The Grumman F11F Tiger was an attempt to obtain the maximum possible performance from an aircraft based on the firm’s highly successful F9F Panther/Cougar series of Navy fighters. While its predecessors enjoyed great success, the F11F was a mediocre combat aircraft.
The straight-wing F9F Panther, which first flew in 1947, evolved into the swept-wing Cougar. Both fighters were highly successful. The Grumman F11F design—begun in 1953 as the F9F-8 and then F9F-9—turned out to be a totally new design with several distinct differences from its predecessors: The F11F had a thinner wing, fuselage-side intakes, low-mounted horizontal tailplane, and an afterburning engine.1 The most distinctive feature of the new fighter was its “area rule” or “Coke-bottle” fuselage for improved high-speed performance.
The area-rule concept followed three years of studies by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics that promised to reduce aircraft drag by as much as 25 percent. This was accomplished by “pinching in” the fuselage where it joins the wing so that the total drag of the wing and fuselage is significantly less than their separate, combined drag. It somewhat resembled the familiar Coca-Cola bottle.
This much-improved F9F was delayed by engine development problems. Still, based on Grumman’s record of producing several generations of effective fighter designs, the Navy placed an initial order for the aircraft on 27 April 1953, with production contracts forthcoming for the F9F-9 day-fighter and F9F-9P photo-reconnaissance variants. The first YF9F-9 prototype flew on 30 July 1954, powered by a non-afterburning Westinghouse J65-W-7 engine. In January 1955 the second prototype flew with an afterburner fitted.
(In April 1955 the aircraft’s designation was changed from F9F-9 to F11F-1; it again was changed to F-11A in October 1962 as part of the all-service designation scheme.)
Continuing problems with the J65 engine led to two F11F-1F variants being built with General Electric J79-GE-3A engines producing 15,000 pounds of thrust. These aircraft—called “Super Tigers”—were capable of Mach 2 performance and first flew in June 1956. However, the up-engine aircraft never entered production because a major redesign would have been required to increase their fuel capacity to provide adequate range and endurance. Also, the Chance Vought F8U/F-8 Crusader, newly arrived on the scene, was capturing laurels as an outstanding carrier-based day fighter.
During its flight tests an F11F was shot down—by its own guns! On 21 September 1956, Grumman test pilot Tom Attridge was firing the 20-mm cannon of the 17th F11F on an over-water flight near Calverton on New York’s Long Island. Attridge put the fighter into a slight negative-gravity dive to achieve supersonic speed. He later wrote:
I fired the full load of ammunition and I felt a thud on the airplane as if I had run into something.
The engine immediately became quite rough, necessitating me to reduce engine power to 70 [percent] where it smoothed out. I flew . . . back to Grumman Calverton Airport as fast as I could at very reduced power.2
The plane crashed a half-mile from the end of the Calverton runway and caught fire, with 20-mm ammunition “cooking off” to threaten an approaching rescue helicopter. Unknown to him at the time, Attridge broke his back in the crash. (He recovered from his injuries.)
A change in flight procedures avoided further F11F self-shoot-downs.
Assigned the name Tiger, the first production aircraft reached the fleet in March 1957, assigned to attack squadron VA-156—a day-fighter unit despite the designation.3 Altogether, six carrier squadrons were provided with F11F fighters. The F11F was outclassed as a fighter by the contemporary Crusader, which was faster, and it was outclassed by other attack aircraft—especially the Grumman A2F/A-6 Intruder—because of its limited performance at low altitudes and limited all-weather capability.
However, in 1957 the Blue Angels—the Navy’s flight-demonstration team—began flying the F11F. Replacing the F9F-8 Cougar, the F11F was the team’s first supersonic aircraft. The “Blues” flew the F11F for 11 years, from 1957 to 1968, one of the longest-serving aircraft in the team’s history.
Grumman produced 42 F11F-1 fighters on the first contract (the photo-reconnaissance variant had been canceled). A second order provided an additional 157 F11F-1s, these aircraft having a longer nose section to accommodate the AN/APG-56 radar—that was never installed in operational aircraft. Thus, counting the two -1F engine test aircraft, the total F11F Tiger production was 201 units.
This was one of the smallest production runs for a Grumman fighter aircraft. Only 22 years had separated the first flight of the initial Grumman fighter—the FF-1 biplane—and the first flight of the supersonic F11F.4 The development of Grumman fighters in that period was remarkable, giving the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps (and several allied air forces) such outstanding fighters as the F4F Wildcat, F6F Hellcat, F7F Tigercat, F8F Bearcat, and F9F Panther/Cougar. But the F11F Tiger was a limited success—not in the same class as those other “cats.” And it was the penultimate fighter produced by Grumman: The firm’s next—and last—fighter was the superlative F-14 Tomcat.
1. CAPT Carl O. Holmquist, USN, “Developments and Problems in Carrier-Based Fighter Aircraft,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 96, no. 5 (May 1970), 246–47. Gordon Swanborough and Peter M. Bowers, United States Navy Aircraft since 1911 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990), 256–57. Richard Thruelson, The Grumman Story (New York: Praeger, 1976), 259–264.
2. Robert F. Dorr and Fred L. Borch, “Early supersonic fighter shot down by its own guns,” Navy Times, 20 August 2007, 39.
3. The Grumman F7F twin-engine fighter and reconnaissance aircraft, developed during World War II, was named Tigercat.
4. Norman Polmar, “Biplane Fighters in Action,” Naval History, vol. 25, no. 3 (June 2011), 16–17.
Grumman F-11A Tiger
Type: Fighter
Crew: pilot
Combat weight: 18,375 pounds
Length: 44 feet, 10¾ inches
Wingspan: 31 feet, 8 inches
Wing area: 250 square feet
Height: 13 feet, 2¾ inches
Engine: Wright J65-W-18 turbojet; 10,500 pounds thrust maximum
Max. Speed: 585 mph at 35,000 feet with 4 Sidewinder missiles
Ceiling: 49,000 feet
Armament: 4 20-mm cannon (500 rounds) Sidewinder missiles or 2 Sidewinders plus 2 150-gallon drop tanks