F-100 to F-117 | The Rise of the Century Series

Added: 2026-05-03

[00:00:00]So many of you left comments on my last video asking what about the Century series. And you know what? You were right to ask. Today we will cover F-100 all the way through the F-106, the legendary Sentry series. And then we are also looking at what came after like the North American F107, the General Dynamics F-11 Airvark, and even the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk. These aircraft did not just push aviation forward. They marked the shift into the supersonic missile-driven age of air combat. All right, so first things first. Why did America even need these jets? World War II ends in 1945, and almost immediately tensions rise with the Soviet Union.

[00:00:35]Now, both sides have nuclear weapons, and the Soviets are developing longrange bombers capable of reaching American cities. That creates a serious problem.

[00:00:43]The North American F86 Saber was great for dog fighting, but it wasn't built to stop fast, highaltitude nuclear bombers.

[00:00:50]So, the US Air Force realized it needed something completely new, faster aircraft, capable of flying higher, equipped with radar and guided missiles, and able to intercept threats before they ever reached US airspace. Starting in the early 1950s, that is exactly what they built. One aircraft after another, each pushing the limits of speed, altitude, and technology. They all carry designations in the hundreds, F-100, F101, F102, and so on. And that is where the name comes from, the Century series Century, as in 100. Now, let's meet them one by one. First up, the one that started it all, the F-100 Super Saber.

[00:01:25]This plane did something no American jet had ever done before. It flew faster than the speed of sound in a straight line, not diving down, not cheating, just flying straight and going supersonic. That was a huge moment in history. It had four guns. It could carry bombs and missiles. It could fly above 50,000 ft. That is about 15 km up in the sky. But the F100 had a dark side, too. Let's talk about that. A brand new F100C is flying from the factory to its base. The pilot is Lieutenant Barty Brooks. During the flight, something goes wrong with the nose landing gear. It will not stay in place properly. So, Lieutenant Brooks tries to land at Edwards Air Force Base, which has a longer runway. He comes into land, but his speed drops too low. The nose comes up too high. And here's the problem with the F-100. If the speed drops too much, it stops flying. It cannot save itself. The engine is not powerful enough to recover. The jet starts to wobble. It rocks left and right. It staggers through the air with the nose pointing up. Pilots who saw this terrifying flying style gave it a name. They called it the saber dance.

[00:02:19]The jet tries to climb. It rolls to the right and it crashes into the ground in a huge fireball. Lieutenant Brooks did not survive. This crash was caught on film by cameras that were set up for a different test that day. The whole world could now see just how dangerous the F100 could be when things went wrong.

[00:02:35]The Saber Dance was a reminder these early jets were incredible machines, but they were also very unforgiving. One small mistake, one moment of low speed, and it was over. Before we move on, let's just look at what the F-100 Super Saber did in Vietnam as a whole. The F-100 flew more than 360,000 sorties in Vietnam, more than any other aircraft, including the famous F4 Phantom and F105. So, what are sorties? A sorty is one complete mission flown by an aircraft. It starts when the plane takes off and ends when it lands. For example, if a pilot flies one mission and returns, that is one sort. If the same pilot flies three separate missions in a day, that counts as three sorties. In military reports, when they say the United States Air Force flew hundreds of sorties, they mean hundreds of individual missions were completed. A sort does not mean how many enemies were destroyed or how long the aircraft stayed in the air. It simply counts how many missions were flown. At its peak, over 490 Super Sabers were active in South Vietnam, flying an average of two ground support missions every single day. But the price was heavy. Over 242 F-100s were lost in Vietnam and more than 889 were lost in accidents, killing 324 pilots. This was not an easy jet to fly. It demanded respect. And the pilots who flew it like Swedener gave everything they had. Next is the F101 Voodoo. And this jet looks scary because it is. The Voodoo was big. It had two powerful engines. It was built to fly far and fast. F101A Voodoo became the first American jet to fly faster than 1,000 mph. Shooting for a world speed record in the Air Force's F101A Voodoo fighter bomber, Major Adrien E. Drew takes to the air at the Air Force Flight Test Center. He sets a new world record of 127 and 610 mph, bettering the previous British record by more than 75 mph in the 1950s. That is incredible.

[00:04:25]The Voodoo had many jobs. It protected bombers. It took spy photos. It stopped enemy planes. The F101B carried nuclear rockets, specifically the 2 AIR2A rockets, plus 2 A IM4 missiles. Now, look at this shape, that big triangle wing. This is the F102 Delta Dagger. The F102 has a famous story. When engineers first built it, it could not go supersonic. It was too slow, too much air drag. So, the engineers came up with a clever idea. They shaped it like a Coke bottle, wider in the middle and narrower at the ends. That design reduced drag and helped the jet go supersonic. This idea was called area rule. Every modern fastjet uses this idea today. The F102 was built as an interceptor. Its job was simple. If Soviet bombers come, go up and stop them. It served that role through the 1960s and flew missions in Vietnam, too.

