F-106 Delta Dart Interceptor "Time Will Tell" 1960 NORAD-Convair
more at
http://scitech.quickfound.net/aviation_news_and_search
.html
On the need for bomber interceptor aircraft and the capabilities of the
Convair F-106 Delta Dart and the
North American Air Defense Command.
Public domain film from the
Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
There is a broadband hum in the vocal frequencies of this film which I cannot completely remove.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/
3.0/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_F-106_Delta_Dart
The Convair F-106 Delta Dart was the primary all-weather interceptor aircraft of the
United States Air Force from the
1960s through the
1980s. Designed as the so-called "
Ultimate Interceptor", it proved to be the last dedicated interceptor in
U.S. Air Force service to date. It was gradually retired during the 1980s, with the QF-106 drone conversions of the aircraft being used until
1998 under the
Pacer Six Program...
Design and development
The
F-106 was the ultimate development of the
USAF's
1954 interceptor program of the early
1950s. The initial winner of this competition had been the
F-102 Delta Dagger, but early versions of this aircraft had demonstrated extremely poor performance, limited to subsonic speeds and relatively low altitudes. During the testing program the
F-102 underwent numerous changes to improve its performance, notably the application of the area rule to the fuselage shaping and a change of engine, and the dropping of the advanced MX-1179 fire control system and its replacement with a slightly upgraded version of the
MX-1 already in use on subsonic designs. The resulting aircraft became the
F-102A, and in spite of being considered barely suitable for its mission, the
Air Force sent out a production contract in
March 1954, with the first deliveries expected the next year.
By December 1951 the Air Force had already turned its attention to a further improved version, the F-102B. Initially the main planned change was the replacement of the A-model's
Pratt & Whitney J57 (itself replacing the original
J40) with the more powerful
Bristol Olympus, produced under license as the
Wright J67. By the time this would be available, the MX-1179 was expected to be available, and was selected as well. The result would be the "ultimate interceptor" the Air Force wanted originally. However, while initial work on the
Olympus appeared to go well, by
August 1953 Wright was already a full year behind schedule in development.
Continued development did not improve issues, and in early
1955 the Air Force approved the switch to the
Pratt & Whitney J75.
The
J75 was somewhat larger than the
J57 in the F-102A, and had greater mass flow. This demanded changes to the inlets to allow more airflow, and this led to the further refinement of using a variable-geometry inlet duct to allow the intakes to be tuned to best performance across a wide range of supersonic speeds. This change also led to the ducts being somewhat shorter. The fuselage grew slightly longer, and was cleaned up and simplified in many ways. The wing was slightly enlarged in area, and a redesigned vertical tail surface was used. The engine's 2-position afterburner exhaust nozzle was also used for idle thrust control. The nozzle was held open reducing idle thrust by 40% giving slower taxiing and less brake wear.
A mock-up with the expected layout of the MX-1179, now known as the
MA-1, was inspected and approved in
December 1955. With growing confidence that the aircraft was now improving, an extended production contract for 17 F-102Bs was sent out on 18 April
1956. On 17 June, the aircraft was officially redesigned as the
F-106A.
The first prototype F-106, an aerodynamic test bed, flew on
26 December 1956 from
Edwards Air Force Base, with the second, fitted with a fuller set of equipment, following
26 February 1957.
Initial flight tests at the end of 1956 and beginning of 1957 were disappointing, with performance less than anticipated, while the engine and avionics proved unreliable. These problems, and the delays associated with them nearly led to the abandoning of the program, but the Air Force decided to order 350 F-106s instead of the planned 1,
000. After some minor redesign, the new aircraft, designated F-106A were delivered to 15 fighter interceptor squadrons along with the F-106B two-seat combat-capable trainer variant, starting in
October 1959.
On
15 December 1959,
Major Joseph W. Rogers set a world speed record of 1,525.96 mph (2,455.79 km/h) in a
Delta Dart at 40,
500 ft (12,
300 m)...