Feightner had just one question: What airplane would the team fly? “He said the F7U-1 Cutlass,” recalls Feightner, at the time a Navy test pilot with the most flight time in that very aircraft.

Lastly, the Vought F7U Cutlass had an unusual design but was underpowered and unreliable, leading to its early retirement.

One beautiful southern California afternoon in the summer of 1954, I watched a Navy F7U-3 Cutlass jet fighter as it cruised over the beach at Coronado and headed out to sea. And then I saw the ...