Northrop F-15 Reporter - Operational History

Operational History

Of the 36 F-15As produced, nine were allocated to the Air Material Command in the Continental U.S., and the remainder were issued to just one squadron, the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron (PRS) attached to the 35th Fighter Group in Japan. The first four were sent over by ship, arriving in March 1947 at the Japan Air Material Area (JAMA), Kisarazu, Japan. Their voyage had not been smooth, and three of the four were in such bad shape that they were used for spare parts.

The 8th PRS had been non-operational for about a year, and was being brought up to strength to serve in the American occupation of Japan, participating in the Post-Hostilities Mapping Program in which the beaches, villages, road networks, and cultural centers of Japan were to be extensively photographed, work that was to be performed by the F-15 in association with the F-13 variant of the B-29 Superfortress. Under the command of Major Benjamin H. Albertson, the 8th spent most of the summer of 1947 preparing for their missions to come, spending June and July at JAMA helping to assemble the newly arriving F-15's. Captain Jarvis and Lieutenant Heistand were the first two pilots selected to fly back with the first pair of Reporters in late June. The squadron spent most of July test flying their new machines. Four additional aircraft arrived in July, giving the squadron seventy-three hours experience in the F-15. The unit's first operational mission would also be flown in July, with Captain Moore at the controls. The squadron lost its first F-15 in August when a pilot made a very hard landing. The plane was a write-off, but the pilot walked away. In September, Lieutenant Colonel Ben K. Armstrong became the commanding officer of the 8th. A unit strength of 16 aircraft was finally reached in October, the same month in which three aircraft and their crews were sent to Itazuke Air Base on the Japanese island of Kyūshū. The detachment remained there until December 1947, flying four to seven-hour aerial photography missions. In January 1948, a detachment of six F-15s were sent to Clark Field in the Philippines to assist the 5th Reconnaissance Group. Eventually other detachments of F-15s from the 8th PRS were dispatched to Itzake and Chitose Air Base for various lengths of time. The detachment to the 13th Air Force in the Philippines would remain until early September, with crews being rotated every thirty days.

Maintenance was a problem for F-15 operations from the beginning. In January 1948, the entire fleet was grounded for ten days because of weather and a lack of spare parts, mostly heat exchangers that were found to be cracking prematurely. Because of the lack of spare heat exchangers, replacements had to be obtained from F-15s in storage at JAMA. By February 1948 the parts problem had become so critical that the 8th PRS had an average in service rate of only two aircraft. Cannibalization of both damaged and flyable aircraft eventually brought this rate up, but the unit would never reach a strength of sixteen operational aircraft again, reaching a high of fifteen only once, in December 1948.

In April 1948, Major Russell E. Cheever took over as squadron commander. In August, the unit was redesignated the 8th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (Night Photo). In addition, under the new U.S. Air Force designation system the name F-15A (F designating Photo under AAF classifications) became the RF-61A (R for reconnaissance and F for fighter). This immediately caused confusion, both because the F-15A was unarmed and was never considered a fighter, and because the F-15A was now reclassified as the P-61A both by the USAF and in squadron records (the P-61A already existing as the earliest variant of the original "Black Widow"). The designation of RF-61C was applied later, but by this point the unit had unofficially returned to calling the aircraft the F-15A, and would continue to do so for most of their operational time with the machine.

The end of F-15 operations came on 25 March 1949, when the 8th TRS (NP) was transferred to Yokota Air Base minus their equipment and personnel. There it became the 82d Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. On 1 April, the 82nd, which consisted now of the former 8th's personnel and their F-15s, was deactivated and all F-15s were assigned to the 35th Maintenance Squadron at Johnson Air Base for salvage or other disposition.

Of the nine F-15A allocated to Air Material Command, several were operated for a short time by the Pennsylvania Air National Guard from their base in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, before they too were scrapped.