I'm still here--and with more aircraft!!

Sorry for the lack of posts. The trouble I'm having with this PC makes posting less fun than chasing French Quarter gals.

But I caught one last week and took her to Pensacola to see the Naval Air Museum, a place I've always wanted to visit. And I was not disappointed.

It's actually on the base, so get ready for the 100% security check.

Hey look--an F-14!

And just inside (after another security checkpoint), there was this Douglas A-4 Skyhawk!

And here is the only SBU-2 Vindicator left in the world. And this one only survived after being lost overboard during carrier training in Lake Michigan and being recovered and restored 47 years later! (Shown with Paige for scale.)

And here's a T-28 Trojan trainer hanging above a Grumman F9F Panther jet. Yep. I'm happy in here. And Paige is somewhat confused, as before we got here she had no idea that the Navy had airplanes.

And I found a Corsair!

Here's a Vought F7U-3 (not a 3M as marked...tsk!). Not one of the more successful early jets; they were under-powered and problematic and over a quarter of them were destroyed in crashes and they killed 21 Navy pilots and four test pilots before being withdrawn from service.

And here's a few older ones...A Grumman F4F-3 below, and a sweet Beechcraft UC Traveler above.

And here's an F3F-2 biplane. This one was also ditched at sea off San Diego in 1940. Rediscovered by the Navy in 1988, she was raised in 1991 and restored and here she is today.

By this time, Paige was like "Why are there so many?" Poor girl didn't even know yet how much she was about to learn.

More to come. Stay tuned.













































https://www.navalaviationmuseum.org/nnam/virtualtour/

FALLON!!

So I couldn't not be in NW Nevada and not go to Fallon NAS, home of the Navy's "Top Gun" program now, could I?

I drove up to the gate of this Navy facility way out in the desert only to be challenged by some rough and ready MP types who let me right in and gave me directions to all the cool stuff to see once I gave them my ID and dropped Old NFO's name.

The actual name of the field is Van Voorhis Field, named for LCDR Bruce Van Voorhis.

And the plaque bearing his Meal of Honor citation is flanked by these two gate guardians, a Vought A-7 Corsair II (left) and a Douglas A-4 Skyhawk (right).

There's also a beautiful Douglas A-1 Skyraider just inside the gate.

And across the street is a slick-looking North American A-5 Vigilante.

And here's a Grumman F-14 Tomcat, a pane so cool even Tom Cruise could not screw that up when he pretended to fly one on the movie Top Gun.

They have lots of really cool warbirds on display in an open-air park here. I spent a fair bit of time walking among them and I was the only one there.
Here's a Grumman A-6 Intruder.

They have another Douglas A-4 too.

There's another A-7, too.

And a Vought F-8 Crusader, the "last of the gunfighters".

And naturally there's a McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom. There has to be.

Apologies is some pictures look close-cropped or don't show both sides of the aircraft. As a guest here on this active duty installation, I don't want to photograph and publish pictures of the many, many communications and radar antennae that are all around. Erring on the side of caution for Opsec at the expense of numerous photos. Sorry.

More to come soon as I can. Many, many more.

Skyhawk!

The F-18 gate guardian wasn't the only bird observed at Belle Chasse the other day. I found this A-4 Skyhawk there, too.

This one, 147750, is an A-4C that was one of the 100 airframes upgraded to an L version with the addition of the avionics hump.

These versatile little warbirds were used by American and allied forced for a long time. The first ones came into service in 1956 and the last ones were retired from VC-8 in 2003. The Israeli Air Force, the largest foreign operator of the A-4, just retired their last ones in December, 2015. And there are still a few countries using them today along with a host of private operators.

This was the smallest fighter capable of carrying nuclear weapons back in it's day. It was so small that it could be operated from carriers without the need for folding wings. John McCain flew one of these over Vietnam and was shot down in one. And the Blue Angels flew them for a while, too. I saw them perform with these a few times and they could d amazing things that they don't try with the F-18s today. They were seriously maneuverable, which is why they were used as adversary aircraft by TOP GUN and other training units.

I want one of these now. Pity my work car didn't have a trailer hitch.