FJ Furies Came in Several Flavors But All Were Mostly Sabres at Heart
North American Aviation (NAA) is justifiably famous for producing the B-25 Mitchell medium bomber and the P-51 Mustang fighter for the US Army Air Corps and later the US Air Force. However, when it came to producing carrier-based aircraft for the US Navy and Marine Corps, NAA’s significance faded in comparison to that of Douglas, Grumman, and Vought. In fact, NAA only produced one fighter for the Navy- the FJ series of jet-powered fighters.
Created from the Same DNA
NAA leveraged several assemblies from the P-51 Mustang to produce their first jet-powered fighter, the FJ-1 Fury. The straight-winged FJ-1 incorporated tail surfaces, wings, and a canopy/cockpit derived from the Mustang. But NAA didn’t limit this approach to their first Naval fighter design. The original design for the eventually legendary F-86 Sabre was essentially the same aircraft as the FJ-1. It wasn’t until swept wings replaced the straight wings on the Sabre and the Fury that either design became the jets we associate with those names today.
Going Straight
During late 1944, the US Navy was preparing for a potential invasion of Japan, likely sometime during late 1945 or early 1946. As a result of the need to have jet fighters available to the Navy for Operations Olympic and Coronet, the Navy ordered four carrier-based jet-powered fighters: The Vought XF6U-1 Pirate, the similar products from McDonnell, the McDonnell XFD-1 Phantom, the McDonnell XF2D-1 Banshee, and the North American XFJ-1 Fury.
The First Fury
NAA plan NA-134 produced the XFJ-1, a single-engine jet-powered design with low-mounted straight wings, conventional empennage with pronounced dihedral for the horizontal surfaces, and a straight-through engine intake/exhaust configuration. The wings had retractable, slatted air brakes on the upper and lower surfaces. Powered by a General Electric J35 axial-flow turbojet producing 4,000 pounds of thrust and armed with six .50 caliber machine guns, the XFJ-1 looked good enough that the Navy ordered 100 of them in May of 1945. The jet flew for the first time on 11 September 1946.
Heading to the Boat
Only 30 examples of the FJ-1 ever entered service with the Navy, all of them between October 1947 and April 1948 with VF-5A. On the production aircraft, the wing-mounted air brakes were replaced with fuselage-mounted air brakes. Like the early McDonnell F2H Banshees, the FJ-1 was equipped with a small wheel co-mounted on the modified nose wheel strut, allowing the jet to kneel with its nose low (and its tail elevated) so it could be tucked under the tail of the aircraft parked in front of it aboard the boat. On 16 March 1948, VF-5A operated from the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Boxer (CV-21) for the first time.
