- This program was made possible by Wings Over the Rockies, educating and inspiring all people about aviation and space endeavors of the past, present, and the future.

Hi, I'm Shahn Sederberg, and this is "Behind the Wings".

In this episode, we'll get an inside look at the Century Series fighters.

- [Narrator] Three Century Series strike aircraft.

- You ever flown an airplane, Lieutenant?

- No, sir.

- [Shahn] The Century Series defined an era of aviation during the Cold War, charting a course from one era to another.

- [Narrator] First of the supersonic fighters.

- Jets were in their infancy, and many milestones, including the sound barrier, loomed large.

- [Narrator] Welcome to supersonic pilot training.

- Morning, sir.

- [Shahn] In an arms race with the Soviet Union, a rising superpower, the US got to work developing a variety of impressive fighter jets known as the Century Series.

It's time to go "Behind the Wings".

(cheerful music) - I'm Chuck Stout.

I'm the curator at Wings over the Rockies Air and Space museum.

As soon as we started developing jet fighters, we knew that we wanted to build something that would go faster than the speed of sound.

So the sound barrier was first broken by Chuck Yeager in 1947.

Manufacturers started trying to figure out immediately how they could build a supersonic production airplane, an airplane capable of exceeding the speed of sound in level flight.

We recognized that the Soviet Union would be a major threat, a threat to democracy.

We had nuclear weapons and they didn't until 1949.

So as soon as they started exploding nuclear weapons, then it became the Cold War.

In the late '40s, early 1950s, we realized that the biggest threat now would be Soviet bombers coming over the pole, carrying nuclear weapons.

So the first efforts towards building supersonic fighters and interceptors were to take out nuclear bombers coming from the Soviet Union.

Because of the Air Force numbering sequence of their fighter planes, the first supersonic fighter happened to be the F-100, hence the beginning of the Century Series.

- [Narrator] The big punch of the Tactical Air Command is made up of these three Century Series strike aircraft.

All can deliver nuclear or non nuclear weapons.

The North American F-100 Super Sabre, first US Air Force fighter to fly operationally in supersonic speed in straight and level flight.

- My name's John Stewart.

I joined the Air Force in 1966 and I went to F-100 training school at Luke Air Force Base.

Graduated from that and went directly to Vietnam in October of 1968, I had gone to high school overseas at Wheelus Air Force Base.

And so I'd seen an F-100 when I was in high school.

When we'd go to lunch, they'd be at the officer's club and you'd see the pilots hanging around and you thought, this was really something.

And then eight years later, I was flying one.

The first time I flew the F-100 was quite a thrill.

The first time I soloed and got in an airplane with only one seat, no one in the airplane and lowered the canopy, and I said, here I am flying what at the time was one of the most iconic fighters in the Air Force.

The people that flew the F-100s were hardcore fighter pilots.

They lived on the edge.

It just had an image of a big, bad machine.

You had to be completely in charge of the airplane to fly it and survive.

And so you looked at these people as almost demigods of aviation.

Almost the first day in F-100 training, they showed us a video of one of them, the early models, that did what they call a sabre dance and it ended up crashing.

It was at Edwards Air Force Base.

And they talked about the challenges of flying this airplane and the characteristics of this airplane when it gets slow.

And the fact they drilled into our head that you must understand how to fly it, or you'll be one of those people that does a sabre dance and you won't live through it.

And the flying of it, it was very heavy.

38,000 pounds maximum weight.

It had low performance unless you had the afterburner and the afterburner gave 60% more power.

- [Pilot] Okay, I got the burners.

It's a good light.

- It was a very responsive airplane once you got up to about 300 miles an hour.

Before that it was a little sluggish at slower airspeeds.

Well, the F-100 had a worldwide reputation as the first fighter aircraft that would go supersonic in level flight.

- [Narrator] Unveiled in 1953 was the first of the supersonic fighters, fighters capable of operating regularly above the speed of sound.

- Prior to that, all the supersonic flight had occurred in taking the airplane up to 40000 or 50000 feet and going in a steep dive and going supersonic.

During training and we'd go out and accelerate it, go through Mach 1.

And then when you got back, Northrop gave you a pin.

And so that was cool.

The airplane, when you went Mach 1, you hardly knew it.

There'd be a little change in the feeling of the flight controls because when you go supersonic, the pressure on the airplane changes dramatically.

You said, well, here I went supersonic in the first airplane that went supersonic in level flight.

