Lockheed F-80C Shooting Star Squadron

Maximum Speed: 594mph
Range: 825 Miles
Wingspan: 11.81m
Length: 10.49m
Armament: six 0.5in machine guns, two 1000Ib bombs, eight rockets

$30.00

~~$40.00~~

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Air Aircraft Blood Red Skies Jets Korea Korean War Planes World War 2 WW2

Description

A single seat fighter-bomber, the Lockheed F-80C was a later production version of the P-80, the original designation denoting pursuit. However, with changes to the American system of designation in 1947, the Shooting Star would be re-designated as a ‘F’, a fighter. The Shooting Star was designed in fewer than 6 months around the British Halford H.1 (Goblin) engine and first flew in 1944, with P-80s flying under combat conditions in Italy the next year.

By the time of the Korean war, the aircraft was considered somewhat obsolete, but was at the forefront of the initial sorties across ‘MiG Alley’, of which 1500 flights were made in the first four months alone. It was on November 8^th 1950 that a Shooting Star claimed the first MiG-15 shot down, in one of first ever instances of jet-to-jet combat.

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