WI: F-108 Rapier Enters Service

[Delta Force]

If it was to carry 4 20mm cannons, I'd guess that they'd probably be M-39s, although a search for cutaways & diagrams online didn't show anywhere it would look like they could go, and scans of the Standard Aircraft Characteristics sheets from 1958 & 59 available online list no gun armament, just a few Falcon missiles in an internal bay, yet the wiki article cites to the USAF Museum online fact sheet, which lists 4x20 mm cannon & 108 unguided rockets, or 4,000 lbs bombs.

If the museum didn't just make a mistake, then any guns would probably have to be mounted on a tray that would mount in the weapons bay, they were originally planned but deleted early in the design process, or the program was cancelled before the designers found a place to squeeze them in.

I haven't seen any mockups, diagrams, or illustrations with bombs, cannons, or rockets, or any apparent provision for them. I'll see if I can figure this out.

 

[Just Leo]

If the museum didn't just make a mistake, then any guns would probably have to be mounted on a tray that would mount in the weapons bay, they were originally planned but deleted early in the design process, or the program was cancelled before the designers found a place to squeeze them in.

They'd only just begun with $141 million for the wooden mock-up and no metal cut. Any idea on how much a real flying example would cost? The engine fuel had changed from zip-fuel to JP6, so nobody else would be using it. Avro Canada engineers had done studies on projected performance estimates and they weren't worried, but they perhaps should have been. The -108 outlasted the Arrow, and the -106 won out overall.

 

[DD951]

They'd only just begun with $141 million for the wooden mock-up and no metal cut. Any idea on how much a real flying example would cost? The engine fuel had changed from zip-fuel to JP6, so nobody else would be using it. Avro Canada engineers had done studies on projected performance estimates and they weren't worried, but they perhaps should have been. The -108 outlasted the Arrow, and the -106 won out overall.

Quick search didn't find anything other than some assorted stuff saying that the program never got to the point where the per-unit costs were worked out, and some vague guesses that it would have been somewhere ranging from similar to somewhat more expensive than the YF-12 would have been.

 

[Delta Force]

They'd only just begun with $141 million for the wooden mock-up and no metal cut. Any idea on how much a real flying example would cost? The engine fuel had changed from zip-fuel to JP6, so nobody else would be using it. Avro Canada engineers had done studies on projected performance estimates and they weren't worried, but they perhaps should have been. The -108 outlasted the Arrow, and the -106 won out overall.

Oddly enough, I have found just such a document while trying to find out about the armament. It just happened to have been posted in the thread I'm browsing. Equipment costs for a wing of aircraft are listed here in 1958 dollars. It appears $291.3 million would be spent on 83 interceptors ($3.51 million each), and $48.8 million on 420 AIM-47 missiles ($116,200 each).

 

[Delta Force]

Still no indication of where any cannons and rockets would go, but I've found some excellent illustrations and photographs of the mockup. Looks like some additional missiles could be squeezed in if folding fins were adopted.

 

[Delta Force]

I have something of a confirmation that the final F-108 design was only armed with the three AIM-47 missiles. Namely, a lot of sources make no mention of it for the final design, and I can't find them in any cutaway diagrams of the final design (or anywhere where they could go for that matter). I imagine those armaments were proposed earlier in the design process, as cannons and rockets were more of an early to mid 1950s weapon loadout.