Crusader Queen

by totallynotabrony

Author Notes

Author's Note:

Many of the people and places in this story are real, though I think we can assume the events were fiction. TOPGUN, of course, is real. Most especially, the Vought F-8 Crusader is real.

I hold a special place in my heart for the Crusader, for some reason. Maybe just because it seems like a lot of people haven't heard of it.

The F-8 was one of the world's highest performance fighters when it was designed in the 1950's. In fact, it held Navy speed records for several years until the F-4 came along. However, the F-8 retained dogfighting dominance with better maneuverability and aircrew who were actually trained for close combat.

This was proven out in the Vietnam War. F-8's were the first American fighters to tangle with the North Vietnamese. They also had the highest kill ratio of any American fighter in the war - 19:3. Supposedly the F-8 had such a reputation that late in the war one enemy pilot actually ejected rather than even trying face it.

Despite its performance, it was kind of a weird looking thing. The variable wings and side-mounted missiles can be seen in this picture.

Still, the dogfighting experience of F-8 pilots was vital to creation of TOPGUN after the Ault Report.

And speaking of patches, Crusader pilots had one of their own:

Comments

[Stellar_]

o7

[Uncle Mike]

Love it!

"It takes a fighter with a gun to kill a MiG-21!"

[Olden Bronie]

Thata girl, Rainbow!

Very nicely done, sir! I enjoyed this story so much, I read it twice. Loved the fighter jock descriptions, too. The ' no shi, I was there and I saw it' is one of my favorites, and is, oddly, a good indication of a true story.

[Uncle Mike]

Okay, now I've found something in the Silly Ideas bin. Happens I was just re-reading Coram's biography of John Boyd with Hammond's retrospective of Boyd's work a while ago. Rainbow meets Tomcat Connolly and bursts a bubble or two.

NAS Patuxent River, circa 1971

"Admiral, you got us out from under the Air Farce's F-111, and that's great, but you borrowed the engines and the swing-wing from that turkey, so you could get the lift and the thrust to get off a deck after wrapping the airplane around that big ol' AWG-9 radar for the fleet defense interceptor part of it. It's gonna bleed out speed like a grape and maneuver like a wagonload of horseapples when you get it into gunfighting range. She flared her wings for emphasis. "All the wingpower I've got wouldn't mean horseapples if I weren't small enough and light enough to use it. And, I'm sorry as hay, but this airplane won't do it. First one you send to Miramar, I'm gonna end up hoofwriting my name on the tail, because it won't be able to dodge me...."

And, she did...

[totallynotabrony]

8415503
"Well, at least this one has a gun."

[Scarheart]

I loved how you combined naval (aerial) history with a cartoon character. The two have been hand in hand since the first ship took to the sea to the modern day, where squadrons have adopted their own symbols, some of which have remained the same since WWII.

[totallynotabrony]

8416025
Whoa, that's unexpected, I submitted it almost a day ago.

[DuskHeart13]

Neat concept. The joke at the end definitely made me smile too. Well played indeed Rainbow, well played indeed.

[Russian Bank Teller]

no. The problem for US pilots in Vietnam was that Vietnam had the best air defenses in the world, MiG-17s didn't have missiles and the US forces ONLY used missiles which didn't work half the time, and US forces were prohibited from going into North Vietnam.

the F-8 also had gun problems and its guns constantly jammed

[alfonso_rd_33]

can we have more please?