When I was in the Navy at NAS Corpus Christi they held the annual Navy Relief Festival, opening the base to the public and featured a daily show by the Blue Angels. When they were flying Phantoms about '69 there was a Father/Son team of matching Bearcat's there, and Dad's had the two-stage blower with water injection, and they'd made up a poster describing a drag race to 10,000 feet between Pop's Bearcat and an Angel's Phantom. Very nicely done, it described that as the flag dropped the Bearcat would be rolling immediately, but the pilot had to be careful not to give it too much throttle too fast or it would torque roll into the tarmac. He would be off the ground before the Phantom had rolled 100yards, standing on his tail and boring a hole in the sky, balls out, blower cranked, water flowing to keep from melting plugs & pistons. As I recall the Bearcat would be at about 5000' when the Phantom tucked his wheels and stood up on his tail, hitting afterburner, and they were then racing that last half. The statistics for each plane said that the Phantom would pass the Bearcat in the last 500' or so, and of course could then continue into the heavens in a corkscrew motion. It made an impression on this young sailor, and sealed my love for radials for life.

Unc, your comment about an F86 brings back another memory. I couldn't have been more than five or six, which would put it at about 1952 or 1953 in Noel, MO. One Saturday morning I had wandered down to the school grounds and was walking around the baseball field chucking rocks towards the fences when I heard this loud "WOOOOOSH" in the sky, and looking up I saw what I later learned to be an F86 Sabre fly down the valley at about 1000' or so. Not sure how many people saw it, as it was kind of early on a Fall morning; where it came from or where it was headed, but I expect that the pilot probably had ties to the area and was checking things out from his vantage point. Again, it made a lasting impression on a young hill country boy!