Warbird Information Exchange

Recoiless rifle tests at China Lake, 1972.










These pictures were found on the China Lake Archives site;

http://www.chinalakealumni.org/1973.htm

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"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass..."
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

make that a Cavalier F-51

the photos on the 1974 page are even better

http://www.chinalakealumni.org/1974.htm

for all these photos without watermarks - e-mail me please

Martin

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Flying is easy: just learn how to throw yourself at the ground and miss

after the shot?

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EVERYTHING that CAN fly should be ALLOWED to FLY!
IWO JIMA'S best narative..."GOD ISN'T HERE"
http://www.amazon.com/God-Isnt-Here-Ame ... 0976154706


P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.

S: Took hammer away from midget.

Below are 2 photos taken of 68-15796 at United States Air Foprce Armanent Museum, Eglin AFB, 02/27/93.
bill word

Looking at the paint job at China Lake I'm guessing that it was one of the Mustangs used as chase for the Cheyenne project ?

Bill, the China Lake info says that this aircraft is 68-15795. Is 96 the other chase aircraft ? If I remember correctly there were two.

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"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass..."
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto

Rick,
first the id for 1973 is 68-15795, but for the one in 1974 it is id'd as 68-15796 (see Swiss Mustangs post)

There actually were 3 Mustangs 0-72990 used for initial evaluation and then also acquiring 2 others (Cavaliers) 68-15795 and 68-15796.

68-19795 is at Minnesota ANG Museum, Minneapolis
68-19796 at Eglin AFB Museum
0-72990 at Army Air Museum, Ft Rucker (see below)

Photo taken Army Aviation Museum, Ft Rucker, Alabama 10-22-96

And to round out Bill's excellent images, here are a couple that I took of 68-15795 at the Minnesota Air Guard Museum a couple of years ago in her new paint scheme.





Steve

Love that chopped-off tailcap so they could 'get rid' of the Cavalier tail.

FWIW, I will have the "there I was" story from the pilot who flew the 106mm rifle tests in my Cavalier Mustang book, whenever that gets published. Very interesting stuff.

Yeah, isn't that great?

The paint job looks pretty good though. The pics don't do it justice as it was pretty dark and overcast that day I took them.

Looking forward to your book Randy.

Steve

Nice tie-downs!!

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...at Chino-AeroSport...1972...





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Well, if you're still grounded then you have lot sof time to hammer that thing out! get cracking!

What ARE you doing these days? I've been out of the loop a while now...

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"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

F-15Es were only grounded for the first little bit -- it is the C model that had the extended grounding, so I've continued flying ops normal.

It is that 'ops normal' which has basically pushed the book to the back-burner. The pace of work here overseas is dramatically -- dramatically -- higher than it ever was at assignments stateside. I barely have time to even be at my home seeing my family, much less spending time at the computer writing and researching the book.

To be honest, I'm at a stopping point that is just going to take dedicated time to get over -- there are two large photo collections in the US that I need to obtain, as well as some significant editing to the text. Neither of those two things are the sort of item I can take care of during a couple spare hours on the weekend, so until that happens I'm at a standstill.

That's what I get for not being a professional writer. When 'real life' gets racheted up in intensity, the hobbies on the periphery get pushed to the side until time becomes available to work on them in earnest.

Wow, thanks for the link. Those are some great photos! Are they available anywhere larger and without watermarks? Anyone have Peter Foster's contact info??

Guess those F-89s, RF-84s, and A-1s were all destroyed as ground targets at some point