These two pictures were taken from the Tanker Base Tower at Fox Field in Lancaster, California at the end of a fire bust in October 2003 by Dave Kelly, jr.
T62 was the DC-7 that I was flying for Butler Aircraft on a Moses Lake contract. I don’t remember offhand who was flying the other tankers or their home bases, but,
T68 was TBM’s DC-6
Tanker 21 and Tanker 22 were Aero Union P-3s
T14 was Aero Union’s DC-4
T06 was a Neptune Aviation P2V-5
A P2V-7 of Neptune Aviation is nose on in a loading pit in the foreground
One of ARDCO’s DC-4s is nose on in the middle row along with another Neptune Aviation P2V-5
Another ARDCO DC-4 and a Hawkins & Powers P2V-7s are in the background with a Minden Air P2V-7 next to it. I’d say that Minden’s P2V is T48 from the yellow paint
The Argosy, Boxcar and C-97 in the far background were part of a museum.
This is the Last Hurrah because for reasons that were claimed to be for “safety” all of the Federal Tanker Contracts were cancelled in June of the following year. This was a few days before I was to report for duty at Moses Lake with Tanker 62.
We tanker pilots went from being considered more or less heroes to being reckless maniacs overnight as far as the official press releases went because we had a “Can Do Attitude”, which apparently made us unsafe. The aircraft couldn’t be used as tankers unless the operators could provide a manufacturer’s airframe life limit. The only one that qualified was the P-3, although the paperwork was really for a P-3C rather than the P-3A. The rest of us were out of luck
I’d better not say any more. That was 18 years ago but the wounds are still fresh.
Here are the pictures
426CAB44-7A56-4593-B0ED-B81F57318A54 by
tanker622001, on Flickr
83CE45B9-8949-4D1C-B49E-26D87AC0BAB8 by
tanker622001, on Flickr