What Are Century Series Jet Fighters & When Were They Built?

Jet fighters have been one of the primary methods of air-to-air combat for the militaries of the world for decades. The incredible Messerschmitt 262 was the very first jet fighter, fielded later in World War II. During the conflict, the United States was also working on its first-ever jet fighter, further emphasizing that jet aircraft have a history that is almost a century long. 

Incidentally, there's a group of jet fighters that are known as the Century Series. The broader family consists of some similarly legendary models that you might well recognize individually: The Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, for instance, and the F-100 Super Saber. There are six models, all told, and not all of them are strictly dedicated fighter jets.

The Century Series models were built during the Cold War, a critical time for the United States and the wider world, and helped to define the nation's role and power within it. "Lessons learned from Korea revealed that aircraft such as Soviet Union MiG fighters could perform better than US jets in certain situations," retired fighter pilot and US colonel Jack Broughton wrote in Air Force Magazine in 2012, a situation that certainly wouldn't do for the United States in the 1950s. In response, Broughton goes on, "engineers went back to the drawing board and, starting with a designation of 100, launched the Century Series of supersonic fighters."

The Century Series is named for the number 100 (and beyond) in its designation. As such, the first Century Series model was the pleasingly alliterative Super Sabre, the F-100. It was certainly a potent model, but pushing the envelope as it did can prove to be a double-edged sword. 

There were significant hurdles for the developers and pilots of brand-new innovative supersonic aircraft in 1954, and the Super Sabre faced its share when it made its debut that year. The National Museum of the United States Air Force notes that a spate of accidents suffered by the first pilots of the model quickly necessitated the creation of the F-100F training variant. Construction was completed by North America, and the U.S. Air Force received them until 1959. 

A training model it may have been at heart, but this certainly isn't to say that it wasn't the real thing. It boasted M-39 20mm cannons just as the first Super Sabre did, and would be used in vital aerial missions in Vietnam right alongside the single-pilot model. Just two years after the family's introduction, the F-100D variant made its debut. This was the most common and deadliest variant, adding sidewinder and Bulldog missiles to its arsenal as well as a payload of bombs. Its Pratt & Whitney J57-P-21 family engine pushed it to a top speed of 926.6 mph.

The next aircraft in the celebrated Century Series is the F-101 Voodoo. This model's own first flight took place just a year after that of the F-100, in 1954, and it's already clear just what a remarkable and creative time this was for U.S. military aviation. The Voodoo was built by McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, and the initial idea was for it to escort bombers, which had historically been rather lumbering models (at least relatively) that were very vulnerable to swifter aerial predators. 

The Voodoo would pivot, though, to the more general role of an interceptor. The lingering threat of sophisticated Soviet Union bombers during this incredibly tense period of the Cold War was not taken lightly by the United States. The Century Series more broadly would have a heavy emphasis on air-to-air firepower, speed, maneuverability, and the potential of potent nuclear weapons, hoping to pre-empt a threat that may or may not come from the Soviets.

The F-101B variant of the Voodoo was built in Missouri, at McDonnell Aircraft's St. Louis facility. This model boasted a speed of up to 1,095 mph on a pair of J57-P-55s from Pratt & Whitney, which offered a combined thrust of 33,800. It was complete and ready for service early in 1959, arriving two years after the 101C configuration. By 1961, the Canadian Air Force completed a deal for 66 CF-101Bs, and the model would continue to serve the nation until 1984, after its retirement with the USAF.

Continuing the pleasing motif of alliteration among the Century Series aircraft, we have the F-102 Delta Dagger. Its name refers to a couple of its most notable traits. Firstly, there's its long, thin, dart-like design, and second, those prominent delta wings. The latter is always an eye-catching feature of any aircraft adorned with them – see also the iconic British bomber that is the Avro Vulcan – and the F-102 broke the mold in this regard for the United States. The Air Force hadn't fielded a delta wing model before, but this was deemed to be a preferable approach for the role that was envisaged for the Delta Dagger: a high-speed interceptor.

The first F-102 was built ready for a test flight in October 1953, joining the Air Defense Command three years later. Contemporary of the F-100 though it was, it was plain that this model was more advanced in some ways. Bruce Gordon, a former Major in the USAF, first flew an F-102 in 1962, with the 317th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron. He told Aircrew Interview in 2020, "the F-102 was a much better plane than the F-100," noting that the latter "had a very long intake and it was very susceptible to compressor stalls," despite the fact that the two models had the same engine in common. A sophisticated model capable of flight at 810 mph, 1000 Delta Daggers were manufactured in all.

If the goal with the Century Series was to create innovative, high-performance, futuristic aircraft, there could really be no more appropriate name for such an aircraft than the F-104 Starfighter. It might sound like something that Darth Vader would have sent his lackeys off to pursue the rebels in, but in actuality, it was a superiority fighter, and was equipped with the M-61 20mm cannon, bombs and Sidewinder missiles it would need to serve in the role.

