It’s Fast and It Hovers: The Next X-Plane What Vought XF8U-1 Dear Aliens... Doomed Love, NASA the F-8? Secrets of the Wright Brothers Eyewitness SR-71 Crash www.airspacemag.com NOVEMBER 2015 Contents OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015 | VOL. 30, NO. 5 » Meet the Howards Mr. Mulligan’s extended family became postwar America’s favorite At the Howard Aircraft Foundation flying pleasurecraft. fly-in, members putter around Benny BY MARK HUBER | PHOTOS BY JIM KOEPNICK Howard’s high-wing beauties. AIRSPACEMAG.COM JIM KOEPNICK Features » The Next X-Plane Tilt rotor, lift fan, tail sitter: What’s the best technology for both vertical lift and high speed? BY RICHARD WHITTLE » Airplanes Seeking Good Home Some lucky community could get a new tourist attraction—and a lesson in early If the Lockheed aviation. » Towers Martin F-35B BY PAUL GLENSHAW PHOTOS BY CAROLYN RUSSO Joint Strike Fighter is any guide, the PHOTOS BY DANE PENLAND Air traffic controllers companies competing for DARPA’s vertical- work in the world’s most takeoff-and-landing distinctive buildings. A X-plane have their » A Truly World-Wide Web work cut out for them. Access brought to you by drones, sats, photographic tribute. and balloons. BY MARK ANDERSON » Space Nerds Sometimes a soldier’s best » “Hi! I’m from Earth!” friend is an IT guy with a Spacecraft are trying to connect to others satellite dish. in the cosmos. BY ED DARACK BY DAMOND BENNINGFIELD » Gunfighter The Vought F-8 Crusader’s When U.S. troops are deployed motto: Have gun, will dogfight. where there’s no cell service, the 117th Space Battalion “Space Nerds” BY EILEEN BJORKMAN set up communications. AIRSPACEMAG.COM LEFT: TECH SGT. WOLFRAM M. STUMPF/USANG; RIGHT: LOCKHEED MARTIN/ANDY WOLFE Departments » Viewport Game time and classic fighter » Letters » What’s Up Down under » Soundings Crash test, space law One of a » Bill Sweetman collection of Technically Speaking bashed cockpit voice recorders, Water skiers » Sightings recovered from Black boxes airliner crash sites. » Solar System Chatter Milky Way central » Reviews & Previews Space art » Above & Beyond Blackbird down » Contributors » Oldies & Oddities Forecast Paper chase » » One More Thing » In the Museum Interact! Happy 70th, Pitts Special In a composite image made by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, Comet ISON is ON THE COVER: On the 60th anniversary of the Crusader’s first flight, stopped (several times) in its swing around the sun. the Museum of Flight in Seattle rolled out its XF8U-1 after a decades-long restoration. Last September, Museum photographer Ted Huetter snapped its portrait. AIRSPACEMAG.COM LEFT: NASA LANGLEY/DAVID C. BOWMAN; RIGHT: JEFFREY MILSTEIN Viewport FROM THE DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM Flying Lessons FOR THE NEXT THREE MONTHS, the National Air and Space Museum is hosting an exhibit unlike any that has appeared in the Museum before. Developed by Boeing and Evergreen Exhibitions, Above and Beyond fea- tures 20 interactive or dynamic dis- plays that engage visitors in the many fields of aerospace, from designing aircraft to traveling to Mars (see In the Museum). This is a gallery where there are not just things to see—although there are artifacts and many videos—but things are undertaking with a $30 million gift from to do. When you plan your visit, you’ll want to Boeing—our curators and exhibit designers are budget at least a couple of hours in order to take using Above and Beyond as a test lab to learn in all that is offered here. about the kinds of activities that are most effec- Besides its interactivity, Above and Beyond tive in holding visitors’ interest. is unusual in another way. At the same time it Even as we update and transform our exhibit teaches our visitors about aerospace, we hope space, one hallmark of the National Air and Space it will teach us about our visitors. As we begin Museum that will not change is the protection and to renovate our other galleries—work we display of authentic artifacts that played a signifi- AIRSPACEMAG.COM cant role in aerospace history. One of those arti- five minutes. Then you started down, accelerat- facts, the subject of this issue’s cover story, is the ing, and when you got to 37,000 feet, you eased Vought F-8 Crusader, the first U.S. fighter to fly it back up to about 40,000 feet again. When you faster than 1,000 mph. came back down the next time, you had to make In 1966, I checked out in the F-8. There was no it, because by then you’d run out of burner time simulator, and there were no two-seaters. To get and probably out of