An iconic and historic performer, the T-38A provides pilots an exhilarating experience from take-off to landing
The T-38 traces its history to Northrop’s N-102 Fang, a concept for an inexpensive, high-performance, lightweight fighter that the company proposed to the United States Air Force in 1952. While the Air Force did not express interest in the Fang, the project (which yielded a mock-up but never a functional model) provided operational inspiration for their 1955 initiative, the N-156.
The N-156 was a planned twin-engine, lightweight, supersonic fighter intended for the U.S. Navy to operate from small aircraft carriers. The project was based on the recently released General Electric J85, a small, powerful afterburning turbojet engine. Ultimately cancelled due to low interest by the Navy, Northrop took the basic design of the N-156 to the U.S. Air Force, which had recently issued a request for a supersonic trainer. The Air Force chose Northrop’s N-156 design in June of 1956 and designated the project “T-38.”
The design of the T-38 features a low-mounted main wing with a highly swept leading edge, a standard empennage, and a retractable tricycle undercarriage. It has a tandem seating arrangement in its cockpit, with the rear seat, which is slightly higher than the front seat, designated for the instructor. It is powered by twin J85-5A afterburning turbojet engines, each of which generates up to 2,680 pounds of thrust in military power and up to 3,850 pounds with afterburner. The engines are mounted side-by-side within the aircraft’s fuselage with exhausts protruding from the aircraft’s tail.
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