You felt like you were in a special group of aviators.

Like the space race, we were in a race in the nation and the people that were developing airplanes were trying to improve the airplane's performance.

- [Narrator] Now from experimental labs and drawing boards, there came yet another aviation miracle, the jet!

- Before that in World War Two, except for a few German jets, there were just prop planes.

And so the transition from propeller planes to jet airplanes was just taking place when the F-100 came in.

- [Narrator] After many years of study and research, jet powered aircraft was a reality.

More powerful than any plane previously conceived, the jet opened up a new vista in aviation progress.

- And the shape of the fuselage was part of the technology.

And a lot of it was experimental.

They didn't really know what was going to happen until they got the airplane and tested it.

The F-100 started the series.

And each one, they were trying to go faster and faster and faster and have more combat capability as they went through the Century Series.

- Okay, we get it.

These fighter jets are super fast.

But how exactly do sonic booms work?

Next we'll hear from Camille Calibeo to learn a little more about sonic booms.

- The Century Series fighters were some of the first planes to reach supersonic speeds.

But how do sonic booms work?

Imagine you are walking down a crowded sidewalk.

You were walking at a decent pace faster than the other people, but they have time to react and move out of the way for you.

This analogy applies to subsonic flight.

You are the plane and the people around you are the air molecules the plane is trying to move through.

The air molecules have time to react to the plane coming and can move out of the way for it.

Now imagine that you are in a big rush.

This time you are moving much faster than the other people, and they don't have time to react and move out of the way for you.

This analogy applies to supersonic flight.

Again, you are the plane and the people around you are the air molecules the plane is trying to move through.

The plane is moving much faster than the air molecules can react, which means they don't have time to move out of the way.

The supersonic plane in this instance causes a shockwave because the air molecules have compressed and built up a lot pressure just like you would compress the people in the crowd if you were running and pushing through it.

Shockwaves looks similar to wakes created by boats, except that they are three dimensional cones that extend all the way to the ground from the front of the plane.

On the ground, a sharp release of pressure occurs and creates what is called a sonic boom that you would hear whenever the plane passes over you.

- Development was very fast and progress was going at an astonishing rate.

At the same time that North American was developing the F-100, McDonnell was developing the F-101, and Lockheed was developing F-104, Convair was developing the F-102.

- [Narrator] The year 1957 was an increasingly active one for the F-102 flight test program.

- [Chuck] The F-102 was intended to be supersonic, but during its initial test flights, it was subsonic.

That was very disappointing because they did everything right.

They did everything according to the rulebook.

- The first jets were tubes with intake in the front and exhaust in the back.

And you would attach wings and fuel tanks to it and a cockpit and away you would go.

When we started to getting to the point of pushing the Mach, going Mach 0.9, 0.95, 0.97, you'd run into a wall.

Drag profile would go way up and the thrust profile wouldn't change.

That was what was called for many, many years the sound barrier.

- [Narrator] Now at the speed of sound, it forms a dangerous wall of shockwaves known as the sound barrier.

- It's not a barrier at all, it was an aerodynamic problem.

- Meanwhile, in another part of the country, NASA had scientists working on aerodynamics.

One of them, Richard Whitcomb, had been studying the area rule for years.

- When you started approaching the Mach you would get huge drag rise over those wings.

This guy found out that you really needed to have the profile that looks like this, including the wings.

So to do that, they took a big piece out of the fuselage called the Coke bottle effect.

And that would give a total profile going through the air of a fairly sleek design.

- When you look at the old-fashioned glass Coca-Cola bottles, they start out narrow, they get fat, then they narrow again and then they get fat again.

And if you look at supersonic airplanes, there's always a narrow part where the wings stick out from the fuselage.

And usually the tail gets a little bit wider behind that.

So that's the Coke bottle that everybody talks about.

- The F-102 wouldn't even come close to going through the Mach.

They changed it.

They put some big twofers on the outside of the engine, in the rear.

They changed the intake design, which was upfront.

And then they took a big chop out of the fuselage to give it an area rule.

Then they found out the thing went supersonic just fine.

With the same engine.

(pensive music) - The Century Series exemplified an era of rapid development fueled by the military tensions and resulting demands of the Cold War.

The US government approached manufacturers, simultaneously producing a variety of aircraft each with their own unique characteristics and capabilities.

Next we'll take a look at the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, a single engine supersonic interceptor aircraft that was used extensively during the Cold War, and eventually saw widespread manufacturing and use outside of the US.

