1 Fury made its maiden flight, but its performance was so disappointing that a Navy contract for 100 was reduced to 30. By that time, however, the North American design team of J. Lee Atwood, L.P. Green, Ray Rice and Edgar Schmued had learned of German sweptwing development and were already applying it to a lengthened, more streamlined version of the Fury with a 35-degree sweep to its wings.

On October 7, 1947, test pilot George Welch took the XP-86 for its first flight, and on April 26, 1948, he broke the sound barrier in a dive. In June of that year, the P-86 became the F-86, and in March 1949 it was named the Sabre. With the added power of a GE J47 engine of 5,200 lb.s.t., the F-86A jet became the best overall fighter of the Korean War and started a line of Sabre variants that would ensure its place among the great fighter aircraft of all time. The Navy also benefited from the change–it got its own versions of the F-86, starting with the FJ-2 Fury.

The U.S. Navy was slower than the Air Force in eliminating piston-engine fighters from its first-line inventory–not until 1952 did the Vought F4U Corsair become the last piston-engine fighter to go out of mass production. On January 26, 1945, Woodwark Burke took McDonnell’s XFD-1 on its first flight, using only one of its two engines because the other was not yet ready. On November 1, the first prototype suffered engine failure, and Burke was killed in the crash. On July 26, 1946, however, Lt. Cmdr. James Davidson scored a U.S. Navy first when he landed the second XFD-1 on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Placed in production and later redesignated the FH-1 Phantom, McDonnell’s fighter was a handsome, dependable and popular brute. A larger version, the F2H Banshee fighter-bomber, made its first flight on January 11, 1947, and went on to a longer and more successful career than the Phantom.

Another successful U.S. Navy fighter of the period was the Grumman F9F-2 Panther, which first flew on November 24, 1947, and, like the USAF’s F-84, later went on to acquire sweptback wings as the F9F-6 Cougar.

Vought tried to follow up on its Corsair with a jet-powered straight-winged Navy fighter called the F6U Pirate, which first flew on October 2, 1946. Lateral instability resulted in Vought’s trying five different tail arrangements before the design was finalized, with two small vertical stabilizers added to the horizontal tail planes to supplement the main stabilizer and rudder. Inferior in performance to the FJ-1 Fury and the F9F-2 Panther, the Pirate was doomed to a short voyage, but Vought soon had another, more unconventional proposal flying on September 29, 1948. This was the XF7U-1, a tailless design with broad, 38-degree sweptback wings influenced by wartime research left by the German Arado firm.

Stabilized by two vertical surfaces installed in the wings and powered by two Westinghouse J34-WE-22 engines, the XF7U-1 could reach 672 mph at 20,000 feet and was put into production as the F7U Cutlass. The rakish Cutlass looked exciting, but its performance and flying characteristics were downright terrifying–by the time the type was retired from service in 1957, it would be responsible for the deaths of four test pilots and 21 Navy fliers.

Radar-equipped, all-weather jet fighters were also developed prior to 1950. On December 22, 1949, the first F-86D, a Sabre with an AN/APO-36 radar mounted above a redesigned nose inlet, made its first flight and went on to become America’s first operational all-weather jet interceptor. A more purpose-built interceptor by Northrop, the XF-89, made its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base on August 16, 1949, with Fred Bretcher at the controls, but was found to be underpowered. An 80 percent redesign, using two Allison J-35-21A engines with 6,800 lb.s.t. and an afterburner and equipped with AN/APG-33 radar, was more successful and entered service at the end of 1951 as the F-89A Scorpion.

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