History
The first FJ-1 Fury originated in a requirement issued by the US Navy in 1944 that called for a supplement to its first jet fighter, the McDonnell XFD-1 Phantom. Three aircraft manufacturer competitors responded to the USN with the Vought XF6U-1 Pirate, McDonnell XF2H-1 Banshee, and the North American XFJ-1 Fury. The USN ordered these four carrier-based jet fighters from late 1944 to early 1945, and it anticipated that these four fighters would be available in time for Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan.
The XFJ-1 was built as a thin-straight-wing, tricycle-gear fighter with a single General Electric J35 turbojet fed by an intake passing through the fuselage. It had a frameless teardrop canopy, and the cockpit was mounted high up in the fuselage to give the pilot excellent visibility. It was armed with 50 Browning machine guns mounted next to the air intake, making it the last aircraft ordered by the USN to use the type of guns as its primary armament. The XFJ-1 had a wing, tail assembly, and canopy that strongly resembled the piston-engined North American P-51D Mustang.
In May 1945, 100 FJ-1s were ordered even though the aircraft had not left the drawing board; however, the war in the Pacific ended sooner than expected. Effectively, the order for the FJ-1 was cut to three prototypes and 30 production aircraft, and the development began to slow down.
In September 1946, the XFJ-1 finally made its first flight on November 27, 1946. The deliveries of the production aircraft to the US Navy began in October 1947. Only a single squadron of VF-5A had become the first operational jet fighter squadron with its FJ-1 aircraft in the USN; this squadron was based at NAS North Island near San Diego, California. In addition, the FJ-1 made the first operational aircraft landing as a pure jet fighter at sea on March 10, 1948, aboard the Essex-class aircraft carrier, USS Boxer. The aircraft was also capable of launching without catapult assistance without a crowded flight deck, although this was later considered too risky for normal operations.
The production FJ-1 was powered by a 4,000 lb Allison J35-A-2 turbojet engine and did not use the folding wings because dive brakes mounted in the wings made them impossible. To compensate for that disadvantage, the engineers fitted it with a “kneeling” nose undercarriage, allowing the FJ-1 to be stacked tail-high close to another FJ-1. The aircraft even lacked pressurization and temperature control in the cockpit, making it very uncomfortable to fly. The VF-5A pilots also noted the flight performance of the FJ-1 was fairly poor when flying at its maximum gross weight, but it had comfortable flying characteristics. There were problems with the wingtip tanks, as they were too heavy for the thin wing. North American engineers attempted to redesign them, but the problem was never resolved.
Consequently, the aircraft did not reach mass-production status mainly because it was not very suitable for carrier service, and the much-improved aircraft with a longer and slimmer fuselage and the swept-wing design had entered development for the USN that would replace the FJ-1 sooner.
The VF-5A was later renamed as VF-51 and received more advanced Grumman F9F-2 Panthers in May 1949, so the FJ-1s were transferred to the USN Reserve units after just 14 months of being frontline fighters in service. They remained in training roles for another four years before retiring in 1953.
The US Air Force got interested in the Fury, so North American proposed a refined design to the USAF in 1945 while the FJ-1 was in development. North American had assured the USAF that they could build a much-improved aircraft derived from the FJ-1 basic design. This led to the development of XP-86 with the swept-wing configuration, the first of the Sabres, beginning to lay the lineage of the F-86 Sabres and FJ-2/-3 Furies.
