North American F-100 Super Sabre

Dick Rutan knew what he was getting into.

He was a Vietnam combat pilot who had flown more than 300 combat missions in the F-100 Super Sabre.

He had been shot up, shot at, and had pulled energy maneuvers that would make your stomach turn.

He had the stick time and the temperament.

So the Air Force tried something new, forward air controllers in jets to pick out targets for strike aircraft.

They put two pilots in the F-100F Super Sabre, a two-seat fighter that the crews called the Hun, short for 100, and sent them low over North Vietnam for four hours at a stretch, hunting for trucks, fuel dumps, and gun pits.

The program was secret, and every pilot in it was a volunteer.

Their first commander, Major George Bud Day, liked a Johnny Mathis song called Misty, so the call sign became Misty.

Two HH-3 Jolly Green rescue helicopters came in, one for each man, and plucked them out of the water.

Gruters was hurt badly enough to be sent to a Navy hospital, but within weeks, he was flying Misty missions again.

Six weeks after that shoot down on the 20th of December 1967, Gruters was back in the rear seat of an F-100F, call sign Misty 3, this time behind Major Grob Craner.

About 25 miles west of Dong Hoi in the mountains, a 57-millimeter gun found them.

Dick Rutan was exactly the kind of pilot you want for this mission.

He had flown 125 combat missions over North Vietnam in the F-100 Super Sabre.

He had been shot up, shot at, come home, and gone back again.

After the war, he had spent years as a test pilot, developing the instincts and the patience that a nine-day marginal fuel flight demands.

They're supposed to bolt those on.

There were three center wing failures in the F-100, two of them in Vietnam, and the guys didn't survive.

This one was a guy named Tony McPeak flying a solo on the, on the Thunderbirds.

Merileah McPeak, later Chief of Staff.

... we went and flew them.

We were like, "Holy shit, what have we done?"

Well, if you guys have ev- ever seen the old famous old Sabre dance, the F-100?

Yes, sir.

So he was absolutely delighted.

And this is because he was number one in his flight to get an assignment on the F-100.

the hung so in the book i sort of identified three life-changing experiences that formed chuck horner into the commander and the first was a near-death experience that we talked about bill before the show this near-death experience made him deeply religious and that affected him throughout his career The F-100 demanded confidence, judgment, and respect for the machine.

And he said that the F-100 was his first love, but it could kill you in an instant.

And in 1962, at the age of 26, while flying in an exercise over the Libyan desert outside Tripoli, the F-100 nearly killed him.

He was pulling the stick too hard to avoid an air-to-air collision.

His aircraft stalled, which sometimes happened with the F-100.

And the aircraft stopped flying, and he suddenly found himself strapped to a 30,000-pound brick, falling toward the desert, approaching certain death.

I'm your host, David Moore, and today I'll be talking with Tim Hafner.

Tim has flown the F-16, both the A model and the C model, as well as flying for the airlines in the 727, the F-100, the 757, and 767.

He has more than 8,000 flying hours.

Tim, welcome to the podcast.

I assume that's when they did the later modification to the intake to let more air get into the engine.

Was that behind that?

Yeah, they started initially, it was a Pratt and Whitney engine, the F-100.

And then when they get into the C model, they brought General Electric in and they put their motor in and it just worked better with a bigger intake.

Also at AFA, the Air Force is interested in buying new F-16 Fighting Falcon jets from Lockheed to fill out the service's aging force structure.

And startup hypersonic aircraft maker Hermias announced a deal with Pratt & Whitney to build the jetmaker's F-100 engines under license.

This as the Navy awarded Boeing a $560 million contract to put the company's MQ-25 Stingray unmanned refueling jet into low-rate initial production with plans to enter service in 2029.

And 22 days after signing a contract with General Motors for Pac-3 missile parts, Lockheed Martin said the carmakers started delivering, a test of the agreement between the world's leading defense company and America's top carmakers' defense arm.

Boeing has Ghostbat as well as developing MQ-25, so, you know, puts Boeing in pole position.

And then with the MQ-25 Stingray, obviously.

And then on top of that, you have what was a fascinating announcement between our friends Hermes and Pratt & Whitney to build F-100 engines, right? Which that kind of came out of nowhere.

Anyway, walk us through the headlines from AFA and what you make of them, because there were like a million other headlines as well you could pick from.

Dick Rutan was not a test pilot who stumbled into this project.

He was a Vietnam-era fighter pilot who had flown more than 300 combat missions in the F-100 Super Sabre.

He had been shot down.

He had taken hits that should have ended his career and his life and came back anyway.