The F-8 Crusader Once Scared a Vietnamese MiG Pilot Into Ejecting Before a Dogfight

The Tactical Air Network

Every fighter pilot out there just wants to fly an aircraft so badass that nobody dares tangle with it (or them by extension). But there’s a secret part of them that hungers for the fight that their jet was built for. Naval aviators privileged with flying the F-8 Crusader were given a fairly badass jet, albeit one with an astonishingly high mishap rate. By the end of its production, 1261 F-8s were churned off the line, and all but 155 of them were involved in some mishap or another, varying in severity. To be fair, the F-8 entered service at a time when the Navy (and Marine Corps) was still learning its way around having jets as primary air/strike fighters in place of piston-powered propeller planes. Civilian defense contractors were still in their infant stages with jet production and design, so it wouldn’t be out of place to expect that…

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