In the early 1950s a Cutlass pilot was flying near Naval Air ... “Coming in lower, the unpiloted F7U-3 missed colliding with the central cupola of the famous Del Coronado Hotel by scant feet ...

In the early 1950s a Cutlass pilot was flying near Naval Air ... “Coming in lower, the unpiloted F7U-3 missed colliding with the central cupola of the famous Del Coronado Hotel by scant feet ...

On December 20, 1951, the F7U-3 made its first flight. “Our job was to test the Cutlass,” wrote F7U Navy test pilot—later astronaut—Wally Schirra in his autobiography, Schirra’s Space.

The Cutlass started out with a good — if unconventional ... Pilots hated the plane, and even the improved F7U-3 wasn't much better, as well as being a mechanical nightmare to maintain.

One beautiful southern California afternoon in the summer of 1954, I watched a Navy F7U-3 Cutlass jet fighter as it cruised over the beach at Coronado and headed out to sea. And then I saw the ...

It looked like the future but flew like a death sentence. The F7U Cutlass, born from post-WW2 experimental designs, entered service with promise—yet quickly earned a deadly reputation. What went wrong ...

Such is the case with the Vought F7U Cutlass. The story of this stunning-looking single-seat, twin-engined, carrier-based fighter jet dates back to the end of the Second World War. After this ...