Speaking of rocket-launching fighters...

The late 1940s saw the U.S. get hit with an ugly double surprise. First came the news that the Soviets had cloned the B-29 from examples that had landed in the U.S.S.R. during WW2...

“The aircraft was first displayed during a flyover on 3 August 1947 at the Tushino Aviation Day parade. At first three aircraft flew over and the Western observers assumed that they were merely the three B-29 bombers which they knew had been diverted to the Soviet Union during World War II. Minutes later a fourth aircraft appeared. Western analysts realized that the Soviets must have reverse-engineered the B-29.”

This was followed by the Russkies detonating their first atomic bomb. The mainland U.S. now faced the sort of threat we hadn't seen since the early 19th Century.

The USAAF, and then the fledgling USAF, were faced with needing to come up with fighters that could defend the homeland from streams of heavy bombers, day or night, in any weather. Some of the very first interceptor squadrons used P-61 Black Widows and F-82 Twin Mustangs until an all-weather jet fighter became available.

By way of a stopgap all-weather jet interceptor, Lockheed took its two-seat T-33 trainer, based on the F-80 Shooting Star, and added radar and armament to create the F-94 Starfire. In fact, the earliest production F-94A's were essentially hand built conversions on T-33 airframes pulled from the assembly line.

What was interesting was the F-94C variant, which replaced the original armament of four nose-mounted .50 cals with a snoot full of rockets. Here's a picture of the rocket bays opened for loading...

I could not for the life of me figure out how those rockets launched, until I saw this photo of the one at the museum in Dayton with the launch tube covers in the retracted position...

Rippling those rockets off must have been quite a sight from the driver's chair...at least right up until your hands were full trying to restart the engine after the exhaust caused it to flameout in midair.

At least these later ones had the cockpit fixed, in case you had to eject after a flameout. The early gun-armed ones had a bit of a problem in that regard, you see... 

"The pilot and radar operator found that the cockpit was too narrow for them to be able to get in and out of the aircraft quickly during alerts and scrambles. The clearance for the ejection seats was too small, resulting in several tragic accidents during emergency ejections."

Ponder what kind of tragic accidents could be caused by launching a couple dudes through a too-narrow opening via an explosive charge. Yikes.

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