I recently read a fine book on the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo and its operation authored by Nigel Walpole, a former Royal Air Force (RAF) exchange pilot who flew the aircraft.  The title of the book is Voodoo Warriors: The Story of the McDonnell Voodoo Fast-Jets, and at $1.99, the Kindle Edition is a straight-up bargain and worth the read.  For years and years I had read about the Voodoo's terrifying pitch-up issues and Walpole's book helped bring home the fact that pitch-up was never too far from the minds of those who operated the aircraft.  





















































 

Those days were before "fly by wire".
Those days were "fly by pilot"

Interesting that a really good NY Air Guard pilot once handed two F4's their butts at William Tell in the late 1970's flying an F101. After that it was several years before ay Air Guard pilots or units were allowed to return to that annual fighter competition. The F101 was a difficult airplane to fly well, but in skilled hands, it was still a very capable interceptor for it's day.

When I was flying F-4s in the late '70s, the only F-101s left in service that I knew about were in Canada. We went up to Bagotville for a weekend get together. They had some 101s. Watching them take off, they had the hardest burner light of anything I can remember. They lit with a boom and they lit unevenly. Cool!

I used to sit in my office at the TexANG hangar at Navy Dallas in the 70's while the Navy and Marines did their simulated carrier landings before going on deployment in the F-8 Crusaders.
There would be 2 or 3 in the pattern at the same time doing crash and goes. We would have to take the pictures down from the walls while those hard light were banging.