The Manta Ray of the Sky (Douglas F4D Skyray)
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- Опубликовано: 15 дек 2024
- This is my first video and I am just starting to learn how to use video editing software. It might be a bit...weird, but I promise I will get better with time.
This is the Douglas F4D Skyray, a unique US naval plane from the 1950s. Join me while I describe this plane's fascinating history.
[Quick note. It has come to my attention that I accidentally said 40,000lbs of stores instead of 4,000lbs. I have gone ahead and changed it in the subtitles. It is 4,000 NOT 40,000.]
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If you are interested in learning more about the Skyray I highly recommend reading these two sources I found on the topic! (I can't link anything quite yet but once I can I'll make sure that there are links next time)
Beautiful Climber by Carl A. Posey (Smithsonian Magazine)
"Douglas F-4D Skyray" at arcive.org
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Music and Sound
(All rights to their respective owners. Use of works protected under fair use and the rules/guidelines of their owners with added restrictions.)
Smartphone vibrating alarm silent by EricsSoundschmiede (pixabay.com)
Straight by Benjamin Tissot (Bensound.com)
Georges Bizet: Habanera by Kevin Macleod (freemusicarchive.org)
Inspirational Emotional Cinematic Trailer by OYStudio (pixabay.com)
When I was a boy, I’d spend lots of time with my nose in military aircraft books and this aircraft was one of my very favorites, loved its lines. To me, it had that killer look.
Somehow an F4D remained stashed in a corner near the air strip at Quantico for decades. For many years it sat next to Larsen Gym.
The Skyray was restored to flying condition and is now at the Marine Corps Museum.
Wasn't it also stashed at the south end of the base just past the OCS barracks? I swear I remember seeing there in 92'
@@chrisblack5583 It may have been. I lived aboard base from 1959 to 1974, and was there numerous times in the 80s, but less so as time went by.
The first place I saw it stored was over near the original museum. Then it was kind of behind Larsen and for years it was at the 10 o'clock of someone walking out the door at Larsen.
The other aircraft at the original museum not only looked brand new, they were also able to fly.
When I saw the F4D by Larsen, it didn't look like anything was being done to restore it.
There was also an F-3 Demon next to that F4D; both in the white/light gray color scheme.
Trivia here, The F4D was part of a commercial for Aero Wax (a household product) back in the early 60's. They were saying that Aero Wax was a tough like spaceage plastics that would bounce bullets. The airplane was in the studio if I remember correctly, and they shot a Thompson machinegun at the canopy and the bullets bounced off. Probably wax as they did leave a mark.
Awesome. Thanks for sharing.
K now I have to find this, that sounds way to interesting to pass up. Thanks for sharing!
I just found the ad, but I was mistaken. It was a F-102.
I remember watching that ad as a kid😎; and yes the plane was actually an F-102.
Good one I remember the commercial NOW !...... thx.
I had the pleasure of doing a commissioned painting of this airplane for a pilot who flew it, and later a Phantom in Vietnam. He flew his Skyray during the Cuban Missile Crisis ( which, if you spend a minute thinking about what almost happened, was THE most important event in human history) and he told me lots of great stories about it. His only complaint about his favorite airplane was that it got increasingly cramped in the cockpit when more electronics was added.
The F4D Skyray has always been one of my alltime favorite jet aircraft.
It would have been interesting to see how the Skyray would have done in combat over Vietnam.
Over my 65 years, I have built many plastic scale models of it.
Against the 17 I think it would have fared well, 21 not so good. It could climb like a rocket.
I feel like the skyway would have done ok. Not great but ok. It had guns and could fire A2A missiles. Sadly the biggest failure would be its less then great wing loading.
Thanks for the info...I built a model of the Skyray when I was in the Marines back in 1981 but never took the time to learn about it..It may have been the only Marine aircraft on the stores shelf at the time. My father flew F-8s so the F4D never came up in our conversations. But about 18 years ago a fellow Marine came to visit and he had flown the Skyray so we got a chance to talk about his experiences. Keep up the good work.
If this is your first video the algorithm has been kind to you you have Twenty-One thousand views already in your first two weeks well done
The Crusader was selected by the Navy as a supersonic day fighter long before the Skylancer ever flew. The Crusader was part of a 1952 requirement that saw it face off against Grumman's Design 97 and North American's F2J Super Fury which was based on the F-100 Super Saber. Grumman's design was rejected because the Navy was already going to procure the F9F-9 (which became the F11F Tiger), and Vought's F8U flew nearly half a year before scheduled causing North American to loose interest in competing.
