T-38's are cool :usa how much do they weigh and how much thrust do they have? what is the top speed? i assume they have no afterburner?
11,800# gross weight, including 3,790# (598 gal) of Jet-A and two pilots. Installed (meaning actual) thrust is 2,950# x 2 engines in afterburner, and just over 2,000# each w/o burners. The operational reality was that engines varied in their thrust output. The AF would pair a high-time with a low-time engine in the same airframe (engine changes were quick and easy) so that all aircraft had approximately equal total thrust for formation flying purposes. There was nothing worse than pairing up a dog and a hot-rod in formation, but sometimes it happened. The only time I know for sure that I had two healthy engines was when I flew the first instructional sortie on a brand new T-38 that my buddy had just picked up at the factory the day before - eight hours on the clock. Unfortunately the T-Birds took this airframe when they got rid of their F-4s and went to T-38s, and it was destroyed in the infamous Indian Springs, NV 4-ship crash.
Max speed personally was Mach 1.35, which was 935 mph at the particular altitude and temp that day. Achieved by a burner climb to FL 500 (50,000 ft), then roll off into a dive down to FL300 - the lowest fuel burn technique to reach that speed. We were prohibited from intentionally exceeding M1 below FL300 so the boom wouldn't be too strong when it got to the ground. You could accelerate past Mach 1 in a shallow climb, but it was not the most fuel-efficient way to go M1+. After a burner climb/supersonic run, we'd be hard pressed to get an hour of flying time in. Specific fuel consumption went from about 1#/hr/lb thrust w/o afterburner to 2.2#/hr/lb thrust with burner, so if you wanted to get any training done you had to be judicious about tapping the burners.
Burner climbs were usually only done a couple of times during the student's six-months in the '38. Unfortunately we could only do a "restricted" burner climb due to ATC and local Webb AFB (Big Spring, TX) departure restrictions - normal takeoff and climb at 300K until 10,000 ft and reaching the "Bird" or "Dove" departure fixes, which were about 26 miles from the base. At Bird or Dove we'd then accelerate to .92 Mach at 10,001 ft and do a nice easy pull to 60 degrees nose up. As soon as you reach sixty degrees, you start a nice gentle pushover to level flight. By the time you're back to level flight, you'd be at Flight Level 500 (50,000 ft). A healthy airplane will go up to about FL560, but by AF regulation you have to have a pressure suit above FL500 and our airplanes were not so equipped. I had buddies who did take it that high, but I never did. I also had buddies who died in the airplane, and I never did
that either!
Of the dozens of burner climbs I'd done, one was a bit more memorable because I didn't have to pull it out of burner at 280K (you "coast" up to 300K!) on takeoff leg to meet an ATC restriction. I was coming out of Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth one night in some rainy weather. It was a short hop back to Webb, so I requested a burner climb because I had plenty of fuel for the trip (except in an emergency, a burner climb has to be approved by ATC so they can adjust other traffic flow to accommodate you). We were only going to FL240 and were not a local aircraft, so I thought I didn't have a snowball's chance of getting it approved - but they did! At liftoff, tower asked me to make an immediate right turn and contact departure, Checked in with Departure, and they asked me to report passing 6,000 ft, which I immediately did, then 10,000 ft which I immediately did - as fast as we could make the radio exchange. Then a frequency change to Ft Worth Center - checked in and they asked me to confirm my altitude as passing 16,000 ft. I confirmed, and they asked me to report level at FL240. I responded immediately with,
"Leveling at FL240." It all happened almost as fast as we exchanged radio transmissions. I was climbing nearly vertically to keep from accelerating - fortunately the AF definition of aerobatics (prohibited at night or in IFR) is in
excess of 90 degrees of pitch or bank, so I was still legal. We livened up an otherwise boring evening for the ATC controllers, and my student and I had a fun ride!
In 1,100+ hours in the airplane, I can't say that I encountered the low-G buffeting Chip described Chuck Thornton's T-38, but some airplanes did fly a bit differently, depending on how well (or usually how poorly, in the case of the AF!) they were rigged. Maybe it just became "normal" buffet for me. You certainly did get a buffet above about 5 Gs if you didn't keep the speed up over about 400K. If you do any over the top maneuver in less than 8,000 ft, you're in the buffet big time.
The interesting thing is that it is impossible to get any buffet supersonic because of the different aerodynamics above M1. I would demo this by getting up to about M1.2 at FL350 or so and then rolling into a 7G turn in full AB. It would be glassy smooth until the high drag dropped your speed (quickly!) to below M1 - then it was instant buffet. The really insidious buffet was at slow speed, though. The horizontal slab (all-moving stabilizer) would theoretically not produce an angle of attack that would stall the wing. Stalls in this airplane are called "full-aft stick stalls" because the nose never drops. You just develop at 6,000+fpm sink rate at 85% N1 (which is about 50% thrust) with the nose above the horizon and the stick all the way into your gut. With gear down and 60% flaps, you can fly right out of the sink by just lighting the afterburners - you didn't even have to lower the nose. While in this so-called stall, you normally had a bit of a wing rock which seems a bit strange when you first do it. If the wing rock went over 45 degrees, you were supposed to recover before it progressed further. Twice I had T-38's abruptly flip over on their backs during full-aft stick stalls with only the normal wing rock (maybe 5-10 degrees) preceding it. The lesson was clear that you absolutely never, never, never get into this situation in the traffic pattern, because you will die if it flips over - there's simply not enough altitude to recover.
