Warbird Information Exchange

Beale AFB hosted an open house for the first time in about 7 years over the weekend and had some cool displays. The coolest, and perhaps the rarest was a tribute to a fallen U2 instructor who was killed last year. I've heard from a former U2 crew chief that even he had never seen this formation before.


Being a huge SR-71 fan, it was pretty cool to stand on the ramp knowing once upon a time there were SR-71s coming and going all day long there. Sadly there are only two SR-71 hangars on the ramp now. Still, it was equally cool to see 5 U2s there. As well as the all black T38s that the SR crews used on a regular basis. (Still being used by U2 crews.)







Will

Nice: a U-2 take-off is a thing never forgotten!

(and also IMHO louder than an SR-71 on full reheat)

Thanks for the pictures,
were there any interesting static display aircraft?

Those are great shots! Is that a Corvette chase car I see there? I wonder if they those ever come up on gov't auction

Tom P.

Think the chase car is a Ferrari F430. The yellow spot above the front wheel and in front of the mirror is where the Ferrari badge would be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_F430

Its a Ferrari F430. They were doing demo rides in it, and using it for U2 takeoff and recovery. I guess you could spend $150 to have the opportunity to do 150 mph.


I have a ton of U2 shots that I'm still processing. I'll be happy to post them as I get them done. There were other interesting aircraft on display, including a Super Guppy. Should I post the pics here, or start a full Beale airshow thread? (Seems like the full thread might be a better one since that would allow other people to post their pics and not get off topic.) I shot about 1500 pics, lots of duplicates so I'm trying to weed the repetitive stuff out and only keep the good stuff.

Will

The MIG 28s are pretty sweet. I once heard of a dude in a tomcat that was in a 4G inverted dive with one of them...he had the pictures to prove it! ;-D

Nice! Can't wait for more photos! great thread.

Tom P.

Great pics Will,

HA! I spotted the Super Guppy going into Moffett NASA/Ames last week. airplane spotting

_________________
remember the Oogahonk!
old school enthusiast of Civiltary Warbirds and Air Racers

I think I'm going to keep this thread just T-38s and U2 related. I'll start a second thread for the Beale show in general.




Will

Speaking of U-2 Chase cars...
Back in the late 80s, circle 1989, the U-2 landing chase car at Mildenhall was a Mustang coupe with the 5.0 V-8. It had a stack of aviation radios were mounted on the transmission tunnel and various antennae. It wasn't a GT, just base model and looked to be painted the standard Mustang color closest to Air Force blue (as I recall a dark medium metallic blue. Likely Medium Shadow blue as seen here in a photo of a similar year convertible from the excellent Mustang Attitude web site).
http://mustangattitude.com/cgi-bin/show ... 9_00033_01
IIRC, it was unmarked except for the DoD license plate which look sated it's serial number, unit/base and command.

I never thought I'd see the day where there would be a Mustang staff car!

Other times I saw a Chevy El Camino used...again available with a V-8 and likely faster than the standard military pickups of the era.

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

Here's an article on the Mustangs the USAF used,

http://www.sspmustang.org/features/USAF_SSP.htm

Nice shots as usual, Will! Can't wait to see the rest.

Well, actually I can - I know how many you have to sort through

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Chris

A few more. No order to them.






I've got lots to go through. It wasn't a precision shooting day, more like accuracy by volume.

I'm off to Chino this coming weekend. That should be a photo overload...

Will

What are the black U-2s used for?