If we go to the English-language military forums of the last century, we will find that there is a lot of discussion about the F19. Some people say that this is a stealth fighter secretly developed by the US military, but it was abandoned for unknown reasons, and some people say that the F117 is the F19. Is there an F19 in history? What is the story behind it? Today, let's find the truth together. I believe that everyone will think that the editor is exaggerating, what is the mystery of the disappearance of the F19, how to name the plane is the freedom of the US military? When it is the turn of the F19, I suddenly feel bad and skip over? Is there anything strange? Here, we have to talk about the US military's naming rules for the aircraft.
We all know that as one of the largest armed forces in the world, the US military cannot arbitrarily take any code name for weapons and equipment, and if there is no unified standard, today it will be called A Cat and tomorrow it will be called a dog, and the fight will be completely chaotic, and how can it still fight in coordination? During World War II, the United States did not have an air force, only an army air force and a naval air force. The way the Army names the aircraft is to use the type plus number, such as the P47 Thunderbolt, where P uses pursuit, which means destroyer. At that time, the aircraft were somewhat similar to the concept of multi-role fighters now, which had to fight in the air and attack on the ground, and later the destroyers were divided into F fighters and A attack aircraft.
Since the separation of the Air Force from the Army in 1947, this naming convention has continued to be used. In 1967, the U.S. military unified the naming of the Air Force and Navy, so all U.S. fighters basically followed this set of rules after that. For example, the U.S. Navy's F3D, and later, it was renamed F10, and after that, the naming of U.S. military aircraft is very regular, except for some very old aircraft with the same name, almost all of them are arranged in order from new to old, and we can find its corresponding aircraft for each number, but except for only two numbers, that is, 13 and 19.
Needless to say, the number 13 is too taboo in the United States and Europe, and curious brothers can check it for themselves, so I won't repeat it here. But as for why there is no 19, no one seems to be able to say clearly, at least unlike 13, there is nothing taboo about the number 19, that is, between the F18 Hornet and the F20 Tiger Shark, there is indeed a plane named F19 that disappeared, which is not groundless.
Regarding the mystery of the disappearance of the F19, the Pentagon claimed that there was no F19 in the last century in order to avoid confusing it with the MiG-19. This claim is very intriguing because there are indeed people who believe it if it has not been investigated in detail. For example, the Soviet Union had MiG-17 and MiG-19 fighters, while the United States had F16 and F18 fighters. It seems reasonable, but if we investigate it in detail, we will find that the so-called fear of the Ministry of Defense is actually full of loopholes.
First of all, let's understand the most critical loophole in this statement, the MiG fighter. The MiG is the general name for a series of military aircraft designed for the Soviet Union by the Mikoyan Glevich Design Bureau. The design technology of the plant is very good, and in the early days of the Cold War, it designed fighter technology that was always ahead of the United States. Therefore, in order to highlight the uniqueness of the MiG series of fighters, the Mikoyan Design Bureau named the fighters as the base. We can find that the naming rules of the Mikoyan Design Factory are very regular, from the initial MiG-1 to the last guess of the MiG-33, the Mikoyan Design Bureau has insisted on using the cardinal naming rules. As for the arrangement of American fighters, it is not arranged according to even numbers, for example, the F15 we talked about in previous issues did not make its first flight until ten years after the first flight of the MiG-15. It can be seen that at this point in the naming of the aircraft, the Pentagon does not shy away from the number of MiGs.
Then some brothers asked, although there is an F15, but there is no F17 and F19, isn't that enough to explain the problem? The U.S. military actually has an F17, and around 1965, in order to replace the expensive F15, the U.S. military planned to develop a cost-effective fighter on the basis of the F5. What about the so-called F5? It is a fighter developed by the American company Northrop in the 50s of the last century. Unlike other US fighters, this fighter was born for export, and many countries with poor economic levels but want to buy some fighter jets to support the scene will buy this relatively cost-effective fighter.
Later, when the US military saw that this foreign trade version was really good, it exported it to domestic sales. After improvement, the F5 became a YF17 fighter. Competing with him is Lockheed Martin's YF16, and whoever wins will join the US Air Force and turn the code name of his experimental aircraft YF into the F of the fighter. As we all know, the YF16 won the race and became the next generation of the U.S. Air Force's main F16. So what to do with the rest of the YF17? It just so happened that the US Navy was not satisfied with the F16, because they suspected that the landing gear of the 16 was too light and thin to adapt to the controllable crash of the carrier-based aircraft on the deck, so the US Navy took it out again. Jean Northrop and McDonnell Douglas worked together to design a completely new aircraft in 1975, which was named the Hornet, or F18, by U.S. Secretary of the Navy Gram.
Since there is an F-17 and an F-15, why did the US military avoid the Soviet Union's MiG-19 on the F19? This argument is obviously somewhat ridiculous. In other words, the U.S. Department of Defense is using this argument to prevaricate those who have no understanding of military affairs, and this prevarication is obviously covering up something, which has also become the origin of a series of popular conspiracy theories.
Here are a few more reliable conspiracy theories.
