ROLLING START : Douglas Introduces the T-45 Navy Jet
On a tarmac lined with aircraft and as a Marine band played a military march, Douglas Aircraft formally rolled out its first Navy T-45 jet Wednesday in a ceremony at the firm’s Long Beach facility.
“This is the proof of the pudding,” Douglas President James Worsham said with a nod toward the firm’s red-and-white T-45, a two-seat training jet that will be in production for the next decade under fixed-price contracts.
“This is the real thing,” Worsham added. “It is not cardboard.”
The statement was a not-so-subtle reference to the bizarre 1985 rollout of the Air Force’s T-46 trainer at Fairchild Republic, when that company had fabricated at least some of the first aircraft out of cardboard and balsa wood to disguise development problems.
“It was an incredible thing to do,” one Douglas official remarked later. “I still can’t believe they did it, but it must be true because I have heard it so many times.”
Fairchild spokeswoman Deborah Tucker, asked about the incident Wednesday, said, “I don’t know if there was anything made of cardboard or balsa wood, but there were certain parts on the aircraft that made it not airworthy at the time of the rollout.”
Douglas has worked hard to avert the difficulties that Fairchild Republic had with its trainer program. The Air Force eventually canceled the $3.5 billion T-46 program after it had encountered technical problems, schedule delays and cost overruns. The cancellation forced Fairchild to close down its aircraft plant on Long Island, N.Y.
To vividly demonstrate to the 1,000 Navy officials, Pentagon bureaucrats, subcontractors and aviation enthusiasts Wednesday that the T-45 was the “real thing,” Douglas pilot Fred Hamilton powered up the T-45’s Rolls Royce Turbomeca engines and taxied the aircraft about 100 yards in front of a cheering crowd.
Strong Backing
The McDonnell Douglas subsidiary at Long Beach is under Navy contract to build the T-45 aircraft and to supply computerized aircraft simulators, text material and other training equipment in a program valued at $5 billion to $6 billion (including estimated future inflation).
Despite recent budget cutbacks, Navy officials said Wednesday that the T-45 has strong backing in the service and in Congress. In December, Douglas was awarded a $429.4 million contract for the first 12 T-45s and related training equipment. President Reagan’s 1989 budget request contains funding of $517 million for production of 24 additional planes. Peak production would start in 1993, when Douglas is scheduled to turn out 48 aircraft a year.
Douglas has high hopes for the T-45 program, which will eventually employ a peak of 1,700 workers at Long Beach and Palmdale. Under the current plan, the Navy plans to buy 300 of the aircraft, and Douglas is pushing hard for a commitment by the Air Force to buy the economical training system.
The company asserts that the T-45 training system will cut the cost of turning out 600 naval aviators annually by 50%.
“We think there is a market for over 1,000 aircraft of this type,” said Sterling Stalford, T-45 program manager. “We feel the Navy has a need for additional aircraft of this type.”
Selling the Air Force the T-45 could be a difficult job, however. The T-45 is a “more sporty,” high-performance aircraft than the Air Force wants for its basic training. Navy Capt. Bruce Marshall, Navy program manager for T-45, said the aircraft would probably have to be modified in a number of ways to satisfy the Air Force.
The T-45, nicknamed the Goshawk, is a derivative of the British Aerospace Hawk. British Aerospace is building about 60% of the T-45 airframe and British subcontractors are supplying about three-fourths of the subsystems on the aircraft, Stalford said. Douglas builds the forward fuselage and British Aerospace builds the aft fuselage and wings.
Douglas will assemble two of the T-45s at its Long Beach plant and then shift assembly to a small facility at Palmdale. The Palmdale site was selected to avoid flying the planes over residential neighborhoods in Long Beach.
The T-45 weighs 9,807 pounds empty and is 38 feet, 11 inches long. Its wing span is 30 feet, 10 inches. It is powered by a single jet engine rated at 5,450 pounds of thrust.
Stalford was all smiles at the flawless ceremony Wednesday, but Douglas officials said it was not easy to get to that point. Stalford has spent the last month on the factory floor, personally directing the assembly of the T-45 that was rolled out, one executive said. Only last Sunday, starter motors on the Rolls Royce engine started giving engineers trouble and they worked around the clock to fix the problem.
The ceremony Wednesday was also notable because it involved a powered rollout, sometimes considered a risky show to put on before the public. When McDonnell had a powered rollout of the F-15 in the 1970s, the nose steering gear reportedly malfunctioned, forcing the pilot to steer the aircraft with its brakes. When it finally reached its designated display point, it promptly sprang a leak.
