#f-106

"Shot of QF-106 aircraft taking off from Mojave Airport, California. In 1997 and 1998, the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, California, supported and hosted a Kelly Space & Technology, Inc. project called Eclipse, which sought to demonstrate the feasibility of a reusable tow-launch vehicle concept. The project goal was to successfully tow, inflight, a modified QF-106 delta-wing aircraft with an Air Force C-141A transport aircraft. This would demonstrate the possibility of towing and launching an actual launch vehicle from behind a tow plane. Dryden was the responsible test organization and had flight safety responsibility for the Eclipse project. Dryden provided engineering, instrumentation, simulation, modification, maintenance, range support, and research pilots for the test program. The Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC), Edwards, California, supplied the C-141A transport aircraft and crew and configured the aircraft as needed for the tests. The AFFTC also provided the concept and detail design and analysis as well as hardware for the tow system and QF-106 modifications. Dryden performed the modifications to convert the QF-106 drone into the piloted EXD-01 (Eclipse eXperimental Demonstrator-01) experimental aircraft. Kelly Space & Technology hoped to use the results gleaned from the tow test in developing a series of low-cost, reusable launch vehicles. These tests demonstrated the validity of towing a delta-wing aircraft having high wing loading, validated the tow simulation model, and demonstrated various operational procedures, such as ground processing of in-flight maneuvers and emergency abort scenarios."

Date: February 12, 1997

How easy is it to land a 1950s era fighter interceptor jet? Apparently so easy it will land itself! Under very, very odd circumstances that I would not suggest recreating.

So today the F-35 is supposed to be a sort of all-in-one jet plane that can handle any task the various branches need. I'll leave others to comment on how that actually works out, but the 1950s and 60s were a completely different animal. The US instead created the "Century Series" of jets, with each one highly specialized.

They included the F-100 through F-106 (and a few prototypes that got cancelled). Because of their specialized nature, you got some really funny-shaped planes, like the pencil-shaped F-104 Starfighter, described by Americans as "Zipper" for its speed, and by Germans as "Fliegender Sarg" or "Flying Coffin" for.. other reasons related to handling.

The F-106 Delta Dart was the final entry in the Century Series, meant as an ultra-fast interceptor to catch incoming planes. So fast, in fact, that it was used to set the world airspeed record twice in 1959. Even if it was beaten almost immediately in 1961. That era of the Cold War saw a bit of a race between the USSR and US in setting airspeed records.

The Delta Dart didn't carry any weapons except air-to-air missiles, because anything else would be too slow. What it could carry was something that would be absolutely hilarious if it was only a concept, but rather terrifying to know that someone actually made it: The AIR-2 Genie. That would be a 1.5 kiloton unguided nuclear rocket. The words "unguided" and "nuclear" shouldn't even be in the same zip code in my opinion.

Anyways, the Delta Dart goes fast. It doesn't turn well, it doesn't make fancy dogfighting maneuvers. That's why, in 1970, when one entered a flat spin during a training exercise, its pilot didn't really have many options for recovery.

The pilot, Gary Foust, even fired off the jet's drag chute to see if that'd fix it, but it's not a stable enough plane to get out of a flat spin!

Foust hit the eject switch.

And then watched as his dangerously-spinning jet... fixed itself and carried on flying level.

Somehow, the combined effects of firing the ejection seat and the change of center of mass from being now-pilotless fixed the spin. The plane was once again casually flying along at 15,000 feet. Another pilot supposedly radioed Faust to say "You'd better get back in it!"

Foust drifted into the mountains of Montana and was rescued by locals on snowmobiles. As for his plane, it just kept on going. It eventually belly-landed in a cornfield somewhere so remote I don't have a major city to describe it relative to.

Yeah, it landed. The plane was fine! In fact, the engine was still running. Local police arrived to the 'crash site' to find it slowly making a wide right turn across the field from the engine's idle thrust. When they called the Air Force Base, the suggestion was to just leave it alone until it runs out of fuel. This took another hour and forty-five minutes.

Eventually a recovery crew came by to get it. They took off the wings and put it on a railroad car for the trip back home.

So that thing would be wrecked, right? What kind of plane can crash into the ground and be okay?

Nah, they fixed the scrapes on the underside of the plane and put it back in service. It was flown for sixteen more years until it finally retired, and that was only because the F-106 was phased out in general.

While most F-106s ended their run as target practice drones, this one got special treatment. You can now go see it displayed as the Cornfield Bomber in the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, Convair F-106 Delta Dart and McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle flying in formation over Washington state.