{"id":5543,"date":"2021-02-21T18:53:50","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T03:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/?p=5543"},"modified":"2025-11-01T22:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T07:41:07","slug":"f-8k-crusader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/?p=5543","title":{"rendered":"F-8K Crusader"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5555\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5555\" class=\"wp-image-5555 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/F-8K_Crusader.jpg\" alt=\"F-8K Crusader\" width=\"600\" height=\"474\" srcset=\"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/F-8K_Crusader.jpg 600w, https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/F-8K_Crusader-150x119.jpg 150w, https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/F-8K_Crusader-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-5555\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">F-8K Crusader<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This is a Vought F-8K Crusader on the flight deck of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intrepidmuseum.org\/\">Intrepid Sea, Air &amp; Space Museum<\/a> in New York City.<\/p>\n<p>The F-8 Crusader was an air superiority fighter that served the US Navy from the late 1950s through the mid 1980s. A unique feature of the Crusader was its variable incidence wing. Rather than have a very nose high attitude during take off and landing the Crusader&#8217;s wing would be tilted up. You can see this where this aircraft&#8217;s squadron name (Sundowners VF-111) is painted on at the front of the wing. During normal flight this would be retracted flush with the fuselage.<\/p>\n<p>The Crusader was also intended to be the last US Navy fighter to have a built in gun, and was therefore known as &#8220;The Last of the Gunfighters&#8221;. Two of the guns can be seen below the cockpit. Poor air-to-air performance by the Phantom II and early aircraft missles lead the US Air Force to add a gun to its version of the F-4, and the gun returned in the US Navy&#8217;s F-14 Tomcat.<\/p>\n<p>A detatchment of the VF-111 Sundowners flying F-8C Crusaders served aboard the USS Intrepid for one deployment to Vietnam. Later, while flying the F-14 Tomcat, the Sundowners appeared in the movie Top Gun.<\/p>\n<p>This was taken with a handheld (string monopod) Sputnik on Kodak E100G.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; This is a Vought F-8K Crusader on the flight deck of the Intrepid Sea, Air &amp; Space Museum in New York City. The F-8 Crusader was an air superiority fighter that served the US Navy from the late 1950s through the mid 1980s. A unique feature of the Crusader was its variable incidence wing. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[651,607],"tags":[613,683,640,681,12],"class_list":["post-5543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-d22","category-dragon","tag-brian-reynolds","tag-intrepid-air-sea-space-museum","tag-kodak-e100g","tag-new-york-city","tag-sputnik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5543"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5561,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543\/revisions\/5561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/folio.solidsight.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}