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Massive crash landing of a Vought F7U Cutlass on the USS Hancock. First three good landings are shown. Then a Cutlass misses all of the wires and runs into the barricade, breaking its landing gear in the process. After that another Cutlass snaps its right wheel off while landing. Finally, on 14 July 1955, the sixth Cutlass, aircraft 412, veers off the left side of the deck and explodes into flames. The pilot, Lieutenant Commander Jay T. Alkire, was killed in the crash; several deck crew were injured. Two views are shown of each of the mishap landings.
Public domain film from the US Navy, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
The Vought F7U Cutlass was a United States Navy carrier-based jet fighter and fighter-bomber of the early Cold War era. It was a highly unusual, semi-tailless design, allegedly based on aerodynamic data and plans captured from the German Arado company at the end of World War II, though Vought designers denied any link to the German research at the time. The F7U was the last aircraft designed by Rex Beisel, who was responsible for the first fighter ever designed specifically for the U.S. Navy, the Curtiss TS-1 of 1922.
Regarded as a radical departure from traditional aircraft design, the Cutlass suffered from numerous technical and handling problems throughout its short service career. The type was responsible for the deaths of four test pilots and 21 other U.S. Navy pilots. Over one quarter of all Cutlasses built were destroyed in accidents. The poor safety record was largely the result of the advanced design built to apply new aerodynamic theories and insufficiently powerful, unreliable engines…
Three prototypes were ordered in 1946, with the first example flying on 29 September 1948, piloted by Vought’s Chief Test Pilot, J. Robert Baker. The maiden flight took place from Naval Air Station Patuxent River and was not without its problems. During testing one of the prototypes reached a maximum speed of 625 mph (1,058 km/h)[7]
Production orders were placed for the F7U-1 in a specification very close to the prototypes, and further developed F7U-2 and F7U-3 versions with more powerful engines. Because of development problems with the powerplant, however, the F7U-2 would never be built, while the F7U-3 would incorporate many refinements suggested by tests of the -1. The first 16 F7U-3s had non-afterburning Allison J35-29 engines. The -3, with its Westinghouse J46-WE-8B turbojets, would eventually become the definitive production version, with 288 aircraft equipping 13 U.S. Navy squadrons. Further development stopped once the Vought F8U Crusader flew.
The F7U’s performance suffered due to a lack of sufficient engine thrust; consequently, its carrier landing and takeoff performance was notoriously poor. The J35 was known to flame out in rain, a very serious fault…
USS Hancock (CV/CVA-19) was one of 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II for the United States Navy. The ship was the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name, and was named for John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress and first governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Hancock was commissioned in April 1944, and served in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, earning four battle stars. Decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s as an attack carrier (CVA). In her second career she operated exclusively in the Pacific, playing a prominent role in the Vietnam War, for which she earned a Navy Unit Commendation. She was the first US Navy carrier to have steam catapults installed.
She was decommissioned in early 1976, and sold for scrap later that year…
