Streak Eagle
January 17th, 1975, a lone F-15A was stripped of its paint, speed brake, flap actuators, radar and fire control systems, unneeded cockpit instrumentation, generators, redundant radios and anything that could be left on the ground. Engineers even removed her Vulcan 20 mm cannon and all external pylons, leaving a super clean, slick, light and powerful F-15A Eagle that had only one place to go...UP like a bat out of hell!
The goal was to steal the crown from the Soviets, who held the record for reaching the highest altitudes from a stationary start on the runway. The MIG-25 "Foxbat" held the three highest record positions since 1973. Prior to the Foxbat, previous altitude records had been held by the USAF F-4 "Phantom" since 1962.
Streak Eagle had one mission, and that was to smash the "time to climb" records held by the Soviet Foxbat.
Streak Eagle was held in place at the end of the runway while hooked up to a hold-back bar as the pilot applied full afterburner. The explosive bolt detonated, suddenly freeing the Eagle to accelerate down the active. Rotating after only 400 feet of runway, Streak Eagle pulled into an 80-degree climb while accelerating through the speed of sound. Like a homesick angel with her low fuel levels, bare skin and minimal equipment, sporting a thrust-to-weight ratio of nearly 2:1, she sliced through the lower atmosphere like a hot knife through butter. At altitudes, the Streak Eagle even managed to beat the climb rate of the Apollo Saturn V Rocket!
After the initial climb, the pilot kept a sustained 2.5G pull coming back over the base inverted at 32,000 feet. Rolling out, the super slick jet then accelerating to over two times the speed of sound, pulling 4Gs into a 60-degree climb.
Streak Eagle reached an altitude of 98,425 feet in just 3 minutes, 27.8 seconds from brake release and "coasted" on the highest attempt, reaching 103,000 feet in altitude. The pilot, in an attempt to utilize every last bit of energy, kept Streak Eagle in its climb until airspeed bleed off to as little as 55 knots...only then pushing the stick forward and back towards the Earth. During the coast phase, her engines had to be shut down before overheating or flaming out due to a lack of air density. During the descent phase, her engines were restarted to allow a powered approach back to base.
Streak Eagle broke eight time-to-climb world records between January 16th and February 1st, 1975. After proving that Eagles dared, she was delivered to the National Museum Of The United States Air Force, where she still remains to this day.
You are crazy
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2 weeks into my USAF flight line career, at Edwards AFB, in June 1972, and as a member of the Transient Alert shop, we got in a transient C-5A Galaxy. Once we escorted it to parking at Base Ops, and got it chocked, the plane corcscrewed down to the ground, and the entire nose section opened up to reveal a (wingless) plane in the fuselage. Enter the prototype YF-15A tail number 71-0280. Having done my tech training on century series fighters, trainers, and attack aircraft at Sheppard AFB, this plane looked like something from the future. After it initial flight testing, all of us on the flight line we’re rewarded with the vision of the prototype rotation, with it then pulling nose up at center taxiway, and flying straight up into the sky until it was a spec against the blue sky. Each time a dignitary or dignitaries came to visit EAFB, we were again rewarded with that same sky show.
Eventually we at Transient Alert ended up pulling Last Chance on the YF-15 prototypes, as well as the YF-16 & YF-17 (now the Navy F-18) prototypes, and, of course the YA-9 & YA-10 fly-off prototypes. It was a great time in aviation, and who would have guessed that the F-15, the F-16, and the A-10’s would still be flying over a half century later?
Quality built in, AND, added on!
Former HAF fighter pilot
Old SANDF Airforce Canberra ground crew. Love planes.
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