Above all, the nose gear proved very difficult to master. VF-41’s time on the carrier - which included “Jake” West’s historic landing - was a little more successful than VF-66’s experience, ending with 14 of the squadron’s 22 pilots qualified, but with many other mishaps experienced too.
Air Force’s P-80 Shooting Star jet fighter at low-level and could out climb it up to 18,000 feet. High-speed maneuverability and turning radius were judged excellent, and the FR-1 was more agile than the U.S. That month, the squadron stood down and all of its personnel and aircraft transferred to VF-41.Īt this point, the Fireball program was demoted to test status, which revealed that this stopgap fighter was, in many respects, highly impressive. When the war in the Pacific came to an end on August 15, 1945, VF-66 had begun working up, but none of its aircraft had made it to a war zone - an initial operational deployment had been planned for October 1945. However, two were damaged on landing (one had a nose wheel collapse, the other hit the crash barrier), bringing the tests to an early end. While a succession of operational units did operate the Fireball, their combat-ready status was strictly limited and they were primarily engaged in qualifying pilots on carriers and further developing procedures for operating first-generation jets.įireballs from VF-66 began carrier suitability trials in May 1945, when three examples landed aboard the USS Ranger (CV 4). You could slap that stick into the corner of the cockpit and the Ryan would snap right now.” Schmall added: “It could outturn an F6F by far, and it had extremely beautiful visibility compared to other Navy aircraft.” It was smaller and faster than an F6F, and it would maneuver just as quick as a wink. The commanding officer of VF-66, Lieutenant Junior Grade (LTJG) “Willie” Schmall’s experiences of flying the FR-1 are presented in Steve Ginter’s book Ryan FR-1 Fireball and XF2R-1 Darkshark, in which Schmall recalls the Fireball as “a fantastic little airplane. The W.2B was an outgrowth of the Frank Whittle-designed W.1, the first British jet engine to ever power a flying aircraft - the experimental Gloster E.28/39 that made its maiden flight in May 1941. Its origins lay in the General Electric I-A, the first working jet engine in the United States, and which had been developed in turn from the Power Jets W.2B, plans for which had been provided by the United Kingdom. The primitive J31 - which was known in-house by General Electric as the I-16 - was the first turbojet engine to see quantity production in the United States.
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Full mixed-power flying commenced the following month. A first flight was achieved by the initial XFR-1 on June 25, 1944, but without the jet engine installed at that stage. In February 1943, Ryan received a contract for three prototype single-seat XFR-1 aircraft and by the end of the same year, orders had been placed for 100 FR-1 production aircraft, too. It was the first time the San Diego, California-based company had built a combat aircraft for the Navy. With the above-mentioned drawbacks of these early turbines in mind, in late 1942 the Navy settled upon a mixed-power carrier-capable fighter before accepting the proposal from Ryan Aeronautical. Navy began to identify the potential of the emerging turbojet technology. Development of the aircraft began early on in World War II when the U.S. Much of the rest of the history of the FR-1 Fireball has faded into obscurity, as well. Whatever the truth, West’s landing was a significant achievement, reflecting the naval aviator’s cool-headed decision-making and flying skills. However, other sources explicitly state that West feathered his prop, which would have left no option but to rely on the jet to get back to the carrier. Willis points to the 30-second starting procedure for the J31 as being insufficient for the aircraft to remain airborne after the piston engine had cut out. He points to claims in a book about the Vampire that again reference Norman Polmar, of “residual power in the piston engine.” The same book argues that the Fireball would have struggled to recover “with a dead engine, windmilling propeller, undercarriage, and flaps down” on jet power alone. In his excellent blog, naval aviation historian Matt Willis is also skeptical about whether West recovered aboard the carrier using only turbine power. Other accounts of West's landing, including this one by naval historian Norman Polmar, suggest that the Wright Cyclone was still producing at least some power during the landing, although that wouldn’t be possible with the prop feathered.