Fighter Jet Sunday (Northrop F-5)
Alright, then, before we take off with this, I’d just like to apologise for not having posted anything for the past couple of weeks. Other than that, I’ll now (hope to) start uploading every Sunday a post about a fighter jet, and most of the data will come from Wikipedia or other sites with trustworthy information, so I’ll try to be as accurate as possible. Let’s get this started then.
Very well, in the mid 50′s, Northrop’s Vice President (and one of the chief designers of the successful P-51 Mustang, and F-86 Sabre) Edgar Schmued called for the development of a low-cost, low-maintenance and small sized fighter jet. The first design was meant for the navy’s aging escort carriers (uncapable of supporting current navy fighters) and was named N-156, though the idea for a carrier jet was soon discarded as the navy withdrew its escort carriers from service.
Nevertheless, the design was taken by the Air Force to replace the T-33 trainer aircraft, and with that, was born the YT-38 Talon.
In the early 60′s though, the concept seemed to loose popularity and it appeared as though the whole project was turning into a failure until, in 1962, the Air Force voted the N-156F as the winner of the F-X competition for a low cost export aircraft. Then production began for the first F-5A’s, and soon, Canada and Spain became interested in the design and started producing it themselves.
Then, in the 70′s, Northrop won the International Fighter Aircraft and began development of the improved F-5: the F-5E Tiger II, now perfected in air to air combat, with improved avionics and engines. Several of the new Tiger II’s were now built under license abroad in nations such as Taiwan and Switzerland.
Further development transformed the aircraft into the single engined F-20 Tigershark, made specifically for export purpouses, but it lost in a competition against the F-16. Curiously enough, the Tigger II’s and Tigersharks were much more cost-efficient than the F-16.
The aircraft never saw much action overall, and there’s little (if any) combat record of the F-5 by the USAF. Nowadays it is used by Turkey in bombing raids against terrorist groups and was used by the Royal Saudi Air Force in the Gulf War for Close Air Support (CAS). The only air kills it scored were under Ethiopia (shooting down two Mig 21s) and Iran (engaging several figter jets during the Iran-Iraq war).
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