BOEING FRONTIERS / AUGUST 2013 13 aboard the airships USS Akron and Macon. McDonnell Aircraft responded to the Army Air Force’s request for proposals with four versions of its Model 27 and received an engineering development contract in October 1945. McDonnell engineers worked within the constraints of developing a jet fighter less than 15 feet (4.5 meters) long and 5½ feet (1.7 meters) wide that could carry standard armament. The final configuration was the Model 27E, designated the XF-85. It was a single-seat, midwing jet fighter with folding sweptback wings and an X-shaped tail. The XF-85 was equipped with four .50 caliber machine guns with 300 rounds each and one Westinghouse J-34 engine that supplied 3,000 pounds (13 kilonewtons) of thrust. The XF-85 did not have landing gear. Instead, it had a skid for emergency landings. It also had a retractable “skyhook” in the forward fuselage that would latch onto a “trapeze” extended from the bottom of a B-36 bomber after the fighter had completed its job of protecting the bomber. And the pilot would have an ejection seat. The egg-shaped fighter was called the Goblin because James McDonnell, founder of McDonnell Aircraft, had previously decided to name the company’s jet fighters from the spirit world. The Phantom and Banshee were the first two. Third was the XF-85 Goblin. McDonnell Aircraft received the go-ahead in 1947 to build and test two XF-85s. But no B-36 bomber was available for the tests so a Boeing EB-29 was selected as the mother ship. Nicknamed “Monstro” by its crew, the EB-29 was retrofitted with an arresting trapeze to lower and then retrieve the XF-85 from its bomb bay. The first fully released flight of the XF-85 came on Aug. 23, 1948, at Muroc (now Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.). Lowered by the trapeze from the EB-29 flying at 20,000 feet (6,000 meters) altitude, McDonnell test pilot Ed Schoch released the Goblin. In flight, the Goblin was stable and easy to fly. After a 10-minute flight, Schoch made three unsuccessful attempts to reconnect the XF-85 to the arresting trapeze. But the small jet was buffeted wildly by the big bomber’s turbulence. On the last attempt, the Goblin hit the trapeze with such force that the canopy was smashed. But the pilot managed to make a belly landing, using the Goblin’s skid, on the dry lake bed at Muroc. Schoch did successfully connect the Goblin to the arresting trapeze of the EB-29 on his next attempt on Oct. 14. Ultimately, only three of seven flights of the XF-85 Goblin resulted in successful connections with the arresting trapeze. The XF-85 Goblin test program was canceled in 1949. One never flew from a B-36. Docking with the mother ship had proved too difficult. But the The Goblin was a “parasite” fighter that would be carried by the mother ship, a long-range B-36 bomber. Goblin was no longer needed: In 1949, Boeing’s KB-29P, with its flying boom aerial refueling system, solved the problem of long-range jet fighter escort for bombers. n henry.t.brownlee-jr@boeing.com Learn more about the XF-85 Goblin and see a video at www.boeing.com/boeing/ history/mdc/goblin.page. PHOTOS: (Opposite page, top) The XF-85 Goblin was deployed from the host aircraft using a retractable “trapeze” that was extended in-flight from the bomb bay. For recovery, the fighter carried a retractable hook in its forward fuselage and would fly up to and latch onto the trapeze. (Opposite page, bottom) A mock-up of the XF-85 being tested with the wings folded to fit inside the parent aircraft. U.S. Air Force (This page) McDonnell built two prototype XF-85 Goblins. This one made the first flight from a Boeing EB-29 bomber on Aug. 23, 1948. BOEING ARCHIVES
Frontiers August 2013 Issue
To see the actual publication please follow the link above