The Cold War's Most Underestimated Jet: Northrop's F-5 Freedom Fighter

Video from the channel DroneScapes about Northrop F-5, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 59:20. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary about Northrop's family of lightweight fighters: it starts with the N-156 study, moves through the T-38 Talon trainer, the F-5A/B Freedom Fighter and the F-5E Tiger II, and ends with the F-20 Tigershark. It explains why Northrop bet on a small, cheap, easy-to-maintain fighter when the trend was toward ever-larger aircraft. It closes with the F-5E's role as an aggressor aircraft in dissimilar air combat training. The final part includes a Northrop film about the F-5E in that role.

Northrop finished its fighter studies in 1955. The US Air Force wasn't interested in a small fighter, but it was interested in the trainer, and the T-38 flew on April 10, 1959. The company kept funding the N-156F fighter version until it was chosen in 1962 for the Military Assistance Program (MAP), aimed at allies with limited resources. That October the single-seat F-5A and two-seat F-5B were ordered, and the YF-5A flew on July 31, 1963. In 1965, as part of Operation Skoshi Tiger, 19 aircraft adapted as F-5C were combat-tested in Vietnam and later passed to the South Vietnamese air force. That experience led to the F-5E Tiger II: unveiled on June 23, 1972 and first flown on August 11.

Each F-5A engine weighed 570 pounds and produced 4,080 pounds of thrust, and three mechanics could change it in 20 minutes. The aircraft carried two 20 mm cannons, Sidewinder missiles on the wingtips, and up to 6,200 pounds of ordnance across seven hardpoints. In the 150 days of Skoshi Tiger, more than 3,500 sorties were flown, and maintenance time dropped to six and a half hours per flight. More than 1,100 F-5A/B were built for over 20 countries. Including the T-38, the family reached 3,806 aircraft, and the last F-5E/F went to Singapore in 1989. About 70 F-5E originally intended for South Vietnam formed the Red Flag aggressor squadrons, chosen for their resemblance to the MiG-21. The F-20, powered by the F/A-18's engine, never secured an order.