America’s Parasite Fighter Programs
Boeing B-29 Superfortress
In the early jet age, when the United States’ most offensive weapon were large, nuclear armed bombers, the fate of America’s attack/ retaliation efforts laid heavily on these lumbering, poorly defended planes that made easy targets in the sky. These were the late 1940s and early 1950s, when jet fighters were just becoming capable, yet jet powered bombers were still in their infancy. The mainstay of USAF’s SAC consisted of Boeing B-29s, Boeing B-50s and Convair B-36s. All of which decent, proven and reliable aircrafts, but also very slow, low altitude and poorly defended against near supersonic Soviet jets. The main adversary being the MiG 15, perfectly designed to down those planes by having rates of climb at 10,000ft/min, max speeds of 620mph and packing a 37mm cannon engineered precisely for the destruction of American bombers. In the previous years during World War II, the USAF protected their bombers via fighter escorts, but with the new, fuel hungry fighters that were being introduced, the ranges of escorts were shamefully minimal, thus leaving bombers starkly vulnerable. This was before the incorporated use of mid-air refueling, so it was for this reason the parasite fighter programs were reevaluated.
The Parasite program tested during the jet age got its start from previous programs of decades before. From World War I through the 1930s, tiny biplane scout and fighter aircraft were utilized as defensive means for airships and dirigibles. These biplanes were carried on hoists within the airships, lowered down into the slipstream, and released like bombs when under attack or in need of surveillance. The pilots would then skillfully maneuver their planes to hook back onto the hoists once the mission was complete. The forgotten Naval airships of the 1930s, the USS Akron and USS Macon both of which approached the size of clouds at over 780 ft in length by 130ft diameter, used the Curtiss F9C Sparrowhawk biplane for scouting and defensive missions. After the crash of both dirigibles, the US Navy abandoned its lighter-than-air initiative and thus the parasite fighters to protect them.
It wasn’t until the post World War II years that out of desperation of bomber protection, one of the options the USAF considered were parasite fighter trials, this time with bomber planes instead of dirigibles. This program is now regarded as one of the most bold, daring and dangerous experiments the USAF undertook within aviation. The skills of the test pilots for the experiment are absolutely unrivaled and the piloting needed for this test program was to a degree never seen before by any aviators, as the fighters were no longer slow easy to fly biplanes, but swift and complex jets.
The program was first revisited in 1948 with a modified B-29 mothership bomber and one of the most unique and unorthodox aircraft ever built, McDonnell’s XF-85 Goblin, as the test parasite fighter. The Goblin was the essence of a parasite fighter, with its nimble yet pudgy characteristics and dimensions. To this day it is one of the smallest jets ever built with a wingspan of 21ft and length of 14ft. The plane closely resembled an egg with wings and a multi-fin arrangement at its rear. The plane was designed with the same basic hook and trapeze process as the Sparrowhawks and airships of the 30s. The plane was to be lowered and dropped, protect the mothership for a maximum 30min due to its small fuel capacity and then extend its hook from the nose of the airplane and masterfully the pilot would fight the turbulence of the airflow around the bomber to delicately lock the hook on to the bombers trapeze and be retracted into the airplane for recovery. During these 1948 tests with the Goblin, the piloting necessary to accomplish aircraft recovery turned out to be so arduous that it was only successfully recovered a couple times, while most of its flights ended with a forced landing on the ground. The program and the Goblin were thus cancelled in 1949.
From 1950-1956 the use of parasite fighters were tested again and for the last time by the USAF starting with the “Tip Tow” and “Tom Tom” projects. These experiments incorporated modified Republic F-84F Thunderstreaks (an accomplished and inservice fighter jet) as the parasite plane that were able to attach and detach via their wingtip to the wingtips of B-29s and B-36s. Once attached the pilots of the fighters could turn off their engines and be tugged by the mothership, effectively extending the range of the fighters for bomber escort. The complexities and difficulties of attaching the wingtip of a fighter to the wingtip of a bomber ended up being the downfall for that program.
From 1952-1956, the FICON (Fighter In CONvair) Project was tested. This was a more conventional means of parasite fighters, with the mothership having a retractable trapeze arrangement and the fighter having a hook to connect to the trapeze. These tests were also done with B-36s as the mothership and F-84s as the fighters. From analysis of trial testing, and attention to enemy defenses, the roles of parasite fighters of FICON changed from bomber escort, to that of tactical reconnaissance. While the B-36 would loiter outside barriers of enemy defense, the F-84 would drop from the mothership, fly fast and low through enemy defenses while gathering information on enemy positions, then fly back to attach to the trapeze of the mothership. These tests were far more successful than the Goblin trials, yet the final nail in the FICON’s coffin was of the same type as that of the Goblin, “Tip Tow” and “Tom Tom” projects. It was too difficult to consistently hook the fighter to the trapeze, thus the projects were infeasible for operational service.
While the use of parasite fighters had no real success in testing or operational service, the various US parasite programs helped to develop mid-air refueling which has developed into a vital asset to aerial military operations. On another note, as a private pilot with very limited time formation flying, the bravery and airmanship of the test pilots and elites who conducted these trials is astounding. Maneuvering the aircraft with such precision, in the face of mass turbulence, dwindling fuel reserves and prop/jet wash to tactfully hook on to metal trapeze arrangements only inches from the canopy, jet inlet or propeller while traveling hundreds of miles per hour is a level of aviating that can hardly be matched. In the end, the best method for increased fighter range and bomber protection came to fruition with aerial refueling, but the very unorthodox and daring trials that led to this practice should not be forgotten.
