Super Sabre!

I was in mad love with this one at the Eglin Armaments Museum too.

It's a North American F-100, first of the "Century Series" jet fighters...and first US production jet fighter to break the sound barrier in level flight.

Look at those 20mm cannon beneath that massive air intake. Tis bird meant business.

And if this wasn't cool enough just finding this here, I noticed it's pilot markings on the left side.

It's done up as Bud Day's Misty 1, the bird he flew as Fast FAC in Vietnam before he was shot down and captured. Too cool, and a well-deserved honor to an American legend.

The Super Sabre was a great aircraft, but it was not without it's faults. Here, a pilot trying to power out of a bad approach initiates what became known as a "Sabre Dance"--a series of machinations caused by a low-speed, low-altitude stall resulting in a crash and the death of the pilot.

This was not uncommon with the F-100, particularly the early production models. A later redesign with a larger tail helped cut down on such crashes but the stability problem never entirely went away. The Super Sabre had a well-deserved reputation as a pilot killer.