By the beginning of 1943 Westinghouse had made considerable progress with the engines, and the next job was to design an efficient airframe. The US Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics decided to call on the services of the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, the resultant joint effort to be designated XFD-1.

McDonnell FD-1 Phantom / FH-1 Phantom Article

The designers set out to produce the smallest possible fighter that would satisfactorily carry a pilot, four 0.50-inch guns and their ammunition for a specified length of time. Weight, wing area and even engine power were treated as secondary consideration. Everything was to be kept as simple as possible with no “frills” or unnecessary gadgets to complicate production. Unorthodox ideas such as a tailless or tail-first layout (to keep the tail out of the way of the jet exhaust) or a prone position for the pilot were quickly put aside.

The McDonnell engineering team took just about a year to finalise the design of the XFD-1, although a preliminary mock-up inspection was held at St Louis at the end of May 1943. The release of drawings for structural work began on 25 January 1944 and construction of the prototype took a further year. By January, 1945, the last drawings had been finished, the last airframe parts made and assembled. On paper, the Westinghouse 19B was now promising a thrust of 1,500 lb (680 kg) in a version designated WE-19XB-2B for the prototypes of the XFD-1, but, in practice, engines reaching McDonnell were unable to produce this thrust and deliveries were lagging behind airframe availability.

In order to minimise the delay, taxy trials of the first XFD-1, by now named Phantom, began with only one engine installed, and ballast in the other engine bay, during January 1945. Although the 19B engine was producing only 1,325 lb at this stage, the company’s chief test pilot Woodward Burke felt confident enough to allow the aircraft to get airborne on 26 January 1945 in what has subsequently become widely re¬corded as the Phantom’s first flight. According to Kendall Perkins, though, this was only an “initial hop (rising a short way off the ground)”; the first real flight followed a few days later, after the second engine had been installed.

Satisfactory results were recorded in the first few weeks of flight testing, including a speed of 483 mph (778 km/h) at 20,000 ft (6 100 m), an initial rate of climb of 5,000 ft/min (25 m/sec) and a range of 750 mls (1 200 km). Consequently, the Navy was ready to initiate production of its first jet fighter, placing a contract for 100 FD-1s on 7 March 1945. They were to be powered by 1,600 lb st (726 kgp) Westinghouse J30-WE-20 turbojets, these being productionised WE-19s. The pro¬duction aircraft would closely resemble the prototypes, but would have increased internal fuel capacity, provision for a belly drop tank, a taller, square-tipped fin, slightly lengthened front fuselage and (on all but the first three production aircraft) dive brakes in the upper and lower surfaces of the outer wing panels.

Within a few months of production being launched, the war was over, first in Europe and then against Japan. VJ Day, on 2 September 1945, brought massive and immediate cuts in aircraft contracts in the US and that for the FD-1 was cut back to 30 aircraft, but later increased again to 60. Some considera¬tion was given to using an improved Model 19C version of the Westinghouse engine in the second batch of 30 aircraft, perhaps to have been designated FD-2s, but this did not materialise, and the entire production run was of the FD-1 configuration. After a first flight of a production FD-1 on 28 October 1946, deliveries were made from January 1947 to 29 May 1948, with the designation changing from FD-1 to FH-l halfway through the run, on 21 August 1947 (and then becoming retrospective for the Phantoms already in service).

First production aircraft designed by the company, the McDonnell FH-1 Phantom was notable in being also the first jet designed to operate from an aircraft-carrier. The US Navy placed the original letter of intent on 30 August 1943, and the first prototype made its initial flight from St Louis airport, Lambert Field, on 26 January 1945. The type was certainly not over-powered, because the final propulsion system, adopted after many studies of alterna¬tives, was two slim Westinghouse 19B engines buried in the wing roots. Later produced in small numbers as the J30, these were hardly enough for ade¬quate performance.

The first flight is thus all the more remarkable in that, at that time, Westinghouse had been able to deliver only one engine, and one of the wing-root engine bays was empty.

At that time McDonnell’s US Navy designator letter was D, the pro¬totype being the XFD-1, but because of confusion with Douglas (which also used letter D) McDonnell was assigned letter H, so that the 60 pro-duction Phantoms were designated FH-1, first flying on 28 October 1946. They were gentle and easy to fly, and on 21 July 1946 a prototype landed on and took off from USS Franklin D. Roosevelt. The production aircraft were delivered from December 1946 and served mainly with US Marine fighter squadron VMF-122. Their fault was lack of performance and lack of fire¬power, and the next-generation F2H Banshee was a vast improvement on both counts and after equipping one US Navy and two USMC squadrons, were withdrawn in 1950.

