Coolidge Air Force

Wed Dec 24, 2008 11:41 am

Back in October 1995, visiting the US for the Gathering of Spitfires, I took the back road from Tucson to Phoenix . At Coolidge, lo half the former Polish Air Force - Mig/Lim 17's. There was probably 12-15 from memory.

Any news of what happened to them?

PeterA

Wed Dec 24, 2008 2:50 pm

All of the Migs are long gone............I believe that the guy running Coolidge (Sam something) owned them and sold them all off.

Coolidge now has all of the T&G ops based there (relocated from Memorial Field) with a bunch of Herks & a beautiful DC-7.

Got any more pics of the Coolidge Migs??

Wed Dec 24, 2008 3:44 pm

SuperGuppy wrote:Got any more pics of the Coolidge Migs??

SG

I'll need to scan the negs.

On the list for after Chrissy.

PeterA

Thu Dec 25, 2008 4:19 pm

Anybody have any recent pictures from Cooledge, and the hardware that is there? I was at Memorial when a man I met..Chuck....was moving out the helos...

Fri Dec 26, 2008 8:18 pm

GARY HILTON wrote:Anybody have any recent pictures from Cooledge, and the hardware that is there? I was at Memorial when a man I met..Chuck....was moving out the helos...

yes I have visited a couple of times recently... most recent was one year ago

http://www.skippyscage.com/aviation/az/coolidge0702/

Fri Dec 26, 2008 10:48 pm

I was there lst May for one day. We flew a country music singernamed Billy Ray Cyrus in for the annual "cowboy roundup." Had to hand pump about 800 gallons of Jet A as they only have self service available to the public!
At that time , a company had four C-130A's and a DC-7C being operated for D.O.D. contracts carrying cargo. There was a SNJ-5C on the field owned by a retired airline pilot (Brian Beulen ?) that was a nice almost bone stock flyer. There was supposed to be a P-51 in a hangar, and several other aircraft that frequent the airport but actually are based somewhere else.
I believe the Jurca plans built replica Spitfire is based there as they talked about it a lot but it had been damaged asnd was being repaired somewhere else at the time.
There is also a HALO school being run by govt. contractors for the Marine Corps to instruct crazy people how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes!

Fri Dec 26, 2008 11:06 pm

Good thing you didn't have that country boys daughter on board or you would have had a riot on the ramp!

Sat Dec 27, 2008 6:07 am

SuperGuppy wrote:All of the Migs are long gone............I believe that the guy running Coolidge (Sam something) owned them and sold them all off.

Coolidge now has all of the T&G ops based there (relocated from Memorial Field) with a bunch of Herks & a beautiful DC-7.

Got any more pics of the Coolidge Migs??

SG,

It seems there were eight outside and seven in the hangar.

So are these all privately owned and flying in the US now? Target drones?

PeterA

Sat Dec 27, 2008 9:31 am

Hi Peter

I visited in March 1996 and the Migs were there then though I was not able to get in the Hanger. some of them have moved on to museums or private owners and two of them have crashed. Four or five have not been seen, since they were last noted at Coolidge in 96/97. Do you have a list of which ones you saw in the Hanger as am still trying to id one.

best regards

Tony Edmonds

Mon Dec 29, 2008 7:15 am

Tony Edmonds wrote:Hi Peter

I visited in March 1996 and the Migs were there then though I was not able to get in the Hanger. some of them have moved on to museums or private owners and two of them have crashed. Four or five have not been seen, since they were last noted at Coolidge in 96/97. Do you have a list of which ones you saw in the Hanger as am still trying to id one.

best regards

Tony Edmonds

Tony,

I am not a list person.

With more foresight I should perhaps have taken reference shots of the ID's, but this was pre-digital.

What you see here is all I have.

PeterA

Mon Dec 29, 2008 9:52 am

I know several ended up at Deervalley, and one at Glendale.