Summary and Key Points: The North American F-100 Super Sabre, the first supersonic fighter jet, set the stage for modern air warfare despite its troubled service history.
-Although prone to accidents and spin-related disasters, the lessons learned from its aerodynamic flaws directly inspired the design of legendary fighters like the F-15 and F-22.
F-100 Super Sabre. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
-The Super Sabre served prominently in Vietnam and other conflicts before transitioning into critical roles for weapons testing, electronic warfare, and aerial target practice.
-Its legacy shaped subsequent air-superiority strategies, enhancing fighter jet survivability and electronic combat capabilities—transforming air combat tactics and technology development for generations to come.
F-100 Super Sabre: A History
The F-22 and F-15 can travel at speeds of Mach 2.25, and the F-35 can reach Mach 1.6. But the first supersonic fighter aircraft emerged as far back as the 1950s: the North American F-100 Super Sabre.
The F-100 was produced in a number of variants across its decades of service. It fought in Vietnam, among other key conflicts, before it was phased out of service in the early 1970s for a number of reasons. Above all were safety and control. While the jets were heralded for unprecedented speed, they became known as accident-prone and unable to recover from a spin.
The life and service of the F-100 aircraft is perhaps most significant for its contribution to air-war modernization. The F-100’s career might have been full of mishaps, accidents, and aerodynamic complications, but a new era of air-to-air combat came into existence in its wake.
According to the U.S. Air Force’s official “accident table,” 889 F-100s were destroyed in accidents, resulting in the deaths of as many as 324 pilots. One catastrophe is recounted in the Aviation Geek Club in an article that cites a pilot recalling when his F-100 Super Sabre exploded during its signature “bomb burst.”
F-100 Inspires Future Air War
It is not surprising that the highly maneuverable, high-speed F-15 emerged from the troubled era of the F-100.
The failures and challenges of the Super Sabre made possible a new generation of air-war breakthroughs covering performance aspects such as high-speed maneuvering, dogfighting, and overall air attack.
Lessons learned from F-100 failures inspired the emergence not only of the F-15, but ultimately even the F-22.
The F-15 is famous for its perfect combat record, and both the F-15 and the F-22 are considered by many to be the best air-superiority platforms the world has ever seen.
It would make sense that Air Force’s fourth- and fifth-generation fighters built much of their success and their performance parameters from the rigors, challenges, and failures of the F-100.
Vectoring at supersonic speeds and maintaining stability are not things that can be easily learned and applied, so the road to the F-15 and F-22 was paved with those earlier difficulties encountered by Super Sabre pilots.
It is perhaps only from failures that a new technological level of air-war engineering could come to life, given the complex aerodynamics involved in ensuring flight stability and maneuverability at such high speeds.
Mission history
Despite its many difficulties, the first supersonic fighter performed successfully over the course of several decades in various combat arenas.
Although ultimately succeeded by the far more capable Phantom F-4 fighter jet, the F-100 did serve in the Lebanon Crisis in the late 1950s. It also deployed during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961.
The F-100’s most extended combat experience came during its many flights over South Vietnam, although this experience was also marked by combat losses, accidents, and tragedies.
Overall, 242 F-100s were lost during the Vietnam war.
Interestingly, the F-100’s departure from active service did not end its contribution to the future of air warfare. The planes were used by the Air Force as Full Scale Aerial Targets to test a wide range of anti-aircraft weapons.
F-100 Super Sabre
The F-100s were targets for ground-based anti-aircraft guns, and they also shot at and were destroyed by air-launched weapons in air-to-air warfare testing. Test-firing of this kind may have proven extremely valuable in modernizing air defenses, and preparing aircraft to elude enemy air defenses.
By closely analyzing the targeting systems, radar, and interceptors used to track and shoot the F-100s, Pentagon weapons developers likely learned a great deal about how to engineer aircraft with an increased ability to avoid detection. In this respect, target practice on the F-100s likely helped experts learn about how air defenses themselves can be modernized and made more effective at longer ranges. Certainly a vastly enhanced knowledge of how these systems work can only help aircraft survivability experts improve fighter jets’ attack options.
The F-100s were also significant in the realm of electronic warfare (EW), as some were converted into EW-capable reconnaissance planes. This was likely a critical opportunity to modernize, refine, and improve EW, which has now, decades later, become a critical and growing non-kinetic method of attack.
About the Author: Kris Osborn
Kris Osborn is the Military Affairs Editor of 19 FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a Highly Qualified Expert with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
