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Tomcat, the firs USN Fly by Wire fighter

Navy Chief

Navy Chief

Senior Member
Tomcat, the first USN Fly by Wire fighter

The other day, I was listening to a talk show that was interviewing a former USN F/A-18 pilot, who remarked that the Hornet was the first "Fly By Wire" fighter aircraft.

That just didn't seem correct to me, so I checked and found this:

http://www.firstmicroprocessor.com/thereviewers/russell-fish/

It states in one of the paragraphs that the Tomcat was the first to employ such technology.

When I was at Pax River, the Tomcat was just being introduced to the fleet. I distinctly recall an incident on the flight when a civilian contract maintenance type was killed when the flaps of the Tomcat (that they were working on) went to the full position, and the guy in the cockpit had not touched the controls. The accident was blamed on a faulty flight controls computer. If I remember correctly, that accident was one of the reasons why mobile electric power carts had to be positioned away from the aircraft, to prevent such occurrences.


NC
 
Last edited:
Navy Chief said:
The other day, I was listening to a talk show that was interviewing a former USN F/A-18 pilot, who remarked that the Hornet was the first "Fly By Wire" fighter aircraft.

That just didn't seem correct to me, so I checked and found this:

http://www.firstmicroprocessor.com/thereviewers/russell-fish/

It states in one of the paragraphs that the Tomcat was the first to employ such technology.

When I was at Pax River, the Tomcat was just being introduced to the fleet. I distinctly recall an incident on the flight when a civilian contract maintenance type was killed when the flaps of the Tomcat (that they were working on) went to the full position, and the guy in the cockpit had not touched the controls. The accident was blamed on a faulty flight controls computer. If I remember correctly, that accident was one of the reasons why mobile electric power carts had to be positioned away from the aircraft, to prevent such occurrences.


NC
Click to expand...


I understood that the first FBW fighter in the US inventory was the F-16. Tomcat may have been the USN first?
 
ejoiner said:
I understood that the first FBW fighter in the US inventory was the F-16. Tomcat may have been the USN first?
Click to expand...

No doubt there will be a difference of opinion, but the article states that Grumman's Tomcat was the first, in 1970. NC
 
The first FBW aircraft was the Soviet's Tupolev ANT-20 in the 1930's and technically, the first FBW Fighter to fly was the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow. There's a lot of mixed evolution regarding FBW but in the end, the F-16 was the first FBW Jet Fighter in Service but the F/A-18 the first Quadruplex FBW Jet Fighter.
 
StormILM said:
The first FBW aircraft was the Soviet's Tupolev ANT-20 in the 1930's and technically, the first FBW Fighter to fly was the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow. There's a lot of mixed evolution regarding FBW but in the end, the F-16 was the first FBW Jet Fighter in Service but the F/A-18 the first Quadruplex FBW Jet Fighter.
Click to expand...

Well now thats cutting the cheese quite thin... quadruplex?
 
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