Missed It By That Much

If Vought hadn't made the F7U-1 control system so complicated, underestimated the empty weight by so much, or realized that the visibility over the nose had to be a lot better than the existing specification on an airplane approaching at such a high angle of attack; Westinghouse had done as good a job initially on the J34 with afterburner as they did on the J30; and the Navy had figured out sooner that landing on an angled deck was a lot easier than an axial deck, then the F7U-1 would have been trolling for MiGs over Korea: It was faster than an F-86 with twice the rate of climb and a terrific rate of roll...

Two served briefly with the Blue Angels. The show was spectacular but the stars were failure prone so it was a short run.