FJ Fury
Wings For The Fleet

What do you get when you put a tailhook on an F-86 Sabre? An FJ Fury of course. The FJ and F-86 were parallel developments that benefited from developments made by either program. As you take a closer look at each of the Furies, you can see some of the design parallels with the F-86 series. North American Aviation definitely used the best of both worlds to advance the Sabre and Fury through their operational lives.

rocket.aero has uncovered some very nice material on this family of Furies. The DVD contains essentially two documentary movies. The first is a pilot's orientation of the FJ-2. The second is an orientation film for the 'new' FJ-4. Additional silent movies are also provided for FJ-2 carrier operations, FJ-3 flight operations, and FJ-4 weapons tests.

The FJ-4 weapons testing was especially fascinating. This was ground tracking camera footage of an FJ-4 with a single underwing weapons store. A shape. Okay, a simulated nuke. The aircraft was being run through the envelope with this asymmetrical load through loft and toss bombing profiles using a variety of escape paths to determine if the aircraft would go unstable in that configuration and a particular attitude plus G-load.

The title has a selection of still photos on the DVD that are presented in a slide-show (automated advance) format. I didn't spend much time trying to stop the auto-advance function but is a useful feature for folks to stop and examine a given photo for details.

This is another welcome addition to the video library as this is an aircraft that you don't see that much video or even printed material (unlike the F-86). This DVD provides in a very short time the great list of capabilities that was designed into this aircraft as well as allowing the viewer to see in in flight.

This video is recommended to all aviation modelers and historians alike! You can order this video directly from rocket.aero by visiting their website at www.rocket.aero

My sincere thanks to rocket.aero for this review sample!