airspace. the feel of the airplane, on your first hop, you In this issue’s feature, you’ll see the patch the lined up on the runway, went into afterburner, F-8 pilots made: “When you’re out of F-8s, you’re and at 60 knots you came out of burner and out of fighters.” A-4 Skyhawk pilots developed tried to stop before the end of the runway. a different patch. It said, “When you’re out of Every F-8 pilot wanted to earn a thousand- F-8s, it’s no big deal.” I’m glad I don’t have to mile-an-hour pin, but although the F-8 was an moderate that debate, but I’m also glad we have easy airplane to fly, it wasn’t easy to get it to 1,000 an F-8 Crusader in the National Air and Space mph. In the F-4, you can get your Mach 2 pin just Museum. You can learn a lot about fighter air- by adding power and sitting there. In the F-8, craft by studying that one. you had to really work, particularly in the older ones. You climbed to about 43,000 feet, then went n n n J.R. DAILEY IS THE JOHN AND ADRIENNE MARS into afterburner, which you could use for only DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM. WASHINGTON, DC CHANTILLY, VA AIRSPACEMAG.COM BACK TO CONTENTS Letters WRITE TO US Look for Another Lunar Loss FOLLOW US Scientists should forget about tasking the Lunar Twitter twitter.com/ airspacemag Reconnaissance Orbiter to find Luna 9 (“ISO First Moon Lander,” Soundings, Sept. 2015); instead, Facebook facebook.com/AirSpaceMag have it try to solve the mystery of Surveyor 4. On July 17, 1967, at about two and a half min- Pinterest pinterest.com/airspacemag/ utes before touchdown, all contact with the Surveyor was lost. Some believe the retro-rocket WRITE TO US at Letters, Air & Space/ exploded, blowing Surveyor to pieces. But it’s Smithsonian, MRC 513, P.O. Box 37012, possible something happened to the radio and Washington, DC 20013. Please type or print clearly. You must include your full address and Surveyor has been sitting on the moon’s sur- daytime phone number. face ever since. Pointing the LRO at Surveyor 4’s e-mail: [email protected]. All e-mails must Central Bay landing site would help solve the include your full name, mailing address, and mystery of its loss. daytime phone number. THOMAS J. FRIELING Tallahassee, Florida ace in the Vietnam War, Richard “Steve” Ritchie. Aces Missing There was another: Randy “Duke” Cunningham. Am I admitting some annoyance that the From “The Last American Aces” (Aug. 2015), the only Vietnam pilot mentioned was Air Force? uninitiated might think there was only one pilot Regrettably, yes. As a naval aviator of that era, I AIRSPACEMAG.COM want people to know that the Navy held its own ment) on its wing. Afterward, the CH-46’s log- in Vietnam. books were presented to General Jack “Zorro” C.W. “TODD” SCHRACK Dailey, director of the National Air and Space Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Museum, which will display 153369 at the Udvar- Hazy Center. Editors’ reply: Our photo-essay could include only Upon my return home, I checked my log- those who attended the 2015 American Fighter Aces books and found that, after 26 years of flying convention, which is mentioned in the introduction, or CH-46s, I made my last flight as a Marine Corps who were able to be within driving distance so that the pilot on May 8, 1990, in that exact aircraft. photographer could reach them. COL. JERALD GARTMAN, USMC (RET.) Morehead City, North Carolina We Meet Again, Old Phriend Corrections The Phrog went out in style (Viewport, Aug. 2015). At the farewell fly-in on August 1 at the Steven F. Sept. 2015 “Huey Pilots: Where the Heroes Were Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia, BuNu no. 153369 Made”: The Marines’ name for the UH-34 is Sea made a low pass, an Osprey (the Phrog’s replace- Horse, not Choctaw. Aug. 2015 “Brought to You by Drones”: On July 17, Flirtey delivered medications via WRITE TO US at Letters, Air & Space/Smithsonian, MRC 513, P.O. Box drone to a clinic in western Virginia, not West 37012, Washington, DC 20013. Please type or print clearly. You must include your full address and daytime phone number. Virginia. email: [email protected]. All emails must include your full name, mailing address, June/July 2015 “War Within a War,” p. 34, cap- and daytime phone number. tion: The first bombing missions in Korea were Air & Space is not responsible for the return of unsolicited materials. Never send unsolicited original photographs to the Letters department; send only flown a few days, not three weeks, after the war copies. began. The error was introduced during copy All letters selected for publication are edited.