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F-86 Sabre "Beautious Butch II"
SKU: NC10284
The North American F-86 Sabre (sometimes called the Sabrejet) was a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known for its participation in the Korean War, where it encountered the Soviet MiG-15. Although developed in the late 1940s and was outdated by the end of the 1950s, the Sabre proved adaptable and continued as a front-line fighter in air forces until the last active front-line examples were retired by the Bolivian Air Force in 1994.
Delivery 7 to 10 days
Product Description
Its success led to an extended production run of more than 7,800 aircraft between 1949 and 1956, in the United States, Japan and Italy. Variants were built in Canada and Australia. The Canadair Sabre added another 1,815 airframes, and the significantly redesigned CAC Sabre (sometimes known as the Avon Sabre or CAC CA-27), had a production run of 112. It was by far the most-produced Western jet fighter, with total production of all variants at 9,860 units.
Initial proposals to meet a United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) requirement for a medium-range, single-seat, high-altitude day escort fighter/fighter bomber were drafted in mid-1944. North American Aviation got to work, and in early 1945 submitted four designs. The USAAF selected and granted a North American a contract to built three examples of the XP-86 (eXperimental Pursuit). These originally to be derived from the design of the straight-wing FJ-1 Fury, then being developed for the U.S. Navy. By deleting specific requirements from the FJ-1 Fury, coupled with other modifications, this allowed the XP-86 to be lighter, thus faster than the Fury, with an estimated top speed of 582 mph (937 km/h), versus the Fury's 547 mph (880 km/h). Despite the gain in speed, early studies revealed the XP-86 would have the same performance as its rivals, the XP-80 and XP-84. It was also feared that, because these studies were more advanced in their development stages, the XP-86 would be canceled. Crucially, the XP-86 would not be able to meet the required top-speed of 600 mph (970 km/h); North American had to quickly come up with a radical change.
The F-86A set its first official world speed record of 570 miles per hour (920 km/h) in September 1948.
Several people involved with the development of the F-86, including the chief aerodynamicist for the project and one of its other test pilots, claimed that North American test pilot George Welch had broken the sound barrier in a dive with the XP-86 while on a test flight October 1, 1947. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier on October 14, 1947 in the rocket-propelled Bell X-1 during level flight, making it the first true supersonic aircraft. Five years later, on 18 May 1953, Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier, flying a Canadian-built F-86E alongside Chuck Yeager. It is unclear whether this was in level flight or not.
The F-86 was produced as both a fighter-interceptor and fighter-bomber. Several variants were introduced over its production life, with improvements and different armament implemented (see below). The XP-86 was fitted with a General Electric J35-C-3 jet engine that produced 4,000 lbf (18 kN) of thrust. This engine was built by GM's Chevrolet division until production was turned over to Allison. The General Electric J47-GE-7 engine was used in the F-86A-1 producing a thrust of 5,200 lbf (23 kN) while the General Electric J73-GE-3 engine of the F-86H produced 9,250 lbf (41 kN) of thrust. The fighter-bomber version (F-86H) could carry up to 2,000 lb (907 kg) of bombs, including an external fuel-type tank that could carry napalm. Unguided 2.75 in (70 mm) rockets were used on some of the fighters on training missions, but 5 inch (127 mm) rockets were later carried on combat operations. The F-86 could also be fitted with a pair of external jettisonable jet fuel tanks (four on the F-86F beginning in 1953) that extended the range of the aircraft. Both the interceptor and fighter-bomber versions carried six 0.50 in (12.7 mm) M3 Browning machine guns with electrically-boosted feed in the nose (later versions of the F-86H carried four 20 mm (0.79 in) cannons instead of machine guns). Firing at a rate of 1,200 rounds per minute, the .50 in (12.7 mm) guns were harmonized to converge at 1,000 ft (300 m) in front of the aircraft, using armor-piercing (AP) and armor-piercing incendiary (API) rounds, with one armor-piercing incendiary tracer (APIT) for every five AP or API rounds. The API rounds used during the Korean War contained magnesium, which were designed to ignite upon impact but burned poorly above 35,000 ft (11,000 m) as oxygen levels were insufficient to sustain combustion at that height. Initially fitted with the Mark 18 manual-ranging computing gun sight, later models used the A-1CM radar ranging gunsight which used radar to compute the range of a target. This would later prove to be a significant advantage against MiG opponents over Korea.
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