F117
The F117 is the first generation of stealth attack aircraft in the United States, which began to be designed in the 70s of the last century and began its first flight in 1981. The rumored so-called F19 is also a stealth fighter, and the F117 also happens to be a stealth fighter. What's more, it does not follow the naming rules of the US military that we talked about before, and does not use a serial number, but uses a 117 as the code name, which makes it easy for people to associate it with the vacant F19.
Not only that, but there is another evidence, that is, the first flight of the F18 was in 1978, and the first flight of the F20 was in 1982, a difference of four years, and the first flight of the F117 was in 1981, which was in between. From this point of view, if the F117 is according to the naming rules of the US military aircraft, it should be the F19, which seems to be a reasonable explanation, but there are still some doubts that we cannot answer.
The first is the name, in fact, the F117 not only cannot be an F19, but even an F-series fighter cannot be counted, because it is not a fighter at all, but an attack aircraft that focuses on ground support like the A10. In other words, even according to the original naming method of the US military, this F117 should be named A11. Robert, then commander of the Strategic Air Command, a four-star general in the United States, explained that it was not easy to fly this new stealth aircraft, and that it was necessary for the best pilots to fly it, and that these pilots generally preferred the F model, so I wanted to attract those pilots to fly this aircraft by naming it the F117. As for Robert's claims, there are some facts to back him up. For example, the F105 fighter-bomber, or the F111 multi-role aircraft, but they are all multi-purpose aircraft, and they can also have a relationship with fighters. There is nothing wrong with naming it F, but the F117 is a pure attack aircraft with no air combat capabilities, and it is difficult to argue whether this naming method can still be used.
But in any case, the F117 is strictly in accordance with the naming scheme of the Air Force, and it must not be named F19. Therefore, the rumors that F117 is F19 are less credible.
Another rumor about F19 is even more conspiracy, and has even influenced a large number of literary and artistic works. This is an article from the New York Times on November 11, 1988, with an all-black silhouette of the plane in the middle of the front page, and the caption that the U.S. Air Force confirmed today that it has been experimenting with dozens of jets at a base in Nevada for the past few years, and also released a photo of the stealth plane. At this time, people immediately think of a crash two years ago, at two o'clock in the morning on July 12, 1986, a plane from the US Air Force crashed at an altitude of 1,249 meters on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. A total of one person was killed in the incident, but the US military declined to disclose any other information about the incident.
At that time, there was a lot of speculation, and at this time, the F19 that Lockheed Martin was working on crashed, and even a source from Congress confirmed this speculation. The House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigation team also believes that it was an F19 that crashed. Although the U.S. military and Lockheed have sealed the news impenetrable, their political opponents have investigated many details. For example, John Tidinger, a Democrat of Michigan, has been investigating Lockheed's security breach, telling the media that the aircraft exploded in the air, which is why no pilot chose to parachute out.
As the incident unfolded, something even more interesting happened, that is, what about the plane that crashed, which actually ignited a forest fire. But when firefighters arrived at the scene to extinguish the fire and wanted to take the opportunity to see the wreckage of the mysterious flying machine, they found that only a black hole was left at the crash site, and everything was burned clean by the fire. No one can explain why the fires burned the wreckage of the steel-made planes so cleanly, and even why the fires created has been a mystery.
However, the matter is not over, because this crash allowed an otherwise indiscriminate model to break into the House of the US Congress, and even became evidence of the guilt of congressmen to press the president of Lockheed. As early as January 1986, a model company called tto produced a model of the F19 based on design experience and some inside information. The model didn't initially attract much attention, but after the crash in July, it sold 500,000 copies, making it the best-selling aircraft model in history.
What's more, two weeks later, Lawrence, chairman of Lockheed, admitted before a House subcommittee that his company had lost 1,460 classified documents, all about the stealth vehicle program. As soon as these words came out, Ah, Rep. Ron Wyden, a Democratic Party of Oregon, was so angry that he held up a model of the F19 and asked why the chairman of Lockheed, which was not seen by Congress, was the first to appear in the toy? Lawrence did not deny Lockheed's attitude in this regard, making people think that the company named TTO obtained the relevant information about the F19 through some channel, and let the people get the plane before the US military.
However, two years later, in 1988, the Department of Defense admitted the existence of stealth aircraft, but not F19, but F117, and also admitted that the plane that crashed in Nevada two years ago was F117, and the photos of F117 released at the same time are also far from the model. At this time, people were divided into two factions, one wave believed that the model incident at that time was deliberately performed by Lockheed and the Pentagon, in order to make the Soviet Union misjudge the shape and design details of the F117. Another group of people believe that the model reflects the real F19. The reason why the Pentagon wants to describe the crash as the F117 is to cover up the failure of the F19 development program. Because the U.S. government spent $7 billion on the development of stealth fighters at that time, if taxpayers knew that the 7 billion had been lost, it would definitely affect the people's trust in the government, so they took the F117, which had already completed its first flight, out of the top bag.
Either way, there seems to be some truth to it, but there is no hard evidence to prove it. But it is this attribute that makes the F19 an urban legend among US fighters and one of the talking points of military enthusiasts. #Fighter ##军事#