The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star is an early jet fighter that was designed and built by Lockheed. It was the first jet aircraft to be used operationally by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), flying active missions during the latter months of World War II.Green and Swanborough 2001, p. 345.
The P-80 has its origins in Lockheed's earlier L-133 design study, although the USAAF ultimately passed it over in favour of the competing Bell P-59 Airacomet for it being technologically unfeasible. However, after the P-59's performance proved to be lacking and the discovery of Nazi Germany's Me 262 combat jet in spring 1943, Lockheed was instructed to commence work on what would become the XP-80 in May 1943. Developed to accept the British-made Halford H-1 B "Goblin" turbojet engine, it was worked on by 128 engineers led by Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson in what became known as the Skunk Works. Design work on the airframe started on 26 June 1943, and the first aircraft was delivered to Muroc Army Airfield only 143 days later. On 8 January 1944, the first prototype performed its maiden flight. During early flights of the P-80, multiple pilots lost their lives, including one of America's top aces, Richard Bong. By the end of 1944, 12 pre-production aircraft had been delivered to the USAAF. While two pre-production aircraft saw limited service in Italy just before the end of World War II, they never engaged in direct combat.
Production of the P-80 continued after the conflict, being adopted by both the United States Navy (USN) and the newly-formed United States Air Force (USAF), the latter assigning it the designation F-80. The type was deployed widely during the opening years of the Cold War, forming part of the response to events such as the Berlin Blockade. It saw extensive combat operations during the Korean War, both as a fighter and as a photo-reconnaissance aircraft. At its height, no less than 10 USAF squadrons were operating the F-80C over Korea. However, by the end of the conflict, fighter models of the F-80 had already been withdrawn from the Korean theatre in favour of other platforms. Although the aircraft had been America's first successful turbojet-powered combat aircraft, it was designed with straight wings and thus was quickly outclassed by a new generation of swept wing fighters, such as the Soviet's MiG-15. This led to the F-80 being rapidly replaced in the air superiority role by the transonic-capable North American F-86 Sabre. The final American F-80s were withdrawn in 1959; the Chilean Air Force, the last operator of the type, retired their aircraft during 1974.
Multiple derivatives of the P-80 were produced, such as the Lockheed F-94 Starfire, a twin-seat all-weather interceptor that saw action during the Korean War. Another derivative was the closely related Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star, an early jet trainer that remained in service with both the USAF and USN well into the 1980s, and a handful of examples were still operational into the twenty-first century.
Design and development
Background
Lockheed was the first American aircraft company to start work on a jet-powered aircraft, having worked on the L-133 design study back in 1939. The L-133 was progressively developed into a more advanced design that included numerous futuristic features, such as canard forewings and a blended wing body; however, when Lockheed presented the design to the United States Army Air Force (USAAF), it was rejected as being technologically unfeasible.Norton 2008, Instead, the USAAF opted to concentrate its resources on the development of the much less radical Bell P-59 Airacomet, which made its first flight in October 1942. During flight testing, it became apparent that the P-59's performance was only marginally superior to current piston engined fighters. While Bell performed preliminary work to revise the P-59 with a low wing and a single fuselage-mounted engine, which was given the designation XP-59B; Bell's factory had become swamped with other projects, thus the USAAF opted to transfer the project to Lockheed.
The impetus for development of the P-80 was the discovery by Allied intelligence of the Me 262 in spring 1943, which had made only test flights of its own first quartet (the V1 through V4 airframes) of design prototypes at that time, all fitted with retracting tailwheel landing gear. After receiving documents and blueprints comprising years of British jet aircraft research, the commanding General of the Army Air Force, Henry H. Arnold, believed an airframe developed to accept the British-made Halford H-1 B "Goblin" jet engine could provide the superior performance to match the new German jets, and the Materiel Command's Wright Field research and development division tasked Lockheed to design the aircraft based on their experience with the L-133.Felton 1945, pp. 44, 46.Knaack 1982, p. 1. Concept work began on the XP-80 in May 1943. Since the British turbojet was not yet delivered, Lockheed obtained its blueprint dimensions from Bell as ordered by the USAAF. Lockheed's team of 128 engineers was led by Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson in a makeshift building used for the design and assembly of the prototype. The building was remote and secure, built from pallets and packing crates around an existing shack, the whole of which was covered by a rented circus tent; this tent area became known as Skunk Works—the first explicit usage of the term to refer to an elite engineering project.
With the Germans and British clearly far ahead in development, Lockheed was pressed to develop a comparable jet as quickly as possible. Kelly Johnson submitted a design proposal in mid-June and promised that the prototype would be completed in 180 days.Knaack 1982, pp. 1-2. By the end of day 19, a full-scale wooden mock-up of the aircraft had been completed. By the end of day 139, the first prototype had been completed and was ready for engine tests, although its delivery was briefly delayed by there being no method of removing it from the assembly building short of its partial demolition.Felton 1945, p. 46. On 8 January 1944, it was delivered to Muroc Army Airfield for its maiden flight.Knaack 1982, p. 2.
