During May 1953, Vought's submission was declared to be the winner; one month later, the company received an initial order for three XF8U-1 prototypes (after adoption of the unified designation system in September 1962, the F8U became the F-8).

On 16 July 1957, Major John H. Glenn Jr, USMC, completed the first supersonic transcontinental flight in a F8U-1P, flying from NAS Los Alamitos, California, to Floyd Bennett Field, New York, in three hours, 23 minutes, and 8.3 seconds.

It was typically described as an all-weather fighter, yet initial production aircraft were only fitted with a ranging radar for its guns and thus was entirely reliant on external platforms to be guided towards enemies.

[15] Pilots often claimed the later F-8 models did not turn as well as early aircraft and had greater difficulty in aborting a landing attempt; furthermore, that the radar did not work well in tropical environments.

[16] A key feature of the F-8 was its variable-incidence wing, which allowed for a greater angle of attack to be achieved and increased lift without compromising forward visibility by pivoting 7° out of the fuselage during takeoff and landing runs.

The armament of the F-8, which had been specified by the US Navy, consisted primarily of four 20 mm (.79 in) autocannons; the aircraft would become the final U.S. fighter to be designed with guns as its primary weapon.

[3] They were supplemented with a retractable tray with 32 unguided Mk 4/Mk 40 Folding-Fin Aerial Rocket (Mighty Mouse FFARs), and cheek pylons for four guided AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.

The first fleet squadron to fly the Crusader was VF-32 at NAS Cecil Field, Florida, in 1957, which deployed to the Mediterranean late that year on Saratoga.

The Pacific Fleet received the first Crusaders at NAS Moffett Field in northern California and the VF-154 "Grandslammers" (named in honor of the new 1,000-mph jets and subsequently renamed the "Black Knights") began their F-8 operations.

At the time, U.S. Navy carrier air wings had gone through a series of day and night fighter aircraft due to rapid advances in engines and avionics.

The unarmed RF-8A proved good at getting low-altitude detailed photographs, leading to carrier deployments as detachments from the Navy's VFP-62 and VFP-63 squadrons and the Marines' VMCJ-2.

[20] Beginning on 23 October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, RF-8As flew extremely hazardous low-level photo reconnaissance missions over Cuba, the F-8's first true operational flights.

Two-ship flights of RF-8As left Key West twice each day, to fly over Cuba at low level, then return to Jacksonville, where the film was offloaded and developed, to be rushed north to the Pentagon.

[7] Early on, pilots were encouraged to only keep a minimum level of fuel remaining onboard prior to landing; in the long term, the adoption of the more powerful J57-P420 engine improved the situation.

One of these episodes took place on 23 August 1960; a Crusader with the wings folded took off from Napoli Capodichino in full afterburner, climbed to 5,000 ft (1,500 m) and then returned to land successfully.

The Crusader was capable of flying in this configuration, though the pilot would be required to reduce aircraft weight by jettisoning stores and dumping fuel before landing.

[26][27] The MiGs claimed the downing of an F-8 and Lt Pham Ngoc Lan's gun camera revealed that his cannons had set an F-8 ablaze, but Lieutenant Commander Spence Thomas had managed to land his damaged F-8 at Da Nang Air Base,[28][29] the remaining F-8s returning safely to their carrier.

The F-8 repeatedly encountered the relatively nimble North Vietnamese MiGs over the following years, yet the F-8 never made first contact via radar detection in any of these engagements.

[33] The US Navy had evolved its "night fighter" role in the air wing to an all-weather interceptor, the F-4 Phantom II, equipped to engage incoming bombers at long range with missiles such as AIM-7 Sparrow as their sole air-to-air weapons, and maneuverability was not emphasized in their design.

[36] Following the end of Operation Rolling Thunder in November 1968, American aircraft stopped flying in airspace in which MiGs encounters were expected and thus there were less opportunities for aerial engagements to occur.

[37] Accordingly, the Crusader became increasing used as a "bomb truck", with both ship-based U.S. Navy units and land-based US Marine Corps squadrons attacking communist forces in both North and South Vietnam.

[39] During December 1972's Operation Linebacker II, numerous Navy F-8s were assigned to fly aerial superiority missions, yet these were largely unopposed; actual combat with MiGs had become exceeding rare by this point of the conflict.

[42] While VPAF pilots claimed 11 F-8s shot down by MiGs, official US sources indicate that only three F-8s were lost in air combat, all of them during 1966, to cannon fire from opponents in MiG-17s.

[citation needed] Several modified F-8s were used by NASA in the early 1970s, proving the viability of both digital fly-by-wire technology (using data-processing equipment adapted from the Apollo Guidance Computer),[54] as well as supercritical wing design.

On 7 May 1977, two Crusaders went separately on patrol against supposedly French Air Force (4/11 Jura squadron) F-100 Super Sabres stationed at Djibouti.

[citation needed] The Aéronavale Crusaders flew combat missions over Lebanon in 1983 escorting Dassault-Breguet Super Étendard strike aircraft.

In October 1984, France sent Foch with 12.F squadron to conduct Operation Mirmillon off the coast of Libya, intended to deter Libyan ruler Colonel Gaddafi from escalating.

Regional tensions around the Persian Gulf, largely related to the Iran-Iraq conflict, triggered the deployment of a task force headed by Clemenceau, which included 12.F squadron in its air way.

[64] The Crusaders were manned by the 7th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Basa Air Base and were mostly used for intercepting Soviet bombers and escorting presidential flights.

[64] However, due to a lack of spares and the rapid deterioration of the aircraft, the remaining F-8s were grounded in 1988 and left on an open grass field at Basa Air Base.