- When I got into the Air Force, I decided I had to be a fighter pilot.

That's how I got into F-104s is on the heels of the Cuban Crisis in early 1963.

- [Narrator] The F-104 is a tower in the sky from which men can keep vigil over their homeland.

- The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter was designed under the same design team under Kelly Johnson, who was also responsible for the P-38 Lighting in World War II and for the F-80 Shooting Star, which was our first operational jet fighter.

So when he approached this point defense interceptor problem, he and his design team, the Skunkworks at Lockheed, went for simplicity, lightweight, and a very efficient design.

- Kelly Johnson came up with the Starfighter and we called it the high fastie.

The high, fast, faster airplane would win the battle.

What would it do?

Go high and fast.

Once you did that, you better head back home because you're out of gas.

And you better not try to turn real hard or you'll fall out of the sky.

It took a big piece of airspace to make a 360 degree turn.

- [Chuck] You'll notice that the wings on the F-104 are proportionately very small compared to the wings on other airplanes.

And they are designed strictly for supersonic flight.

That means you have to get them going really fast on the ground before you can even take off.

- The F-104 went supersonic on its first flight.

It was always fast.

It carried very little fuel and had a great big engine and was very pointy so it was easy to go fast.

The 104 was a basic airplane.

When we were flying the thing out of Homestead in those early days, we didn't even have a navigation system.

We'd just go out there until we sort of passed over a little set of islands that we knew that was sort of where the line was between Cuban territory and US territory.

That was about the most complex system that we had.

We had sort of a super squadron at Homestead.

We had 26 unit equipment airplanes.

And we could scramble from wake up at 2:00 in the morning to the sound of a horn, and it would go, eee, and we would come awake, run out the door, run to our airplane, get in and start up and be airborne in less than three minutes.

I have gotten airborne and then been going through 10000 feet when I'm saying to myself, come on, Charlie, wake up, wake up, you're flying now.

And that's the way you feel sometimes when you're scrambled in the dead of night.

We scrambled on some very interesting things.

Sometimes they had an idea of what it was or who it was.

But most of the time it was we get airborne and we're on the way out to take a look.

And that happened the time that I intercepted a nuclear submarine.

Nobody knew what it was.

- [Narrator] Field of radar, which will search out on unknown aircraft long before they reach US borders.

- But it was clearly a nuclear submarine on the surface.

Is it friendly or not friendly?

In this case turned out to be a British submarine coming in to Cape Canaveral.

The typical air defender says when you make your intercept, get type and numbers and color.

I'd say big black submarine with three numbers.

Submarine's not going very fast and the slowest I can fly is 180 knots, which is pushing 200 miles an hour, going well, psh, going to have to come back around again.

I didn't quite get the numbers that time.

But that's how you get to intercept a submarine.

- F-104s gained a reputation as being widowmakers.

They were dangerous to fly.

They had a high accident rate compared to other airplanes, even other really high-performance airplanes.

The good news is boy, is this airplane sexy.

And the Air Force recognized that and used it a lot for their recruiting.

(energetic music) They would show an F-104 doing aerobatics and steep climbs while an announcer read the poem by John Gillespie Magee Jr. called "High Flight".

This video inspired a whole generation of pilots who were maybe six to 10 years old when they saw this on TV.

- As a young kid growing up, I saw "High Flight" before I got into the Air Force Academy.

When they would say the poem, I was all set to go fly this thing.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and flown on laughter and silver wings.

- [Narrator] Sunward I climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, and done 100 things you have not dreamed of.

Wheeled and soared and swung, high in the sunlit silence.

Hovering there, I chased the shouting wind along and flung my eager craft through-- - That was my motivation.

And the fact that I ended up getting to have a long tour in the Starfighter was just magic.

- Hearing directly from these pilots, we can only begin to imagine the full experience of flying these remarkable machines.

Being at high altitude at supersonic speeds and alone in the cockpit is something that most of us can only dream of, something that pilots can only describe as magic.

Next we'll hear from Charlie Johnson, who flew the Republic F-105 Thunderchief.

- [Narrator] A pilot's tour of duty is 100 missions.

♪ 100 missions to be flown ♪ 100 targets still unknown ♪ But it's my belief that my Thunderchief ♪ ♪ Strikes a telling blow to help GI Joe ♪ ♪ 'til 100 missions, I myself have flown ♪ - My name is Charlie Johnson and I had the privilege of flying the F-105 in 1969, '70, '71, and '72.