FH-1 Phantom
Powerplant: two 726-kg (1,600-lb) thrust Westinghouse J30-20 turbojets
Maximum speed 771 km/h (479 mph) at sea level / 813 km/h (505 mph) at high altitude
Cruising speed 215 kt / 399 km/h
Service ceiling 13000 m (43,000 ft)
Range 1110 km (690 miles) without belly drop tank.
Empty weight 3031 kg (6,683 lb)
Maximum take-off weight 5459 kg(12,035 lb)
Wing loading 43.67 lb/sq.ft / 213.0 kg/sq.m
Wingspan 12.42 m (40 ft 9 in)
Length 11.81 m (38 ft9 in)
Height 4.32 rn (14 ft2 in)
Wing area 25.64 sq.m (276 sq ft)
Armament: four 12.7 mm (0.5-in) machine-guns in upper part of nose
Crew: 1

The McDonnell F2H Banshee began life even before the end of World War II when the US Navy requested an improved version of the FH-1 Phantom. Designed by a team headed by Herman D. Barkley, bearing a resemblance to the earlier type, the Banshee was of increased size, incorporating folding wings, and with a lengthened fuselage to house more fuel, and with similarly-mounted and more powerful Westinghouse turbojet engines. Conventional ailerons, elevators and rudder were fitted, and split trailing-edge flaps. Small air-brakes were in the top surface of the outer wings. A tricycle undercarriage, with a single wheel on each unit, has the mains retract outward into the wings, and the nose wheel retracts rearward. Fuel was in five tanks in the fuselage.

McDonnell F2H Banshee Article

Three prototypes being ordered on 22 March 1945, as XF2D-1s, these later gaining the name Banshee. First flying in prototype form from St Louis, Missouri, on 11 January 1947, by then redesignated XF2H-1.

Initial trials were successfully accomplished, McDonnell being rewarded in May 1947 by a contract for 56 production F2H-l fighters, which began to enter service with VF-171 of the Atlantic Fleet during March 1949.

Like the later Phantom II, the Banshee proved to be a versatile machine, satisfactorily undertaking day and night fighter tasks, all-weather interception, close air support and photographic reconnaissance.

Following on from the original F2H-1 came the F2H-2, which had slightly more powerful engines and a longer fuselage. Production of the basic F2H-2 totalled 364, some of which were later modified to F2H-2B standard for close support tasks.

14 examples of the F2H-2N specialized night-fighter derivative were also completed, these incorporating airborne interception radar in a slightly longer nose.

For reconnaissance, 89 F2H-2P aircraft were completed as new, these being unarmed and featuring six cameras in an elongated nose section.

Production then switched to the F2H-3 (in 1962 redesignated F-2C), which was optimized for all-weather fighter duties, the first of 250 entering service during April 1952 and being easily recognizable by virtue of a fusel¬age- rather than fin-mounted tailplane, and was 8 ft longer than the -2, with more than double the internal fuel capacity and APQ-41 radar in the nose (250 built).

During the summer of 1949 the first US pilot to ever use an ejection seat escaped his F2H-1 Banshee while speeding over coastal South Carolina at 500 kts.

From November 1955, 39 ex-US Navy F2H-3s were transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy. That service’s first operational jet fighters, they were operated from HMCS Bonaventure until 12 September 1962, when the last examples were retired from service. They proved to be the last carrier-based fighters in Canadian service. Plans to acquire the F2H-3P for reconnaissance were abandoned.

The final production model was the F2H-4 (F-2D), which introduced improved APG-41 radar and more powerful engines, the 150th and last bringing production of the ‘Banjo’ to a close in August 1953.

The F2H was finally phased out of front line US Navy use on 30 September 1959, but remained with reserve units until the mid-‘sixties.

Contracts were to call eventually for a total of 892 production aircraft.

Gallery

XF2D-1 / XF2H-1
Engines: 2 x Westinghouse J34 turbojets
Number produced: 3

F2H-1 Banshee
Engines: 2 x Westinghouse J34-WE-22 turbojets, 3000 lbs.st.
Length 40 ft 2 in
Armament: 4 x 20 mm cannon.
Number produced: 56

F2H-2 Banshee
Engines: 2 x Westinghouse J34-WE-34 turbojets, 3250 lbs.st.
Length 40 ft 2 in
Armament: 4 x 20 mm cannon.
Number produced: 364

F2H-2B Banshee
Engines: 2 x Westinghouse J34-WE-22 turbojets, 3000 lbs.st.
Length 40 ft 2 in
Armament: 4 x 20 mm cannon, 2 x 500 lb bomb.

F2H-2N
Length 40 ft 2 in
Number produced: 14

F2H-2P Banshee
Armament: none
Number produced: 89

F2H-3 / F-2C
Engines: two 14.45kN (3,250-lb) thrust Westinghouse J34-WE-34 turbojets
Maximum speed 933 km/h (580 mph) at sea level
Service ceiling 14874 m (48,800 ft)
Max range 2374 km(1,475 miles)
Maximum speed 35,000 ft / 10,668 m: 532 mph / 856 kph
Empty weight 55056 kg (11,461 lb)
Maximum take-off 7802 kg (17,200 lb)
Wingspan 12.73 m (41 ft 9 in)
Length 14.68 m (48 ft 2 in)
Height 4.42 m (l4 ft 6 in)
Wing area 27.31 sq.m (294 sq.ft)
Armament: four 20-mm cannon, plus (Canadian aircraft only) two AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.
Crew: 1
Number produced: 250

F2H-4 / F-2D
Engines: 2 x Westinghouse J34-WE-38 turbojets, 3600 lbs.st.
Wingspan: 44 ft. 11 in
Length: 47 ft. 6 in
Loaded weight: approx. 19,000 lb
Max speed: 610 m.p.h
Ceiling: 56,000 ft
Typical range: 2,000 miles at over 500 mph
Armament: 4 x 20 mm. cannon
Crew: 1