F-86 Sabre in foreign service

Canadair Sabres

When Canada joined NATO in 1949, the Canadian government decided they needed to ramp up military aircraft production to meet increased commitments, and so in August of that year, Canadair of Montreal signed an agreement with North American to build 100 Sabres, using plans and parts provided by NAA. The two companies had already worked together during the war, with Canadair producing NAA T-6 Harvard trainers.

The first Canadair Sabre, the "CL-13 Sabre Mark 1", was really an F-86A-5. Only one was built, as a manufacturing exercise. It was assembled from parts supplied by NAA, and first flew in August 1950. The first Canadair production variant was the "CL-13 Sabre Mark 2", which was effectively an F-86E-1. 350 Mark 2s were completed between January 1951 and August 1952. This number includes the 60 provided to the USAF as the F-86E-6. Most of the Canadian Sabres went to Europe, while the Canadian homeland was protected by the Avro CF-100 Canuck .

The Canadians were interested in fitting their indigenous Avro Canada Orenda Mark 3 engine, with 26.7 kN (2,720 kgp / 6,000 lbf) thrust, to the Sabre. NAA installed the Orenda to an F-86A-5 pulled from their own production line as an experiment, giving the modified aircraft the designation "F-86J". The experimental fit was very successful, with the F-86J demonstrating substantially improved performance.

Canadair then performed the same transplant on a Sabre Mark 2 pulled from their production, resulting in the "CL-13 Sabre Mark 3", which first flew in September 1952. The Sabre Mark 3 was a purely experimental aircraft, since the Orenda was not ready for production at the time. For the moment, Canadair production went on to the "CL-13 Sabre Mark 4", which was effectively identical to an F-86E-10. 438 Mark 4s were built in 1952 and 1953. Most of the Mark 4s ended up in the hands of the British Royal Air Force (RAF). Since the British did not have a swept-wing fighter at the time, they obtained some 428 Mark 4 Sabres as an interim measure while awaiting delivery of the new Hawker Hunter. The RAF gave their Sabres the designation "Sabre F.4". The RAF Sabres only served into 1955 and 1956, when the Hunter finally began to be delivered to RAF squadrons.

The "CL-13A Sabre Mark 5" first flew in the summer of 1953. The Mark 5 was the first truly Canadian Sabre, using the Avro Orenda 10 engine, with 29.8 kN (2,950 kgp / 6,500 lbf) thrust. The new engine provided markedly improved performance, including a doubled climb rate. The Mark 5 also incorporated the "solid 6-3" stretched wing, which was retrofitted to many Mark 4s and even some Mark 2s. 370 Mark 5s were built, with 75 delivered to the West German Luftwaffe.

The final Canadair variant was the "CL-13B Sabre Mark 6", with first flight in October 1954. The Mark 6 was fitted with an Orenda 14 engine with 32.4 kN (3,300 kgp / 7,275 lbf) thrust, giving it better performance than any subvariant of the F-86F. Later production also featured the "F-40" long slatted wing. 647 Sabre Mark 6s were completed, with the last rolled out in October 1958. 382 went to the RCAF, 225 to West Germany, 34 to South Africa, and 6 to Columbia. Total Canadair Sabre production amounted to 1,807 aircraft.

Australian Commonwealth Sabres

A small number of Sabres, 112 in all, were built by Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) in Australia. Although they were externally very similar to other Sabre fighter variants, they featured major structural redesign, to accommodate the powerful Rolls-Royce RA.7 Avon engine with 33.4 kN (3,400 kgp / 7,500 lbf) thrust, and revised armament of two 30 millimeter Aden revolver cannon, with a total of 162 rounds of ammunition.

The major visible difference of the Aussie Sabres was that they had two big gun ports on the nose instead of six relatively little ones. The Avon was lighter than the J47 and required substantial airframe changes to ensure center of gravity and provide more intake airflow. The fit of the twin Aden cannon was not only very different from that of the six Brownings, but the cannon mounts had to be very sturdy since the weapons were big, powerful, and had a high rate of fire.

The first of these Australian Sabres was the single "CA-26", which featured a standard F-86E/F short-slatted wing and all-flying tail with the redesigned fuselage. It first flew on 3 August 1953, leading to an RAAF order for 70 CAC Sabres. The production batch was of 22 "CA-27 Sabre Mark 30s", similar to the CA-26 prototype and with imported Avon engines. The first of them flew in July 1954 and initial service delivery in August 1954.

The "CA-27 Sabre Mark 31" featured the Australian-built Avon Mark 20 engine and the "solid 6-3" wing. Some sources claim this was a slatted wing, but most sources specifically state that the "F-40" long slatted wing was not fitted to any Australian Sabres, leaving the matter murky. The wing was retrofitted to Mark 30s as well. 20 Mark 31s were built.

The definite Australian Sabre was the "CA-27 Sabre Mark 32", which had the Australian-built Avon 26 engine and four stores pylons. The Avon 26 had a throttle scheme in which fuel flow was automatically reduced when the cannon were fired, reducing the chance of a flameout due to gun gas ingestion. A total of 69 Mark 32s were built, in three batches.

