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I must admit this isn’t an aircraft I was aware of. It was the US Navy’s first jet night fighter, and this shows in its layout – straight wings and a rather old fashioned looking tail, and performance levels that meant the MiG-15 was both faster and more manueverable.
The chapter on its role as a night fighter over Korea shows that aerial combat was rather rare. The faster speed of the MiG meant that the Communists were also able to safely use it as the bait in a trap, using a low flying MiG to pull the fighter away from its escort job, but always staying safely out of the range of the F3D’s guns and over friendly AA guns. Even so B-29s being escorted by the F3D were far less likely to be shot down, making the role worthwhile. The low number of combats meant that were are given good accounts of every combat that ended in a victory claim and plenty that didn’t. An interesting note is that the F3D was almost entirely used as a land based fighter, and the one attempt to operate it from a carrier met with resistance from the carrier crew, who found the large F3D to be difficult to work with and weren’t interested in its assigned missions.
Unsurprisingly the F3D was quickly replaced as a night fighter, but alternative uses were found for it. Chapter two looks as its use as an electrionic warfare aircraft. The large fuselage, designed to carry early radar sets, could carry a wide range of alternative electronic devices and the side by side seating arrangement was also well suited to the role.
The aircraft’s last use was as an electronic warfare aircraft over Vietnam. Here it was used to monitor Communist radar and also to jam that radar. Ironically the former night fighter now needed fighter escort itself. Even so only one was lost in combat in Vietnam, even though the level of threat was constantly increasing as the number of SAM sites and AAA guns increased. As the threat increased we see the F3D being forced away from overland missions and into the Naval support role, operating over the sea instead.
The author includes a great deal of material from F3D crews, and has spoken to some of them himself. As a result we get a good feel for what it was like to fly an aircraft that was never particually high performing and by the end of its career was verging on obsolete.
Chapters
1 – Skyknights over Korea
2 – Cold War Elint
3 – ‘Whales’ over Vietnam
Author: Joe Copalman
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 96
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2022