The project was so secret that only five of the more than 130 people working on it knew that they were developing a jet aircraft, and the British engineer who delivered the Halford H1 engine was detained by the police because Lockheed officials could not vouch for him.Felton 1945, p. 46. After the engine had been mated to the airframe, foreign object damage during the first run-up destroyed the engine. The British engineer who had delivered the engine had warned Lockheed that the skin of the inlet ducts was too thin but the American engineers had ignored this warning, leading to both ducts collapsing and being sucked into the engine when it ran at full throttle.Gunston 1976, p. 131. This delayed the first flight until a second engine (the only other existing)Gunston 1989, p. 59. could be delivered from Britain, de Havilland generously donating the engine intended for the prototype Vampire.
The XP-80 featured a conventional all-metal airframe that was provisioned with a slim low wing and tricycle landing gear. Common to the majority of early jets designed during World War II—and before the Allies captured German research data that confirmed the speed advantages of the swept wing—the XP-80 possessed straight wings, similar to previous propeller-driven fighters. The pilot was provisioned with a pressurized cockpit that was covered by a bubble canopy and provisioned with relatively simplistic instrumentation.Felton 1945, pp. 43-44.
The P-80 was the first operational jet fighter to have its engine buried in the fuselage, a format that had been previously used in the pioneering German Heinkel He 178 V1 of 1939 as well as the British Gloster E.28/39 jet demonstrator of 1941. Other early jet aircraft were typically powered by a pair of engines due to their limited power output, and these were mounted in external nacelles for ease of maintenance. The advent of more powerful British jet engines made the adoption of a single fuselage-mounted engine configuration possible. The XP-80 was also the first aircraft to be fitted with tip tanks; these actually lowered overall drag by reducing vortices at the wing tips while also improving the aircraft's roll response and bolstered the wing's spanwise loading.Felton 1945, p. 44.
Into flight The first prototype (44-83020) was nicknamed Lulu-Belle (also known as "the Green Hornet" because of its paint scheme). Powered by the replacement Halford H1 taken from the prototype de Havilland Vampire jet fighter,The Vampire's first flight was delayed until 20 September 1943 as a result it first flew on 8 January 1944, with Lockheed test pilot Milo Burcham at the controls. Following this flight, Johnson said, "It was a magnificent demonstration, our plane was a success – such a complete success that it had overcome the temporary advantage the Germans had gained from years of preliminary development on jet planes." The donated British jet engine and program data had no doubt proved invaluable. In test flights, the XP-80 eventually reached a top speed of at , making it the first turbojet-powered USAAF aircraft to exceed in level flight, following the August 1944 record flight of by a special high-speed variant of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Contemporary pilots, when transitioning to pioneering jets like the P-80, were unused to flying at high speed without a loud reciprocating engine and had to learn to rely on the airspeed indicator.Felton 1945, p. 50.
The second prototype, designated XP-80A, was designed for the larger General Electric I-40 engine (an improved J31, later produced by Allison as the J33).Felton 1945, p. 48. Two aircraft (44-83021 and 44-83022) were built. 44-83021 was nicknamed the Gray Ghost after its "pearl gray" paint scheme, while 83022, left unpainted for comparison of flight characteristics, became known as the Silver Ghost. The XP-80A's first test flight was unimpressive, but most of the problems with the design were soon addressed and corrected in the test program. Initial opinions of the XP-80A were not positive, with Lockheed Chief Engineering Test Pilot Milo Burcham commenting that an aircraft he very much enjoyed (powered by the Halford engine) had now become a "dog." The XP-80As were primarily testbeds for larger, more powerful engines and air intake design, and consequently were larger and 25 percent heavier than the XP-80.
The P-80 testing program proved to be very dangerous. Burcham was killed on 20 October 1944 while flying the third YP-80A, 44–83025. The Gray Ghost was lost on a test flight on 20 March 1945, although pilot Tony LeVier escaped. Newly promoted to chief engineering test pilot to replace Burcham, LeVier bailed out when one of the engine's turbine blades broke, causing structural failure in the aircraft's tail. LeVier landed hard and broke his back, but returned to the test program after six months of recovery. The top-scoring World War II USAAF ace Major Richard Bong was also killed on an acceptance flight of a production P-80 in the United States on 6 August 1945. Both Burcham and Bong had crashed as a result of main fuel pump failure. Burcham's death was the result of a failure to brief him on a newly installed emergency fuel pump backup system, but the investigation of Bong's crash found that he had apparently forgotten to switch on this pump, which could have prevented the accident. He bailed out when the aircraft rolled inverted but was too close to the ground for his parachute to deploy.