In Defense of the F7U-3 Cutlass

 Uninformed speculation repeated often enough becomes fact. An example is the horrific ramp strike of F7U-3 BuNo 129595 piloted by LCDR Jay Alkire on 14 July 1955.

These excerpts are from the official accident report:

The description of the accident:

Note that the ramp strike followed a successful landing and was therefore at a lower gross weight (although still slightly above the maximum for a carrier landing).

Many descriptions of the accident state the fatalities of deck personnel in addition to that of Alkire. There were none:

The conclusion was explicit:

"It is concluded that this accident was caused by errors in pilot judgement and failure of the pilot to expeditiously answer signals from the Landing Signal Officer."

"(A)lthough the afterburners were operating, it is possible in sweptwing aircraft to establish an angle of attack such that the power required is greater than the power available with a resulting uncontrollable rate of sink."

 "It is recommended that squadrons which are equipped with sweptwing aircraft employing afterburners stress pilot training for complete familiarization with time lags in power acceleration and the curves for power required versus power available."

The sobriquet "Gutless Cutlass" was given to the F7U-3 in jest, referring to its somewhat degraded performance with no increase in thrust when laden with a radar, missile control system, four missile pylons, and four Sparrow Is as a placeholder for fleet air defense with guided air-to-air missiles due to a development delay with the McDonnell F3H Demon being procured for that mission. Its performance was adequate for the task and when landed on angle-deck carriers on a descending, mirror-guided approach, relatively accident free by the standards of the time. As a day fighter, its thrust-to-weight ratio was as good or better than its contemporaries:

Its Westinghouse J46 engine has also been criticized as disappointing in thrust, unreliable, and slow to respond to throttle movement. While it did not meet contract specification, it was not by much; its reliability was never an issue; and because its fuel control maintained engine rpm at 100%, varying thrust by nozzle area as well as fuel flow, it was more responsive than most, if not all, jet engines of the time (which of course, was inferior to propeller-pulled airplanes but resulted in higher maximum speeds). The slight lag in the increase in thrust when afterburner was selected needed to be anticipated but that was a characteristic shared by all engines with afterburners.

In its subsequent, admittedly short career there were no more catastrophic ramp strikes. The F8U had several and a worse accident rate over the same amount of total flight time.

There's much, much more here if you want to comment knowledgeably about the F7U-3's development, capability, and operational career:

Well, There's Your Problem

 I scanned this photograph at the National Archives 14 years ago:

The caption:

 This 6 April 1955 photo was from the same qualification period and illustrates the defense in depth of the crew and aircraft forward of the landing area.

The Cougar is being pulled to a stop immediately before the Davis barrier by the next to the last arresting cable. The much taller webbing is the barricade. It has just passed over one of the standard propeller-plane barriers that is lying flat on the deck. For a primer on barrier/barricade, see https://thanlont.blogspot.com/2022/10/barricade-and-barriers-example.html

 This last minute wave off is another illustration of the landing area:

 

The mystery was that the webbing in front of 217's nose was clearly from the barricade (also note the damage to its right inlet from a vertical strap on the barricade) but the damage on the top of the nose and windscreen was not representative of either a Davis barrier or barricade encounter. This is an example of an F9F-6 going that far up the deck (note that it has engaged a Davis barrier and for some reason the hook has spit out the arresting cable, possibly because the pilot was too quick to raise it to the stinger position):

It was unlikely that the damage had resulted from a standard barrier been incorrectly raised for the landing: that would have required a nose landing gear collapse and the damage would have been far more extensive (e.g. the canopy and the pilot's head would probably have been removed), which is why the Davis barrier was created for carrier-based airplanes with nose landing gears:

 The likely answer became apparent when Peter Greengrass recently stated that F9F-6 BuNo 128266 was also involved in the incident. My guess is that it had just landed and was being taxiing forward but hadn't gotten far enough ahead of the barricade when LTJG Genter needed it, so he rammed it from behind.

Note that I've had to angle both Cougar's nose down relative to their static position to replicate the initial point of contact but this would result from 128266 accelerating forward and 217 being pulled to a stop like 202 here.