After experiments with launching Sidewinder AAMs in 1959, all surviving Mark 31s and Mark 32s were refitted to launch the missile. The Sidewinder-equipped CAC Sabres remained in service with the RAAF through the 1960s, with the last phased out in 1971.

The Fuji T-1 Trainer

The Japanese were the third biggest users of the Sabre after the Americans and Canadians, and in fact liked the Sabre so much that they built a tandem two-seat trainer modeled on it, the Fuji "T-1". It was the first indigenously-designed Japanese jet aircraft to be developed since World War II. Although the T-1 was a new-design aircraft, it was clearly inspired by the F-86, with a distinctive new forward fuselage for cadet and instructor that somewhat concealed its Sabre origins.

In 1953, the Japanese government resurrected the country's aircraft industry, with Fuji Heavy Industries receiving large government contracts. The company began development of an axial-flow turbojet of their own design, the "JO-1", and then won a contract for a new jet trainer, the "T1F1", to be powered by the JO-1 or a derivative of that engine. The government ordered seven T1F1s, with the first scheduled to fly in 1957. However, Fuji didn't quite meet that schedule. The JO-1 engine first ran in 1954, leading to the improved J3 engine, which ran in July 1956. The J3 was then transferred to the Japanese Ishikiwajima-Harima company, with the transfer delaying the engine program and trainer program.

The prototype of the trainer performed its first flight on 19 January 1958, powered by the Rolls-Royce Orpheus engine. Although the plan was to use the J-3 engine, original plans for the trainer had forseen the use of a foreign-built engine, and the delays in the engine program forced Fuji to go into production with the Orpheus engine. The result was the "T-1A", which entered JASDF service in May 1960. It was originally named "Hatsutaka (Young Hawk)", but the name was never used in service. Even though the Orpheus was derated to 15.8 kN (1,610 kgp / 4,000 lbf), this was still more engine than the airframe had been originally designed for, and the T-1A was overpowered.

The problems with the J3 engine were eventually ironed out, leading to the "T-1B", powered by a J3-3 turbojet with 11.8 kN (1,200 kgp / 2,650 lbf) thrust. This was about half the thrust as had been available to the F-86A, but the empty weight of the T-1B was also half as much, even though its dimensions were similar; the discrepancy probably had much to do with the fact that the T-1B was not designed for combat service, though it was also a slenderer aircraft than the Sabre. First flight of the T-1B was in May 1960, with service deliveries beginning in 1961. The T-1A and T-1B were externally identical. Final production of the T-1 series was in 1963, after delivery of two prototypes, four preproduction aircraft, 40 T-1As, and 20 T-1Bs, for a total of 66 aircraft. The T-1s were used in the intermediate trainer role.

The T-1 had two underwing pylons and usually flew with two Sabre-type twin-fin drop tanks. It could also be fitted with a single 12.7 millimeter gun in the nose, and Sidewinder AAMs or other stores on the two underwing pylons, but it practice it almost never flew armed.

Three T-1Bs refitted with the uprated J3-7 engine with 13.7 kN (1,400 kgp / 3,090 lbf) were flown, with this conversion referred to as "T-1C" in some sources, but plans to re-engine other T-1s with the J3-7 were dropped. Plans were also considered for an updated T-1 variant with a "stepped" cockpit to provide the instructor with a better forward view, plus an Adour turbofan engine, but nothing came of this study.

The T-1 trainer was finally phased completely out of service in 1999, having been replaced by the Kawasaki T-4.

Sabres in international service / survivors / oddballs

After first-line service in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Italy, Britain, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, and Columbia, used Sabres were passed on to dozens of nations. The bulk were ex-USAF F-86Fs, which were generally updated to F-86F-40 standard, but there were good numbers of Canadair Sabres of various marks, plus some F-86Ds, F-86Ks, CAC Sabres, and small quantities of other variants.

Second-hand Sabre users included Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Burma, Denmark, Ethiopia, Greece, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia.

For the most part, these Sabres saw little action. However, Pakistani Sabres particularly distinguished themselves in the 1965 war with India. On 7 September 1965, Pakistani Squadron Leader Mohammed Mahmood Alam engaged a set of Indian Hawker Hunters, shooting one down and then, after a few minutes of maneuver, destroying four more in 30 seconds, becoming an ace in a single sortie. Squadron Leader Alam shot down nine Indian aircraft in the short war, taking out the last with a Sidewinder missile. He personally claimed almost half the aircraft India lost during the conflict -- though it should be mentioned that Indian sources strongly dispute Alam's story. The Sabre saw action again with Pakistan during their 1971 war with India.

Sabres also saw combat in Taiwanese service. In 1958, the Communist Chinese tried to blockade the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, and Nationalist Chinese F-86Fs, armed with the new Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles, were sent into the sky to engage Red MiG-15s and MiG-17s. The Nationalists claimed dozens of kills, but these figures are difficult to confirm. A story floated around for a long time that one of the Sidewinders fired during these squabbles was a dud and ended up wedged into a MiG, which was removed and sent to the Soviets to be copied as the "Atoll" air-to-air missile. This sounded like an urban myth, but recent Russian documents actually corroborate it.

