The F-20 Tigershark light-fighter
The F-20 Tigershark is a fighter plane that Northrop started developing in 1975. It was intended to be reliable, easy to fly, and inexpensive to maintain. The company did not need to engage the Air Force or any other government agency when making design decisions because Northrop did not accept any government funding to create the aircraft. Consequently, the development process proceeded really swiftly. Northrop built three planes to take around the world to fly in demonstrations for potential customers
Many pilots thought the Tigershark was a great aircraft. It could climb 53,800 feet per minute and be combat-ready within a minute of takeoff. Northrop intended to sell the plane to other countries so they could use it in their militaries.
The super light-fighter that never was
Super ace Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier, once said, “Of all the airplanes in the world that I’ve flown, the F-5 is the most fun to fly.”
As Author Ehud Yonay explains in the sidebar of his article ‘Top Guns’, from the May 1983 issue of California magazine, which inspired the famed Paramount motion picture ‘Top Gun’ (and available to be read on www.topgunbio.com), “The F-5 is actually a family of planes, starting with the F-5A back in 1964 and culminating last year with the F-5G Tigershark (now called F-20). All are elegant, zippy beauties with body lines so trim they look like canoes with wings.
An exception in the high-budget defense business is the F-5, which is the only fighter plane manufactured in California. In addition to being compact, effective, and easy to repair, it is also relatively cheap. Top Gun instructors used F-5E Tiger IIs to resemble Russian MiGs, and they cost only $5 million each. Even the most expensive Tigershark is just $9 million, which is a quarter of what an F-14 Tomcat costs.
How to make a hop in an F-20
The Navy could court-martial anyone it caught showing off the classified cockpit of the F-14, but here’s how to make a hop in an F-20:
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- The stick. Say you’re entering bogey country. To find out what’s ahead, push the air-to-air weapon select button with your right thumb. (This is basically an “on” switch-your head-up display and digital display indicators are now operating.)
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- The throttle. With your left index finger, select “range while search.” A plot (which looks like a radarscope) of the range in question will appear on your right-hand digital display indicator.
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- The right-hand digital display indicator. If there’s a bogey out there, it will appear on this screen as a small black square. To lock your radar onto its tail, press the throttle’s acquisition button until the screen’s acquisition symbol (two parallel vertical lines) brackets the target. Suddenly the acquisition symbol disappears, and a numbered aiming circle appears around the black square – this tells you at a glance how fast, how high, and in what direction the bogey is going.
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- The head-up display. From this point on, you can look straight through your head-up display and see both the real target and the head-up steering circle (which looks like a bull’s-eye) simultaneously.
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- The left-hand digital display indicator. On this screen is a list of your available missiles and gun ammunition. Once you have picked your weapon, maneuver the plane until the head-up display’s steering circle is directly over your target. When you reach the proper range the word SHOOT will flash onto your head-up display. Pull the stick’s missile release or gun trigger with your right index finger. Bingo.”
FX
The US Department of Defense (DoD) project known as “FX” was responsible for most of the F-20’s development. Except for sensitive front-line technologies employed by US Air Force (USAF) aircraft, FX aimed to create fighters that could compete with the latest Soviet aircraft. The Carter administration’s military export programs, which sought to supply other countries with high-quality weapons without running the risk of US front-line technology ending up in Soviet hands, gave rise to FX. Northrop had great expectations for the F-20 in the international market, but after Ronald Reagan was elected, policy changes forced the F-20 to compete for sales against the most latest versions of the F-16 rather than the downgraded F-16/79.
Following the construction of three prototypes (two of which crashed after their pilots blacked out from excessive g-forces) and the partial completion of a fourth, the F-20 Tigershark program was discontinued in 1986.
Photo by Tom Kasser, published in California magazine, May 1983 and U.S. Air Force