Cold Warriors: The Essex Class in the Cold War

November 29, 1958
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

The Vought F8U-3E Crusader III is declared the winner of the Australian fighter competition. The results from the United States Navy fly off had proved decisive for both the Royal Australian Air Force and for the Fleet Air Arm. While some concerns were raised about the pilot workload and the possibility that the United States Navy may not choose the aircraft for their own needs, the projected costs and performance advantages of the Super Crusader were just too good to ignore. Alongside that announcement, the Department of Defense announced that they had entered into final negotiations for the firm purchase of one hundred fighters with options for a further forty. As part of the negotiations, Australia wished to conduct final assembly of the aircraft at the Government Aircraft Factory and manufacture certain parts of the fighter locally to provide jobs in Australia and a secure supply of spare parts for their new fighter force.

Separately, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation entered into negotiations with Pratt & Whitney to license produce the J75-P-5A engine for the fighters. Surprisingly, this negotiation would prove more difficult than for the fighters themselves. As part of Australia's stated interest in buying the North American Vigilante, CAC had also requested a license to build the competing General Electric J79-GE-8 engines. Though the two engines were in different thrust classes, they were built by two very antagonistic manufacturers. It would take some very astute negotiations along with some very strong safeguards to ensure corporate trade secrets would not be accidentally given to the wrong company.

The Phantom. And it was very close. The decision to buy the Crusader III came down to the eleventh hour and even then there are some within the DOD that feel Australia would have been better served by buying the Phantom which projected to have more room for growth and it would have a common engine with the Vigilante. But the significantly lower purchase and operating cost of the Crusader III was just too big a positive to overlook.

100 for now. And if the RAN gets their new carrier, another 40 or so for the FAA. And Australia wants to build them at the GAF in Melbourne. Well, they want to conduct final assembly there with some manufacturing of specific parts, the ones that are most likely to wear out and need replacement over the service life of the aircraft.

Not quite. The majority of the aircraft will still be built by Vought in Dallas. Only select parts will be built in Australia with final assembly also occurring there

Well, in OTL, the Phantom didn't enter service until June, 1961 after winning the fly off in December, 1958. So probably around that date. Maybe late 61 or early 62 depending on how quickly the GAF can get their production line up and running.

The tooling almost certainly. Though Vought did complete 5 airframes with I believe either the 3rd or 4th one being very close to production standard. And IIRC, they had another 13 in various stages of construction. So it's entirely possible that they could deliver those aircraft to the RAAF for them to begin type training and getting experience in the fighter before the local production comes on line

Probably a few to Vought, yeah. I don't think they'd send a lot though. Probably just a cadre to train the trainers.