The only nation that still operates the Sabre in military service is the US, if in the humble role of "target" as orange-patterned QF-86 drones, operated by the US Navy at their facility at Point Mugu, California. A few Sabres are in private hands, as elite personal toys. For example, STAR TREK actor Michael Dorn reportedly owns a surplus South African Sabre Mark 6.

With as many Sabres as were built, there were of course a good number of one-off modifications:

• Boeing modified a single F-86A with a receptacle in the nose in front of the cockpit for boom aerial refueling. The tests were satisfactory, but the scheme was not adopted, and the only members of the Sabre family to have mid-air refueling capability were the later Fury models.
• An F-86E was also used for mid-air refueling tests, fitted with drop tanks with probes for hose-and-drogue refueling. This improvisation was not adopted.
• One F-86E was experimentally fitted with a wing "glove" that gave it what might later be called "leading edge root extensions" and a dorsal extension for the canopy, apparently to accommodate additional equipment. Nothing came of this experiment, either.
• An F-86E was fitted with an Aerojet rocket on the belly directly below the cockpit and used for high-speed flight experiments.
• An F-86F was similarly fitted with a North American Rocketdyne AR-2/3 engine and flown in tests. The Rocketdyne engine burned JP-4 jet fuel, probably with hydrogen peroxide oxidizer, and was restartable.
• One F-86F was fitted with a 24-round Mighty Mouse rocket tray like that used on the F-86D, and for good measure with a 53-round rocket tray on either side of the aircraft below the cockpit. The scheme was a failure because launching the rockets from the two side trays blinded the pilot.
• Two FJ-4s were experimentally fitted with a North American Rocketdyne AR-1 liquid-fueled rocket engine, burning hydrogen peroxide and JP-4, in the tail over the jet engine exhaust. The fit was apparently made to evaluate the type as a high-altitude interceptor. They were flown during some of their tests with an odd modified nose cone that contained instrumentation, and an auxiliary integral fuel tank was fitted under the fuselage in some tests as well. The two were known as "FJ-4Fs".
• One RAF Sabre Mark 4 was used by Bristol Siddeley as a test bed for the Orpheus turbojet.
• Canadair fitted one Sabre Mark 5 with bulges along the rear fuselage to experiment with "area ruling". The experiment demonstrated no improvement in performance and was abandoned.

F-86 Sabre / Fury production numbers

I recollect reading interesting stories about the Sabre interceptors in a book a very long time ago, so long ago that I do not remember the book's title and am fuzzy on the details. Some of the tales about the F-86D that I recall from it were amusing, however.

The F-86D was one of the first combat jets with an afterburner, and its initial operational years roughly matched that of the first UFO scares. The North American air defense system in those days left continental airspace tightly controlled, and airliners that strayed off course would be quickly intercepted and checked out. Fighters would also be scrambled to intercept airliners just for practice. F-86D pilots liked to sneak up on airliners at night and get in, say, the 1:00 or 2:00 position not too far away with their lights off. They would then engage afterburner and take off in a ball of fire, bewildering the airliner's crew and likely inspiring wild stories when they got back down on the ground.

That afterburning engine was clearly a source of troubles. The book reprinted a cautionary cartoon from an F-86D tech manual that showed the engine melted out of the bottom of the fuselage, in order to encourage pilots to follow proper procedures.

The book also gave a mixed report on the actual effectiveness of the F-86D. During one exercise, bombers were sent up in order to be hunted by the F-86Ds. When the bombers landed again, their pilots laughed that they hadn't seen a trace of the hunters. Then the gun-camera films of the interceptors were developed, and revealed kill after kill. The F-86Ds had been guided on a precision collision-course intercept by their ground controllers and avionics, to cross the path of their victims so quickly that they were there and gone, unseen. However, according to another story, one bomber pilot got onto the ground controllers' frequency and completely jammed the system by continuously reciting "Mary had a little lamb" over the radio link. The interceptors never touched him.

The Sabre Dog's FFAR armament seems somewhat dubious in hindsight. My friend Bill Marr said that he had worked as a service tech on the F-86D's E-4 fire-control system and its solid-state successors. He said that he had seen films of the Sabre Dog firing its rockets and commented: "It was a wonder they could hit anything, the way those rockets twisted around." Folding-fin rockets tend to be unstable until their fins deploy, which is why they were fired in groups. However, even pilots who carried them weren't sure they could actually hit anything with them.

In 1956, a Hellcat target drone "slipped the leash" and broke radio control over southern California, and two rocket-armed F-89D Scorpion interceptors were sent up to shoot it down. They dumped their entire rocket loads on it and didn't scratch it, though they did cause several brush fires and send rocket fragments into local homes. The Hellcat ran out of gas and fell to earth in the desert. Fortunately, nobody was hurt in the incident, though it was a big embarrassment to the US Air Force.

The problem was that there were few good alternatives. Cannon wouldn't have been effective in a collision-course intercept -- it went by much too fast -- and guided AAMs were in a primitive state of development at the time.

Author: Greg Goebel