8 January 1944: At Muroc Army Air Field (later to become Edwards Air Force Base), Lockheed’s chief engineering test pilot, Milo Garrett Burcham, took the XP-80 Shooting Star, serial number 44-83020, for its first flight. A few minor problems caused Burcham to end the flight after approximately five minutes, but these were quickly resolved and flight testing continued. The XP-80 was the first American airplane to exceed 500 miles per hour (805 kilometers per hour) in level flight. The Lockheed XP-80 was designed by Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson and a small team of engineers that would become known as the “Skunk Works”, in response to a U.S. Army Air Corps proposal to build a single-engine fighter around the de Havilland-built Halford H.1B Goblin turbojet engine. This engine had a straight-through configuration and produced 2,460 pounds of thrust at 9,500 r.p.m., installed. The XP-80 was a single-seat, single-engine airplane with straight wings and retractable tricycle landing gear. Intakes for engine air were placed low on the fuselage, just forward of the wings. The engine exhaust was ducted straight out through the tail. For the first prototype, the cockpit was not pressurized, but would be on production airplanes. The airplane was 32 feet, 10 inches (10.008 meters) long with a wingspan of 37 feet (11.278 meters), and overall height of 10 feet, 3 inches (3.124 meters). Empty weight 6,287 pounds (2,852 kilograms) and gross weight of 8,196 pounds (3,718 kilograms). The XP-80 had a maximum speed of 502 miles per hour (807.9 kilometers per hour) at 20,480 feet (6,242 meters) and a rate of climb of 3,000 feet per minute (15.24 meters per second). The service ceiling was 41,000 feet (12,497 meters). Unusual for a prototype, the XP-80 was armed. Six .50-caliber machine guns were placed in the nose. The Halford engine was unreliable and Lockheed recommended redesigned the the fighter around the larger, more powerful General Electric I-40 (produced by GE and Allison as the J33 turbojet). The proposal was accepted and following prototypes were built as the XP-80A. Lockheed built 1,715 P-80s for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy. They entered combat during the Korean War in 1950. A two-seat trainer version was even more numerous: the famous T-33A Shooting Star. Lockheed XP-80 Shooting Star 44-83020 was used as a test aircraft for several years. In 1949, it was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. It is on display at the Jet Aviation exhibit of the National Air and Space Museum. r/max
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000
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