Talk:Vought F-8 Crusader

How can the Never Exceed speed be well below max speed?
Can someone please verify the Never Exceed speed and correct? Pmarshal (talk) 15:27, 23 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Looking at the source, the airspeed indicator in the NATOPS doesn't seem to have any color coding. I also don't see any color coding in later military aircraft such as the F-15A and F-16A (can't speak for newer aircraft with MFDs though). Can't find the ASI being mentioned anywhere else, either; I'd say just delete the VNE section. 72.177.61.18 (talk) 03:26, 9 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Presumably the 1966 Supplemental Manual for the F-8D and E laid down that never-exceed speed (which will always necessarily be below the maximum possible speed, meaning that you could fly the thing faster, but you better hadn't) for a reason. The article doesn't satisfactorily explain the Crusader's phenomenal accident rate, the aircraft's single most outstanding attribute -- over 40% of total production destroyed in accidents, almost 90% involved in serious accidents and over 60% of the French Aeronavale's Crusaders lost in accidents -- which is all the more remarkable since the Crusader was not night-capable. (The British Sea Vixen's notorious 38% loss rate in accidents was mostly related to night operations.) The article does make the claim that the Crusader set a 'US national speed record' in 1956 at somewhat above the 1966 manual's recommended speed, but this is an odd and meaningless bit of special pleading because the official FAI world air speed record at the time, set by the Fairey Delta 2 the previous March, was already considerably beyond that mark. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:14, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Cruise speed
in the specifications it claims that the cruise speed is 308mph. That seems way too slow to me, or is like sea level cruise speed. That's not a hell of a lot faster than a WWII fighters cruising speed. I would have thought somewhere in the 500mph range would be more likely for a supersonic jet at cruise. Modern jet liners do that speed. Idumea47b (talk) 08:59, 5 December 2023 (UTC)