Aircraft History
The Lockheed XF-90 was developed to a 1946 requirement for a long-range escort for the B-36 bomber. The escorts were expected to fly ahead of the bombers and eliminate any opposition. Three companies entered the competition. Besides the XF-90, North American entered with a modified version of the F-86 known as the YF-93. McDonnell Douglas entered with the XF-88, which eventually became the F-101 Voodoo.
Lockheed's entry into the competition was a large aircraft with a 35 degree swept wing. The aircraft was very streamlined and contained a large amount of internal fuel. With the wing-tip tanks, the round-trip range was 1,100 miles, sufficient to take the aircraft from bases in the UK to Kiev and back. The engines consisted of two afterburning Westinghouse J34-WE11 turbojets. Armament was very heavy for the time. Various sources report the armament as four 20 mm cannon and six 0.50 caliber machine guns or six 20 mm cannon. The aircraft could also carry two 1000 lb bombs or eight HVAR unguided rockets.
The aircraft was intended to be supersonic before anyone really understood the stresses due to supersonic flight. It was very heavily built, stressed to 12 g. Just how heavily built the aircraft was is best described by Ben Rich in his book Skunk Works: "The F-90 wound up serving the country by being shipped to Ground Zero at the Nevada Test Site at a mock military base specially constructed to determine how various structures and military equipment would withstand an A-bomb explosion. The short answer was that everything was either vaporized or blown to pieces except for the F-90. Its windshield was vaporized, its paint sand-blasted, but otherwise our steel airplane survived in one piece. That sucker was built."
The aircraft ended up being seriously underpowered due to the engine designed for it being canceled due to budgetary reasons. Maximum speed turned out to be 0.9M at sea level and 0.95M at 40,000 feet. The aircraft would only go supersonic in a dive. It did that without problems. However, the lack-luster performance and changes in Air Force requirements led to the cancellation of the program in 1950. One of the two prototypes was stress-tested in the lab to destruction. The other prototype went through three atomic tests. It is currently being restored for exhibition in the National Museum of the Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.
The aircraft became most famous as the primary plane used by the Blackhawk squadron. They were the subject of a popular set of comic books from the 1950s. In the comic books, they used the F-90B or F-90C, re-engined versions of the aircraft with much better performance. Lockheed's Skunk Works completed this work for the Blackhawks in the comic book universe. In that universe, the Blackhawks generally lost at least one plane a week, and sometimes the whole squadron, so Lockheed would have made a fortune off of replacements.
Additional history of the aircraft can be found at the website of the 456th Fighter Interceptor Squadron:
http://www.456fis.org/LOCKHEED_XF-90.htm