[00:05:16]Now, before we get to F104, let me tell you about F103 because this one has a fascinating story. In 1949, the Air Force wanted a supersonic interceptor to destroy Soviet bombers. Republic Aircraft came up with the XF 103, a design capable of flying at Mach 3, three times the speed of sound at 80,000 ft altitude. That is 24 km straight up.

[00:05:36]It had two engines working together, a normal jet engine for takeoff, then a ramjet engine for extreme speed. The ramjet would kick in and push it to Mach 3. It had missiles stored inside the body, six of them, plus 36 small rockets. So, what happened? three big problems. The whole jet was made of titanium, extremely difficult to work with. The engines kept having delays and costs kept going up. Then America realized the Soviet bomber threat was not as big as they thought. Soviets were building missiles, not bombers. So a Mach 3 bomber killer was suddenly not needed anymore. On August 21, 1957, the Air Force canled the F103 completely. It never got past a wooden mockup, never built, never flown, just drawings and a wooden model. And because it never entered service, the F-103 is not part of the official Sentry series. Okay, stop everything because this one is special. The F104 Starf Fighter. Look at it. It looks like a missile with wings.

[00:06:28]Tiny, tiny wings. A very long, thin body. It is one of the most extreme jets ever built. Pilots even called it the missile with a man in it. The F104 was designed by a legendary engineer named Kelly Johnson. He wanted one thing, speed. Pure speed. And the results, amazing. The F104 was the first jet that could fly at Mach 2 that is two times the speed of sound and hold it. Not just for a second, sustained Mach 2 flight.

[00:06:54]And here is the most amazing fact. The F104 held three world records at the same time. The speed record, the altitude record, and the climb rate record. All three at once. No other jet in history has ever done that. The wings were so thin and sharp. This jet was not easy to fly. It was dangerous, but it was also a legend. Even today, NASA still flies some F-104Gs. The Star Fighter was simply incredible. The F105 Thunderchief pilots called it the Thud.

[00:07:23]The Thud was big, heavy, fast, and it was built to carry a lot of bombs deep into enemy territory. F-105 flew about 20,000 combat sorties in Vietnam. Every single day, F105s flew into some of the most dangerous skies in history. Enemy missiles everywhere, anti-aircraft guns everywhere. The losses were very heavy.

[00:07:41]And many brave pilots never came home.

[00:07:43]But the Thunder Chief never stopped flying. It kept going mission after mission. Pilots who flew it respected it. It was tough. It did its job. And it paid a very high price in Vietnam. The F106 Delta Dart. People called it the ultimate interceptor. And that title fits perfectly. The F106 was built from the lessons of the F102. It was faster, smarter, more powerful. Its one and only job, protect America from Soviet nuclear bombers. Every night, every day, 24 hours, 7 days a week, the F-106 was connected to a massive computer defense system on the ground. The ground computers would track Soviet planes.

[00:08:19]They would tell the F106 where to go, the jet and the computers worked together, and the F-106 carried nuclear air-to-air missiles. The pilot could fire a nuclear missile at an enemy bomber, even if he missed, the nuclear explosion would destroy the bomber anyway. This jet served from 1959 all the way into the 1980s. Over 20 years of protecting the skies when they retired the F-106. Some were turned into remotec controlled drones, then shot down by missiles during tests. A strange ending for such a great jet. The F107 and this one actually flew. Look at it. Something looks strange. Yes, the air intake is on top of the jet. Not the front, not the sides. The top right behind the cockpit.

[00:08:58]Nobody had ever done that before. North American Aviation built it in 1956. It was fast. It was capable. It could carry nuclear weapons. It could fly at Mach 2.

[00:09:08]But here's the problem. At the same time, the F105 Thunderchief existed. The Air Force compared both jets. And in 1957, they chose the F105. The F107 lost the competition. Just like that, three prototypes were built. They flew some test flights. And then they were sent to museums. One of the most unique-l lookinging jets ever built. and nobody ever flew it in combat. The F108 Rapier.

[00:09:32]This one never even got off the ground.

