The YF-16 made its first unintentional flight at Edwards AFB, CA in 1974.
There’s an article explaining this event at this LINK
Nothing more than a high-speed taxi was planned for that day at Edwards AFB. Oestricher (the test pilot that day), who was to split flights in the initial test program with fellow GD pilot Anderson, had a run card to taxi the airplane up to 135 knots and then bring it safely to a halt after checking out the pre-takeoff handling characteristics. The first flight wasn’t scheduled to occur until two weeks later on 2 February.
From here the tale tends to differ, depending on who’s telling it and which version was heard. This much is fact: The high-speed taxi turned into a wild series of roll oscillations that ultimately caused the right horizontal stabilizer to strike the runway, at which point Oestricher took the airplane up to avoid wrecking it.
Thus, the high-speed taxi run became a highly unexpected first flight, and the YF-16 joined the ranks of real airplanes that have actually gotten off the ground, versus the legions of those that exist in the minds of engineers or as concepts on blueprint paper (in computer memory, nowadays). And Oestricher became the Man of the Day for saving GD’s best hope for the future, the first airplane of a program that would bring the company one of the longest periods of employment growth in the up-and-down history of the aerospace industry.
Here’s what they consider the actual first flight. I was so inspired by this “little” jet that I wanted to be a fighter pilot and fly this F-16…man it looked sweet.
I imagine that was hair-raising for a variety of folks — not least the pilot of course.
For your den:
“The jet just wanted to fly.”
(It reminds me of a few equestrian trail rides I’ve had. Yeehaw!)
That’s nice, Mr. Price is an in-house artist at Lockheed Martin. A guy I went to high school with works in the same shop.
I have THIS ONE by an artist named Keith Ferris.
Very nice one, too.
Yiiikes! I actually gasped as I watched that.
Me too. Guts + quick thinking + skill.
While there are rifles and handguns that have achieved the international use and longevity, is there any other military vehicle that has achieved what the F-16 has? It’s used by countries all over the world, and I would assume that it’s still valuable as nationals are still ordering them.
It’s sure is the sexist, but the F-16 has only had about 5000 copies issued. I’m not sure, but the most produced military vehicle would probably be the USSR’s T-54/T-55(including the chinese deritives Type 59/69) with over 100,000 units. I trust Outlaw may have a better handle on this.
I thought about it a second, and 100,000 pffft. Ladies and gentlemen, Oh, Jimmy Built to 812,262. Definitely, not sexy, but just what you need to win WWII.