Twenty-seven years ago, on Feb. 2, 1974, the General Dynamics YF-16 made its "official" first flight. That 90-minute flight was completely successful, and the prototype went on to be developed into one of the world's most accomplished fighter planes. The plane’s actual first flight, however, had already taken place nearly two weeks earlier. On Jan. 20, General Dynamics test pilot Philip F. Oestricher was conducting a series of high-speed taxi runs on the main runway. Suddenly the red-white-and-blue fighter (s/n 72-01567) developed a series of roll oscillations that grew worse until its right horizontal stabilizer dragged along the runway. Oestricher quickly decided to take off and prevent further damage. The YF-16 quickly reached flying speed and wobbled into the air for an uneventful six-minute flight to a normal landing. Subsequent investigation revealed a high sensitivity in the roll channel of the fly-by-wire control system that was corrected by installing an automatic gain switch.

The sharklike fighter, powered by a single F100-PW-100 turbofan engine, was General Dynamics’ entry into the Air Force lightweight fighter (LWF) competition for a small, state-of-the-art air combat fighter with limited avionics, built to demonstrate energy maneuverability and new aerodynamic technologies. Its opponent in the competitive flight evaluation was Northrop’s YF-17 Cobra. The Northrop fighter made its first flight four months later, on June 9, 1974, but to no avail. The Air Force selected the F-16 January 1975 to complement the F-15 Eagle and the rest, as they say, is history. Five months later, a consortium of four European nations — Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway — chose the new fighter for a co-production program and eventually produced 400 of the planes. The F-16 went on to become one of the world’s most successful fighters.

The Cobra, meanwhile, joined the limbo of promising but hapless "also-rans" until McDonnell Douglas produced an improved reincarnation for the U.S. Navy, the F/A-18 Hornet.

Source: Edwards Air Force Base California