Tough Jets

Jet fighters, the slim, fast whippets of the sky, look delicate. Actually, they are tougher, said the Air Force last week, than comparable propeller-driven aircraft. They can absorb an astonishing amount of battle damage and bring their pilots home alive. In Korea, up to mid-November, the Air Force's busiest jets (Lockheed F80 Shooting Stars) flew 57% of the fighter missions and suffered only 25% of the losses due to enemy antiaircraft fire. The Navy made a similar report on its Grumman F9F Panther.

One reason for the jet's high survival value is its structural strength. It must be built strong to resist the stresses of its high speed; the same strength holds it together when it is hit by enemy flak.

Another and more important reason is the smaller, simpler engine. The turbojet has no propeller--a very vulnerable item. It has no delicate ignition system which a few flying chunks of steel can knock out of commission. It has fewer oil lines; it can get along, in fact, with very little lubrication. It needs no cooling system, except the air passing through it. The engine of the propeller-driven F51 has a tender pressurized cooling system with radiators and more than 20 feet of lines, and if any of these is punctured, the engine "freezes" quickly from overheating.

F-80s have come back from their missions looking like flying junk shops (see cut). One of them flew into a trap of cables strung between two peaks. The cables tore off both wing tip tanks and cut into the spar in the leading edge of the wing. They sheared off the left wing tip and 20 inches of the aileron. But the pilot climbed to 30,000 feet and got home, landing at 170 m.p.h. and taxiing up to the line under his own power. "It takes almost a direct hit by heavy antiaircraft," said one pilot, "to bring down an F-80."

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