[00:09:33]In 1957, North American aviation started designing a massive long-range interceptor. Its job, fly far into the Arctic, find Soviet bombers coming over the North Pole, and destroy them before they reached America. The plan was impressive. It was going to fly at Mach 3, three times the speed of sound at 80,000 ft with long range missiles inside its body. But in 1959, it was cancelled. too expensive, too complex, and America was now more worried about Soviet missiles, not bombers. Not a single F108 was ever built. Only drawings and models exist. Another great idea killed by the Cold War budget. The F109, what is it? Nothing. Literally nothing. The number F109 was briefly given to the F101B Voodoo in some paperwork. Then someone requested it for a brand new experimental VTOL jet, a jet that could take off straight up like a helicopter called the Bell XF 109. That request was denied. So the F109 was never officially given to any real jet.

[00:10:30]No jet ever flew with that number. F109 is just a number, an empty slot in history. The F-110. This one is simple.

[00:10:36]You already know this jet, just by a different name. In 1961, the US Air Force wanted to use the Navy's F4 Phantom 2. A fantastic jet already proven, already flying. But the Air Force gave it their own name, the F-110 Spectre. So for a short time, the exact same jet had two names. The Navy called it the F4 Phantom. The Air Force called it the F-110 Spectre. This caused so much confusion across all the military branches that in 1962, America decided enough is enough. They created one unified naming system for all jets across all branches. Under the new system, the F-110 Spectre officially became the F4 Phantom 2. One name for everyone. Now, this one is real. The F-111 Arvar. And it did something no jet had done before. Its wings could move in flight. The pilot could change the shape of the wings depending on what he needed. Wings spread wide for slow speed takeoff and landing. Wings swept back tight for going supersonic and fast.

[00:11:31]This was called variable sweep wings.

[00:11:33]Revolutionary in 1967. The F-111 first flew in 1964. It entered service in 1967 and it served all the way until 1998.

[00:11:43]Over 30 years. It flew in Vietnam in 1968. It bombed Libya in 1986 on direct orders from President Reagan. And in the Gulf War in 1991, it destroyed over 1,500 Iraqi tanks. One jet type, 1,500 tanks. Devastating. The FB11 was the bomber version. Same jet, but built specifically for longrange nuclear strikes. It flew so low and so fast that enemy radar could barely track it. The F11 was not pretty, but it was powerful and it worked. The word arvar is Africans for earth pig and reflects the look of the long nose of the aircraft that might remind one of the nose of the arvar. Now these numbers F-12 to F-16 are very interesting. No American jets ever officially carried these numbers.

[00:12:27]So what are they? During the 1970s, America had a top secret program. They got their hands on real Soviet jets. Mig 21s, Mig 23s, captured or bought secretly from other countries. America flew these Soviet jets at secret bases to learn how they flew, how to fight against them, how to beat them, and to keep it all secret, they gave these jets unofficial American F- numbers as code names. Pilots who flew in this secret program were forbidden to talk about it for decades. The program was called Constant PEG, and it trained hundreds of American fighter pilots to fight and beat Soviet jets, real jets, real flights. Totally secret and totally fascinating. And finally, the F-117 Nighthawk. The most famous secret jet in history. Look at that shape. Nothing like it. Flat panels, sharp angles, no curves anywhere. It looks like something from a science fiction movie. And that shape is the whole point. Those flat panels deflect radar signals away like a mirror deflecting light. Enemy radar sends out a signal. The F-17 bounces it away in a different direction. The radar gets nothing back. The jet disappears.

[00:13:31]This is stealth technology. And the F-17 was the first jet in the world ever built entirely around it. First flight 1981, entered Secret Service 1983. For years, nobody outside the program knew it existed. It flew secret missions at night, always at night. That is why it was called the Nighthawk. The Air Force even called it a fighter, an Fjet. Even though it had no air-to-air weapons at all, it only dropped bombs. But calling it a fighter attracted the best pilots to the secret program. Then in 1989, the F-17 was revealed to the public for the first time. America finally showed the world what it had been hiding. And in the Gulf War in 1991, the F-17 proved itself completely. One of the most effective combat jets ever built, the F-17 was retired in 2008. But some are believed to still fly occasionally for testing dark shapes in the night sky. On March 27th, 1999, a Loheed F-117 Nighthawk was shot down during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. A Serbian air defense unit engaged the aircraft using an S125 NEVA. The F-117 followed a predictable route and was briefly exposed on radar during its Bombay operation. The enemy used short radar activation and achieved a missile lock.

[00:14:39]Two surfaceto-air missiles were launched. The aircraft was hit and went down. The pilot Dale Zelko ejected and was later recovered. If you like these kinds of videos, please like, share, and subscribe for more. We also made a video covering fighter jets from the F1 to the F-35. Check it out here or find the link in our description.