I have been a fan of airplanes all my life since I was three years old.

I believe in motivation and I've never been motivated to do anything other than be a fighter pilot.

The 105 to me personally is a machine you truly connect with.

It was, in my estimation, the epitome of airplanes in its time.

Carried more, did more, just a tremendous machine.

- [Narrator] And this is the Republic F-105 Thunderchief.

- At the same time that the other Century Series fighters were being developed by other manufacturers, Republic Aviation in New York is developing the F-105.

- [Narrator] Screeching through the clouds at Mach plus, these F-105 Thunderchiefs are bent on destroying the enemy's ground potential.

- The F-105, although it's got an F for fighter designation, was really designed around the idea that it could carry a nuclear weapon internally and deliver it supersonically.

Nevertheless, it became a superb air to air fighter and it was mainly used for ground attack during the Vietnam War.

(explosions thundering) - 105 development rumors started in 1951, started getting serious in 1958.

Almost everybody that ever flew it flew it in combat.

You really start to identify with the power, the magic of the airplane.

And when I went to pilot training at that time, if you were first in your class, you could pick any airplane in the inventory.

And the 105 was all I ever wanted to fly since I was in high school.

So I had the good fortune of knowing a lot about the airplane, watching development, watching it go into service.

And then when I graduated from pilot training being selected to go to F-105 training.

Have always felt that there was never a finer fighter built.

One of the interesting things about flying fighters is that you have to be very competitive.

And there is an attitude in fighter pilots, and it's kind of an invincibility almost.

And you're pretty much convinced that if anything happens, it's never going to happen to you.

If you walked into a room with 100 people getting ready to go out on a mission and whatever you believe in stood up on the stage and said, 99 of you folks are not going to come back today.

Everybody would stand up in the room and walk out, saying it's really sad that all those other people aren't coming back today, because I am.

And there is always the element of risk.

The people that are concerned about hurting themselves in a fighter don't last in a fighter, they generally will quit or wash out.

It's driven by attitude.

It is driven by incredible training.

There's not an emergency or a system or a thing that can happen in that airplane that the pilot doesn't know about before you take off.

So you're trained to handle whatever happens.

- The two seat F and G models were used in extremely dangerous missions called Wild Weasel missions, where they would go out and try to protect other American airplanes by attracting surface to air missiles.

They would fly over and mimic an attacking force of American airplanes, get the North Vietnamese radar to lock onto them so that they could see where those radar sites were, and then they would attack them with anti-radiation missiles, anti radar missiles The problem with that is by the time you find out where that radar is and lock your missiles onto it, they've launched missiles at you.

And so it's extremely dangerous.

You're purposely drawing their fire and getting them to shoot at you and then hoping that you can get out of the way of those missiles that are already airborne or get to the radar before they can launch the missiles.

- They found the 105 was the absolute ideal airplane for that.

They built an F model, which was two seats.

They converted those to put all the electronics warfare equipment in the back.

We equipped them with standard arms, which was a very, very lethal weapon.

The Weasel's total job was to fly ahead and behind the strike force and to keep the missile's heads down.

Republic has always had an interesting design philosophy.

It was overcoming weight with power.

We literally had to refuel within 20 minutes of take off.

We'd take off lightweight and then refuel, and then we'd refuel again going into the target.

Most missions had at least reached three refuelings, two going in, one coming out.

I had one where I was doing a search and rescue Air CAP that I had 11 refuelings.

So it brought the boom down and give you some gas, and you'd keep going.

There's nothing I would love more than for somebody to fuel up a 105 and go jump in right now.

If I could go back and do anything in life, let me go fly one more force show, let me go fly one more flight.

So a lot of lessons were learned from the airplane.

Evolutionary is the right word because every piece of the airplane, the way that it works and redundancy that you build into the airplane is all a result of losses in machines like the Century Series fighters.

Each of the fighters that you see in each of the Century Series fighters contributed tremendously to the fighting forces that we have right now.

- We look back at the 1950s and the Century Series as a time of enormous growth in aviation technology.

Anything was possible and development was happening at a lightning pace.

We still see the legacy of the Century Series in the aerodynamic profiles of modern day fighters.

Avionics, automation, and intelligence make today's fighters safer, faster, and more effective than ever before.

The Century Series was a part of that trajectory, but what the future holds, we will have to just wait and see.

(energetic music)