As is characteristic of the Century Series, it was also extremely fast, especially for the times when it made its first flight in 1954. It was capable of hitting 1,320 mph, or Mach 1.7. So speedy and slender was the model, in fact, that it earned one of the greatest nicknames a U.S. military aircraft has ever had: the Missile With A Man In It.  

The F-104 was completed by Lockheed and took its first test flight in March 1954. Speed was an absolute priority for the aircraft, and its performance was truly exceptional. "The Starfighter was the first aircraft to hold simultaneous official world records for speed, altitude and time-to-climb," notes the National Museum of the United States. The super speedy Starfighter had some tragic accidents that saw it nicknamed the Widowmaker, but was deployed during the Vietnam war, and went on to be used by a wide range of international militaries including the Hellenic Air Force of Greece, the Republic of China Airforce in Taiwan, the Japanese Air Self Defense Force, and the Royal Danish Air Force. 

The Thunderchief has the most intimidating title of all the Century Series jets. It is, appropriately enough, perhaps the most offensively-oriented of them as well, designed to combat threats in the air and on the ground alike as a fighter-bomber. This was the brief with which Republic Aviation approached the project when work began in 1951, in an attempt to outdo another then-current fighter-bomber in Republic's repertoire: the F-84F Thunderstreak.

June 1950 marked the first time the F-84F took to the skies, with the F-105 following in 1955, the year after its predecessor arrived for military use. The question is, how did the Thunderstreak become the Thunderchief? It seems that it was an outright upgrade in a wide range of ways. For one thing, it doubled down on the bomber aspect of its role, quite literally, with a 12,000 lb+ capacity for bombs as opposed to the Thunderstreak's 6,000 lb capacity. 

The chief's Pratt & Whitney J75-P-19W also far outperformed the Thunderstreak's Wright J65-W-3, offering 24,500 lbs of thrust and 7,220 lbs of thrust respectively. This translated to a remarkable top speed of 1,390 mph for the F-105, with a range of 2,206 miles. The Thunderchief and its variants had quite a long service life, finally ceasing service in February of 1984. It set the stage for another U.S. Air Force icon, the F-4 Phantom. 

Despite the similarity in their names, the Delta Dart and the earlier Delta Dagger are completely separate models. Even so, they're still undeniably closely related. The Delta Dagger, as we've seen, was new territory for the United States as a delta wing interceptor. It's never easy to venture into brand-new ground like this, and the Dart certainly had its foibles as a result. 

This isn't to say that it was a bad design, though. Indeed, a 2014 piece by  Air Force Staff Sgt. Robert Barnett entitled "The Cold War Legacy of the F-102A" quotes 3rd Wing historian Joe Orr as saying that the F-102A variant "was a weapons system upgrade in every sense of the word. At the time, it was the top fighter interceptor in the U.S. arsenal." Nonetheless, the U.S. Air Force reports, the family "had a troubled development and never seemed to quite live up to the Air Force's expectations for performance." The F-106, then, was an effort to take the concept further and use what had been learnt during the Dagger's creation and operation. 

The Dart was built in the mid-1950s, engaging in its inaugural test flight in 1956. Initially intended as a Dagger variant, it became so far removed from its predecessor in performance, equipment and design, with an aerodynamic mid-section that the Dagger lacked and a Pratt & Whitney J75-P-17 engine offering a top speed of 1,525 mph, that it became its own entity. An eye-catching member of the Century Series.

Numerically speaking, the Centuries Series proceeds straight from the F-102 Delta Dagger to the F-104 Starfighter, without any sign of any potential F-103 in between. There's a good reason for that: Technically, the Century Series comprises six completed, production aircraft. While there was an F-103, in a manner of speaking, it would never take to the skies as a finished model.

The XF–103 is the theoretical model in question, another design from the Republic Aircraft Corporation. Unlike the company's formidable Thunderchief, it was doomed to remain an idea only, but what an idea it was. It was a response to a 1949 Air Force call for designs for a new interceptor, and Republic pulled out all the stops to devise what would certainly have been a unique model. It would boast novel features like an escape pod for the pilot and a periscope that could be retracted when not needed, and its engine system itself was projected to be a mix of a XJ67 from Wright with a XRJ55 afterburner, potentially pushing it to Mach 3.

This was a goal also approached by the never-off-the-drawing-board XF-108 Rapier. Completing the trio of proposed Century Series aircraft was the XF-109, a collaboration between Bell and Convair that would have utilized VTOL technology. Elements of these cancelled aircraft lived on, though: the A-5 Vigilante (pictured here) retained certain aspects of the Rapier's razor-sharp design.