Chip is right on about the antiquated systems - it was designed in the 1950's, and there's very little redundancy. I always thought the single avionics suite was it's Achilles heel. A combination of avionics failures in both airplanes in bad weather had a two-ship formation I was in headed for Havana at FL470 instead of our intended destination, Boca Chica NAS in Key West. Very long story short, we managed to avoid an international incident, but I was always more than a bit wary of the avionics after that. Many if not all of the current fleet have been upgraded from steam to glass cockpits, so that's less of an issue.
Roll rate: 720 degrees per second, but limited to 360 degrees per second for continuous rolls. The Thunderbirds demo of max roll rate was really only 50% roll rate. When our students were a bit more advanced and wanted to challenge their instructor's abilities, we'd attempt to slam the stick full deflection and back to center without rolling at least 360 degrees. It is practically impossible at speeds of 300K or more, but it was fun trying. The reason the T-38 has this much aileron authority is that you need it with the stubbly little wings if you get into serious wake turbulence in the traffic pattern.
Speeds: Liftoff 155K (178 mph), traffic pattern 280K (322 mph), gear in transit limit 240K (276 mph), normal final turn speed 175K (202 mph), normal final approach 155K (178 mph), normal touchdown 130K (149 mph). Final turn, final approach, and touchdown speeds are increased by 1K for each 100# of fuel over 1,000# on board, and by 10K for no-flap. During some heavyweight no-flap training in IP school, I touched down as fast as 190K (219 mph) We did formation landings, which were a lot of fun, but they were prohibited with retread tires. Tires were rated to 240K (276 mph). We flight planned a cruise speed of 490K (564 mph), and would usually cruise in the mid-40,000 ft range. Range was terrible, though - about 800nm (921 miles) was a reasonable upper limit with adequate reserves. It was possible to stretch it farther with some extraordinary effort, though.
Runway required: 8,000 feet with the proper barrier (the T-38 does not have a hook and requires a special barrier), or 10,000 ft without a barrier. During an emergency runway closure at Webb (Navy F-8 blew a tire), a buddy diverted to Midland-Odessa Regional - or so he thought. He actually landed at nearby Midland Airpark, on a 3,500 ft runway. They were going to tow the airplane back on the freeway, but our Wing Commander Col. Malcom Ryan decided he'd fly it back himself. It was what the AF called "Category 3" operations, which meant that there was a point in the takeoff roll that he'd be going too fast to abort in the remaining runway, and too slow to take off if he lost an engine. He made it out just fine, though.
I loved flying this airplane so much that in the mid-1990s I bought the Brasilian AF's entire fleet of F-5B's (five of them). The F-5B is about 85% common to the T-38, the major difference being the addition of tip-tanks, and centerline and wing hard points. Brasil attempted to back out of the deal, and we have been embroiled in a battle over the airplanes ever since - they are still sitting in a military hangar in Sao Paulo, with neither side able to do anything with them. It's a story that I'll likely never be able to tell in full, at least publicly.
A lot of you know how easily the Ford GT accelerates to 200 mph. Imagine that you could keep on accelerating just that easily for another several hundred mph. I was getting PAID to do this two or three times a day!! :lol It's amazing how similar the Ford GT and the T-38 are in their respective elements - electric smooth and effortless performance, but with a bite if you're not careful.
Here are a couple of vintage 35mm photos. The first is over approximately Casa Grande, AZ in 1972. We were fooling around trying to get a shot of the other jet's AB plume, but it didn't show up against the sunset. The second one was at about the same time frame, over DonnyMac's country - I think we were just north of Iraan, TX at about 35,000 ft - 90 degrees of bank in a student 4-ship training flight, looking down at some oil fields.:cheers
ld: the Budweiser rocket car accomplished this task back in 1979 :wink the Budweiser rocket car only weighed 3,700 pounds but had a total of 60,000+ horsepower in the form of 2 rockets built into the car! in addition to its main rocket engine it had a sidewinder missile that was fired off at 640 mph. this acted sort of like a afterburner for a jet but way more intense acceleration. in fact the Budweiser rocket car is the fastest accelerating land speed car ever. as you can see from this vid i have posted here it only took this car 15 seconds to go from a dead stop to 739 mph and break the sound barrier. way major, very intense, extreme acceleration that is just totally beyond comprehension :eek 
