dakkg651
I would stay off that stuff if I were you!
Hey, if it's classified, I'm sorry I even asked. I'm not interested in having a heart-attack or something
Fareastdriver
With all that crap you finish your posts with I have just put you on my ignore list.
Though I assume you have placed me on ignore and will not hear this information, I'm sorry if I have offended you. I kind of use it as a silly tagline -- normally I would have adjusted the signature with the User CP, but this website as far as I know doesn't have that feature so I just write it out every time.
galaxy flyer
6 750 lb GP bombs on a centerline MER, a 450 gallon drop tank on each wing station. The internal bay had a fuel tank. There were many variations depending target, 1,000 and 2,000 pound bombs being the common one, depending on target.
And that brings the F-105D up to around 51,000 pounds, with 2 x 1,000 pounds of bombs on the wings, the centerline stores, the 390 gallon internal tank, and the external tankage you described. That's only about 1,500 pounds off the max load. No wonder the aircraft had such obscene takeoff-speeds (full load takeoff speeds were like 235 kts) and climbed out at such a high alpha.
There are innumerable online references
I wish I had just done that! I did some checking just now. Turns out that the plane had the provision for 2 x 450 or 2 x 650 gallon wing-tanks. I'm guessing once they removed the nuclear weapon (which the aircraft was originally to carry) and put 390 gallon tank in there, they decided to just carry the 450 gallon tanks.
They wings could carry 750 pounders in addition to 1,000 and 2,000 pounders too, though I guess it was more convenient to carry the bigger bombs.
Didn't seem to carry sidewinders much. There is a twisted irony that the F-8 despite being called the last gunfighter scored less kills with it's guns (2) than the F-105 (24.5), and the F-8 scored more kills with sidewinders (most of it's 19 kills were scored with AIM-9's, a few with zuni's and 2 with guns) than the F-105 (only 3) which was less agile.
The F-8 had a better kill-ratio though (19:3)
BarbiesBoyfriend
Seems they rarely used that big old bomb bay for....bombs!
It originally was designed to carry a 8,000 pound nuclear weapon in there -- I don't know if it was wired to deliver anything else (from the bay).
Was it fuel mostly then?
Well, the F-105D which was the definitive version weighed 27,500 pounds empty, carried a little over 8,137 pounds of fuel internally. With a 390 gallon tank (1 gallon of JP4 = 6.6 pounds), 2,574 pounds of fuel is added bringing the total internal capacity to 10,711 pounds; with 2 x 450 gallon tanks on the wing, fuel capacity is increased to 16,651 pounds.
The large fuel capacity was very important for the F-105's mission because it had to fly fast at low altitudes, and both drag and fuel consumption is higher in those conditions.
BEagle
Make that 'except maybe the enemy'.
Although the main enemies at the time were that blinkered fool Robert McNamara, LBJ and the legacy-of-LeMay boneheaded, SAC-umsised air staffs.
So, so true. It was amazing some of the ridiculous restrictions they had -- the dumbest thing I ever heard of was the Route Pack system. The last thing you want to be doing is flying easily predictable routes, your enemy will just position all his SAM's and AAA under your flight-paths, and they did this. If I recall correctly the North Vietnamese were in possession of more artillery in a 50 mile radius of Hanoi than the Germans had in all of Europe in WW2.