More Fallon

They got so many aircraft in here to drool over. One of my favorites--an oldie but a true classic, the North American F-86 Sabre Jet:

If I could have one to fly out of here, it'd be the F-86. Chuck Yeager described it as the last jet that handled like a high performance piston-engine fighter.

Then there's my other favorite, the Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter, built mainly for export but used at Fallon in a training role to simulate aggressor aircraft. It was said that a capable pilot in one of these could still take on an F-15 or F-16 pilot and win.

And here's something you don't see every day...an F-16 in NAVY colors.

And here's a Lockheed S-3 Viking, aka "the War Hoover".

And a Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye.

And of course there is an F-18 here too.

Several F-18's, in fact. And not all of the static displays.

It was a great day to be alive out there.

For Tuna

When I headed out to San Diego a couple of weeks ago, I was unable to link up with blogger Tuna, Old AF Sarge's minion over at Chant du Depart, because he had other commitments. He did, however, mention to me that if I got to the USS Midway museum, I should check our their Lockheed S-3 Viking on display as it was one that he personally flew during the Iraq war. Well heck, if I can't visit a storied pilot hero, visiting one of his planes is a decent second. So I dropped in on Viking #159766, an S-3B once flown by VS-41, the "Shamrocks", as NJ-741. Before that, she flew the skies over the Persian Gulf as an asset of VS-29, but that paint job's long gone now, sadly.

Here it is, folks, the mighty "War Hoover" in all it's awesomeness.

I asked him for some flying stories involving this particular aircraft, and he made mention of this post that he put up on Chant du Depart earlier.

Viking History redux

And here's old 199766 back in her glory days with VS-41.

In his e-mail to me, Tuna says of the S-3:

In general, it was a very fun aircraft to fly because of it's aerobatic capability, flying with all your friends, lots of room for gear on cross-country flights, lots of gas, great cockpit visibility, a variety of missions, and it was easy to fly. This particular bird was exciting because of the new mission, the ability to count Iranian boats pierside from the middle of the gulf, the advanced electronic mission that can't be discussed outside a SCIF, and getting to take part in the war outside of just tanking returning strikers.

Well that's damned cool, because I never would have pictured the S-3 as beoing aerobatic, but hey--it's not like I've flown one; I just saw this one and a bunch more all shrink-wrapped at the boneyard.

And hey, Old AF Sarge...Tuna's responses here count as participation enough to give me cause to list him as a co-blogger. Don't know what you're doing over there to drive the help away, but I can always use more help here.