What served to kill the Skyray strangely was the F3H Demon, while an awful aircraft it could stay on CAP slightly longer while being multi-role capable (for the time) along with being armed with both Sparrow and Sidewinder. The Demon could loiter with 4 Sparrows 150nmi from the ship for 45 minutes- longer with two Sparrows exchanged for drop tanks; while the Skyray with drop tanks could only do the same for 42 minutes. Given that when these planes were in use there still were straight deck carriers performance on CAP was judged more important than performance when launching from alert on the deck. There were attempts to arm the Skyway with Sparrow and even a nuclear variants of the Sparrow, but none left the drawing board. The Demon while slightly older than the Skyray was bought in greater numbers and still made a few cruises after the Skyrays were relegated to shore duty.
Founder of Top Gun Dan Pedersen also started his naval aviation career at VF(AW)-3, flying Skyray between 1957-62.
I remember seeing the Sky rays as a kid at El Toro MCFS. Thank you .
Nice piece mate.The Skyray was a beautiful little aircraft,and quite ahead of it's time when designed.
The Skyray was the first ever model kit I built, as far as I can remember. Probably an Airfix kit, I was obsessed with with, I remember bringing the completed kit with me on holidays lol.
My first and only Skyray model was the old 1/72nd scale Hawk/Testers kit I built when I was 13 or 14 years old.
I remember that it didn't have any cockpit or landing gear detail. But it was shaped fairly accurately and went together really well, a quick & easy build. And with a little help from my spare decals, an extra pilot figure from a "fire crackered" model, and a nice paint job, (thanks to a little coaching from Dad) it turned out to be a really nice-looking model, especially when it was mounted on the stand that came with the kit.....
My first one too , Airfix 1/72 scale big box that had a photo of the finished model on a set of technical drawings.
This has to be the best F-4D vid I've seen. Having studied the plane for years . I have about 25 lbs of factory drawings and books. I've built several different sizes of RC models of the skyray. All fly very well and are very stable. Well done sir. Would like to see a vid like this of the F-3H demon, or the Cutlass. You earned a like and subscribe.
This is the first time seeing your channel and after watching this episode, I can see that you really have done your homework and researched the subject well. Can't wait to see your other episodes.
Thank you. Always good to learn.
I remember as a kid building a model of the F4D Skyray. Years later I learned it was barely supersonic. It was similar to the F-102 (which was 100 kts faster) but far short of the F-106.
I started building models back in 2020. Its a ton of fun.
Started with that about 4 1/2 decades ago, ok I'm an old git!
One of the NASA research pilots flying those F5Ds was a guy named Neil Armstrong. His F5D is on display in front of the Evergreen Museum in Ohio.
Great Video !!
I hope to see more
Very nicely done you obviously know a fair bit about this stuff, makes a nice change from all the bods that seem to know little to nothing about the subject. If you continue your likely have me popping up in the comments and hitting the like button. Hope all goes well. Oj
The Ford-- F4D. Sweetness personified.
Excellent first video! Bravo!! I look forward to many more of your aviation videos.
Great job explaining the life of this plane I have an Radio control in this model
Nice video. I 've always liked the Skyray. I built a model of it as a kid. There is a Skyray on display at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum, in Maryland. A great museum!
Very cool bird - I like the the blended wing/tailess design.
What A Incredible Man Heinemann !.
Well made video. Nice pace, narration and appropriate depth of the material. It is very hard to hit the right balance of enough data in the given length of a video. Usually you put too much technical data or too much boring lore into it and lose the audience. This one hit the sweet spot. Also the intro was very refreshing and nice. Kinda reminded me of the way the Simpsons used to start their plot by giving a completely different topic at the start but digging into the main plot casually. Keep it up. Subscribed.
Agree, only one mispronunciation, ED LEFAY, and I would try not to use any background music with vocals. I found myself drawn away from narration and listening to the aria. Outside of that, great first video.
12:00 it averaged 171ish kmh on a 100km course? So like flying near stall speed for 100km or are those numbers wrong?
Lovely looking kite.
Bloody good show chaps!
This shows excellent promise. Keep it going chief.
Thank you so much! I hope you will enjoy my next video.
