F2H pilot tells the story of when he flew the longest non-stop Banshee flight off of and back onto a carrier
The F2H Banshee, McDonnell’s FH-1 Phantom’s successor, was chosen to escort B-29 bombers over Korea because it was a fast and efficient high-altitude fighter. Because the aircraft’s engines “screamed like a banshee,” that phrase became its official moniker. But it was affectionately referred to as the “Banjo” by its pilots.
The US Navy also decided to deploy its first nuclear capabilities in a carrier-based tactical jet aircraft with the F2H-2. The Banshee was the ideal option given its high altitude and long-range capabilities for the new mission.
The initial capabilities placed in North American AJ Savages and Lockheed P2V-3C Neptunes did not sufficiently meet the needs of the US Navy, as detailed by Rick Burgess in his book F2H Banshee Units. As a result, the F2H-2 was chosen for further development, and the F2H-2B was produced, becoming the first carrier-based tactical jet to be used for nuclear strike missions.
Lt. Cdr. Edward L. “Whitey” Feightner, who would later become Rear Admiral, flew F2H-2Bs at NAS Atlantic City as a test pilot with VX 3 starting in September 1952. Feightner, a World War II ace, led the VF 10 “Grim Reapers” aboard the USS Enterprise (CV-6) and later the second VF-8 aboard the USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) to nine wins over Japanese aircraft.
‘I got tagged with “Whitey” by [US Navy ace Lt Cdr] “Butch” O’Hare’, Feightner explained during a 2009 interview.
‘Everybody had to have a nickname, of course, in those days, and “Butch” was teaching us all to be spear fishermen, and I was the only guy in the squadron that didn’t get a tan—I got red—so he called me “Whitey”. I had blond hair and couldn’t tan’.
Feightner served as the F7U solo pilot for the US Navy’s Blue Angels flying demonstration squadron as well as a project pilot for the Vought F7U Cutlass fighter. The creation of nuclear delivery strategies for the AD-4B Skyraider and F2H-2B Banshee was one of his efforts at VX-3.
‘We were the pioneers [in nuclear weapons delivery], especially in that low-level delivery business’, Feightner said. ‘It was done purely by the VX squadrons in the US Navy. Of course, that was the reason they set us up for it. It was interesting work’.
During that productive period, World War II hero Cdr. Noel Gayler oversaw VX-3. The Banshees’ qualification for their nuclear weapon role and the development of the delivery tactics were greatly aided by VX-3, which was based at NAS Atlantic City. Feightner contributed to such growth.
‘Gayler was a really capable guy. He fully understood the mission of the VX squadron. During the years he was there, we made more progress on this very kind of stuff, all of it. We had so many really good projects up there. He was a guy with great vision. He was the perfect guy to be the head of that outfit. We had the Banshee 2, which, in its day, could fly higher and further than its contemporaries. There was a tremendous range on that airplane, and it’s the airplane that gave us that true Mk 7 capability [The nuclear ‘Banjo’ was modified to carry two types of nuclear weapons, the Mk 7 and the Mk 8]. We worked out all of the delivery tactics for the [F2H-2B]: the low-level tactics, no electronics allowed, avoiding the AAA, and so forth, with a pop-up [manoeuvre] at the end.
‘That Banshee 2 was a really maneuverable airplane, but it had its limitations. McDonnell built what we ordered, but what we ordered should’ve been 100 percent stronger. The Banshee was a phenomenal airplane. I remember Noel Gayler and I took off from Atlantic City and we flew down to Jacksonville, circled Florida for something like an hour, and then went 200 miles out to sea and landed aboard and still had fuel enough to go back to Jacksonville. That’s long legs for an airplane of that size. You could get it up to altitude and, of course, it was the first airplane that would go up to about 40,000 ft and stay there. It was a phenomenal machine.’
One of Feightner’s accomplishments with the Banshee was the 3220-mile sortie that set a record for the longest non-stop round-trip flight from an aircraft carrier. He took off from Midway in an F2H-2B Banshee with Gayler and Lt(jg) Mike Ames, all carrying Mk 7 nuclear shapes.
‘We were working off of Midway, which was 100 miles east of Guantanamo, and we had [the] entire air defense [on] the entire East Coast alerted’, Feightner recalled. ‘They knew we’d be coming during daylight hours sometime, and our target was in Lake Erie. They had a target located out there.
‘We took off from the carrier east of Guantanamo and refueled from the AJ tankers before we got to the coastline down around St Augustine, in Florida. Then we dropped down to sea level and we flew at treetop level from St Augustine clear up to Lake Erie without being detected. This was a terrible thing for the air defenses in our country at that time. We flew up there, and the first time they ever saw us – it was a really clear day – they saw the bombs go off on the targets.
‘All the [Air Force] F-86s and F-89s in the world then came screaming down at us. We built up speed and stayed low and, when they got down to about 5000 ft, we pulled the nose on those Banshees up and we didn’t stop until we hit 55,000 ft. None of those other birds could get up there. We flew back in bright daylight to our carrier, with everybody in the world trying to get to us. They’d get up to maybe 38,000 40,000 ft before spinning out. They couldn’t even get within weapons range of us. We just sat there and watched the show as we went home. We topped off again [from] the tankers out over the ocean on the way back.
‘Gayler, Ames and I still hold the record for the longest non-stop Banshee flight off of and back onto a carrier. We were airborne close to eight hours.’
F2H Banshee Units is published by Osprey Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by US Navy