Fr 38 Les Ailes De Légende Le Northrop F 5 Freedom Fighter

Video from the channel Anarkia DOCS Science/Quantique about Northrop F-5, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 47:07. Language: French. Video type: Documentary.

Episode of the French series «Les Ailes de Légende» devoted to the Northrop F-5 family. It covers its conception as a small, light and cheap fighter, its T-38 Talon training derivative, combat evaluation in Vietnam, the F-5E Tiger II version, the F-20 Tigershark and its later role as an aggressor aircraft in United States combat training.

After the Korean War, American manufacturers were building ever larger and more complex fighters. Northrop went the opposite way. In 1955 it finished the first N-156 studies, which the US Air Force only accepted as a trainer. That gave rise to the T-38, whose prototypes were authorized on 15 June 1956; Northrop built about 1,200. The fighter version, funded by the company itself, found no buyer until 1962, when the Kennedy administration chose it for the military assistance program for allied countries with few resources. The YF-5A first flew on 31 July 1963. In 1964 the first aircraft arrived at Williams base, where foreign pilots were trained, starting with the Iranians. Iran put its F-5s into service in February 1965, and Norway, Spain and Canada signed agreements, in some cases with licensed production. In 1965, with Operation Skoshi Tiger, the US Air Force tested 19 modified aircraft with in-flight refueling and extra armor in Vietnam.

The documentary highlights the ease of maintenance: two small engines that could be replaced in minutes, numerous access panels and single-point refueling. The design applied the area rule. The F-5E/F, introduced in 1972 with more powerful engines, radar and a computing gunsight, was built until 1989, with the last deliveries to Singapore. The Thunderbirds adopted the T-38 in 1974 instead of the F-4 Phantom, and NASA used it to keep its astronauts current and as a chase plane. The F-20 Tigershark, a single-engine aircraft with the F-18's engine, found no buyers. The F-5s destined for South Vietnam formed the Red Flag aggressor squadrons at Nellis.