cursed Cutlass: The USN's Ensign eliminator, The

Flight Journal, Oct 2003 by Tegler, Jan

BY THE TIME THE F7U CUTLASS ENTERED THE U.S. fleet in 1954, it already had a reputation. Word on the Cutlass was out: it was underpowered, hard to maintain, had nasty spin characteristics and a tendency to kill or cripple its pilots. It could ruin your day-or your career.

VF-81, 83, 122 and 124 were the first units to put the F7U into service and to enter the brave new worlds of afterburners, hydraulic flight control and swept wings. Innovations aside, the bird's "rep" didn't improve. Accidents were frequent, flight time was limited, and nicknames were plentiful though often unrepeatable. Those that could be said in public stuck: the F7U was the "Ensign eliminator" and, most popularly, the "Gutlass."

Fewer than 300 F7Us were built, and at least 17 of those were never operational. Most had been retired by the end of 1957, though a few hung on until 1959. Given the relatively few aircraft produced and their brief tenure in service, it's clear that few pilots had a chance to fly the Cutlass. Nevertheless, Naval aviators far and wide, even those who had nothing to do with the F7U, rolled their eyes at its mere mention. Was its reputation deserved? We get the straight dope from a distinguished naval aviator who flew the F7U in development. Rear Adm. Edward L. "Whitey" Feightner relates his experiences in the Cutlass.

F7U-1 AND F7U-3 IN TEST AND DEVELOPMENT: THE INTRODUCTION

"I first saw the airplane shortly after it arrived at Pax River in 1949. They took it up for a photo flight to get some air-to-air pictures of it. They had a midair and both the Cutlass and the photo plane crashed!"

At the time, Lt. Whitey Feightner was a brand-new graduate of class 2 at the Navy's new Test Pilot School (TPS) at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. Already a seasoned Naval aviator, Whitey was one of the best "sticks" around. A nine-victory ace in WW II flying F4F Wildcats and F6F Hellcats, he had accumulated hours in most of the Navy's propeller-driven tactical aircraft and the Air Force's F-80 before being assigned to the TPS. Even so, the Cutlass immediately got his attention, especially when he learned that he was next in line to fly it.

"The company [Chance Vought] pilots had been flying it up to this point, and a few senior Navy pilots had made brief hops in it. The pilot who flew it just before I took it on was D.C. 'Whisk' Caldwell. The F7U-1 had one of the first hydraulic flight-control systems. To build feel into it, they had built a heart-shaped cam with a roller on it on the bottom of the control stick. Caldwell took off in the plane one day, and the throw on the stick somehow sent the roller over the edge of one of the lobes on the heart-shaped cam. Caldwell was immediately faced with a partial control reversal. When he pulled back on the stick, the airplane went down, and when he pushed forward on it, the airplane climbed. Lateral control was normal. So, he flew around for a few minutes while the base crash crew scrambled and debated whether he should eject or not. He thought, 'I think I'll take a little time and see if I can fly this. I think I can land the airplane.' Sure enough, he landed successfully and rolled in. He got out of the airplane, walked straight into the hangar, sat down at his desk without even taking off his helmet and wrote his resignation from the Navy and quit right there! That's when I inherited the project!"

FLYING QUALITIES-A MIXED BAG

Despite the air of danger that surrounded the Cutlass and its rapidly increasing notoriety, Lt. Whitey Feightner found that the F7U-1 wasn't all bad, but it wasn't all good either. Whitey had plenty of opportunity to assess it; he even flew it with the Blue Angels.

"I was amazed from the beginning at how the Cutlass flew. It had a phenomenal rate of roll. The sensitivity of the 'ailevators' was terrific. At the same time, it was immensely stable. Later, we discovered its post-stall-gyration tendency, which wasn't too nice; but I did a couple stalls with it on the first flight, and it was the most docile airplane I'd ever flown. You could stall it, and it would just sit there and drop off into a gentle 'falling leaf.' It didn't even spin off.

"You really didn't use the rudders much; you mostly flew with the stick. I did five turn rolls, and they averaged out to 527 degrees per second! When I checked out other people in the airplane, I had a standing bet: I'd pay $25 if they could throw in full ailevator and stop the airplane upright. I never lost any money. By the time you yanked full ailevator, you had done a 360. In the Blue Angels-much to the consternation of our engineers-I'd often do a maneuver with three rolls to the left, and the rate of roll was so high that when I tried to stop it, my eyeballs were uncaged. The horizon would continue to rotate about 60 or 80 degrees even after I tried to stop rolling. Somewhere along the line, I discovered that if I did three immediate rolls to the right, the horizon leveled out, and I could stop the airplane upright. After that, I did it all the time-three to the left followed immediately by three to the right. People used to say, 'You're gonna tear the wings off!' But that thing was like steel; you couldn't tear them off.