Fine video on a really intriguing aircraft! For a plane that looks like it should perform great, it's surprising how troubled the development was. I've got a copy of Steve Ginter's Naval Fighters Number 13 "Douglas F4D Skyray", and it goes into detail on the assorted issues in getting the high speed behavior somewhat under control. (this book is the first in the list of references at the end). Of course, this was the era of figuring out transonic aerodynamics and electronic flight controls. Technology moved fast then, and it's no surprise that the F-8, and later the F-4 Phantom, surpassed it.
The follow on design, the F5D Skylancer, fixed many of those bad characteristics. But sadly, it didn't enter squadron service. A couple prototypes were used by NASA for astronaut flight training.
As a kid, I thought it was one of the coolest airplanes there was, and wish it had enjoyed more success--but that would have bumped some other awesome planes!
These planes always remind me of the Saab 35 Draken.
Nice video about a very handsome airplane.
I wonder how it would have fared had it had some type of computer controlling that instability like the F-16 and other modern fighters.
Anyone else see the lineage with the A4 sky hawk here? Shame about the short service life here though. Just think how good it would have been with a decent updated engine!
It would be interesting to know if Douglas and Avro communicated at all, as they used a similar wing on the Skyray and the Avro 707 series and Vulcan.
The F4D-1 was redesigned the F-6A under McNamara's 1962 United States Tri-Service aircraft designation system ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1962_United_States_Tri-Service_aircraft_designation_system ).
Given a modern engine and avionics, it would still be a great aircraft today.
And give it a twin tail.
Strangely it reminds me of the A-6 a little bit?
find an active duty or retired service person, and get to the Naval Air Museum. Profoundly different experience than visiting the Air Force Museum.
My favorite plane in War Thunder. Never even knew about it before that. I love it so much, but for some god forsaken reason Gaijin have given it the HIGHEST repair cost of any aircraft. It's so infuriating. I love it so much and can't even use it.
Grinded it last summer but only trained the crew today because I was curious to see if it’s as bad as many players say. It turned out I’m very surprised by how good it is if handled carefully at high speeds. Definitely my favorite fighter at the moment, easily outclassing majority of its BR aircrafts in performance although the armament is quite limited but enough to rule matches, especially with friends. I know it’s just a game, but before the event I didn’t know its existence and history, but now I appreciate its futuristic design even more.
Great video but you gave the F8U barely a mention. The Crusader was the premier Navy Fighter until the Mid 1970s when AIM-7 Sparrow became a reliable weapon. That was the aircraft that killed the Skyray not the Phantom. The Phantom may have a mythic reputation with the public but it was a mediocre fighter which based on the Vietnam experience was replaced long before its service life ended.
I built a Lindberg Line model of the Skyray back in the sixties and then the F7U Cutlass and F8U Crusader. Not very good kits by today's standards but that's what we had.
the f-104 star fighter was a short range day fighter not an intercepter
It was specifically designed for interception missions with one of the shortest scramble time of all times. BTW, the failed attempt to use it as a fighter, made the US Air Force to loose interest into it, preferring the F4 Phantom II. It had good export success, especially in Germany and Italy.
This video has 24k views yet the channel only has 384 subscribers! I just became 385
all it needed was a good flight computer would have corrected the instabilty
I wonder that aircraft as useless as the F-102 (it was an OK flier but had no good weapons) got used in Vietnam while planes which had what it would have needed to be successful were being sent to the bone yard. I think it was only because they were Navy planes and the Airforce wanted to prove all the F-102 they bought were not a waste of money. The F-102 went on to a proud career as a really good target drone.
The 40,000 lbs of stores is wrong.
Thank you for your comment! I have it in the description and in my CCs as the correct 4,000lbs. I just misspoke.
Oh boy,THIS outclimbed all other aircraft ?? look up the English Electric Lightning,this could accelerate in a climb to exceed mach
It would be better today! Computers made a f-117 fly? This bad ass machine would be no problem. I think it looked very mean and I am sure the Russian did as well. So it's first job of intimidation was job done!! They never took a shot at it and it never had to fire a shot in anger. Job #2 done and done!!! Friends worked on it during Their time on board a Carrier said the engine was a very complex machine took hour's of work just to be 100% ready to go.
👎…trying to be helpful here: Your vid shouldn’t take almost two minutes (yawn) to get to anything aviation related. Also, the audio quality is awful. Both issues easily remedied in future efforts. Best wishes sir.
awful first two minutes-I'm out
Being very stoned and borderline drunk, the first three minutes had me very confused.