Category Archives: military

Kansas Aviation Museum

One nice aspect of traveling a lot for work is that you periodically find yourself near to your friends and can make a visit. A recent trip had me not too far from Wichita and needing to spread the trip over a weekend so I was able to pop up and visit Steve and Alysia. On the Saturday, Steve had a suggestion for something to do. It was the Kansas Aviation Museum. What on earth made him think that I might like that I wonder?

The museum is based at McConnell Air Force Base. It is located in the old civilian terminal building that has just undergone an extensive restoration. There is quite a collection of aircraft both within the building and outside. Given the major role that Wichita has played in aviation, it isn’t surprising that they have a lot of material to work with. Displays are in place throughout the museum along with some learning exhibits focused on a slightly younger audience so we obviously didn’t play with them.

The smaller and more delicate types are inside the terminal. This sometimes means they are a little cramped being fitted in wherever the building will allow them to go. The larger stuff is outside. You can walk out amongst them. The 727 and 737 are not too surprising –many ex FedEx 727s are now scattered around the US – but the B-47 and B-52 are nice to see. I never knew that Beech made a jet version of the Mentor. That’s because there is only one of them and it is on display although not in great shape. A Starship is always a nice find and an early Learjet is welcome too.

The old tower is open and a climb up there gives a good view across the displays as well as across to the KC-135s on the ramp of the base. The Boeing hangars are extensive although now dormant and the Spirit factory is just off behind you.

There is a lot to see. The tower would be a fun place to be when the field is busy too. The collection is possibly in need of some extra attention just to keep the basics together. Museums like this are always struggling to get volunteers in to keep everything going so I wish them the best and hopefully they will be able to sustain what they have going.

Sea Fury Surprise

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It’s always fun to get a nice surprise while you were out. I was up at Sonoma Skypark with my friend Eric looking at a bunch of pictures he had taken. There is usually something buzzing around on a Saturday so, while the noise of an engine will cause us to look, we normally then return to what we are doing. However, the sound of this engine made us take a second look. It was a Hawker Sea Fury circling high above. This is a plane belonging to Walt Bowe and we watched him high above us. Eric said it was unlikely Walt would do a pass so we just watched casually.

However, as we watched, Walt’s path did look like he was turning in towards us. We paused a little so as not to look foolish but then it was clear he was dropping down towards the field. Fortunately, I had the camera on the table near me. Eric and I jumped up to get to the other side of the field where the light is better. We scurried across as gracefully as two old geezers can and we in position as Walt dropped into his pass. I guess he saw us as we got a great pass from him before he pulled up and continued on his way. Now I want to shoot this plane again but in a more planned way!

Desert Pink Jets (and not jets)

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My friend, Ben, put some pictures on Facebook of a Jaguar being restored in Arizona that is being painted in the desert pink colors that were used during the first Gulf War. I worked a little on Jags in my days at BAe and have always thought it was a cool jet. It is nice to see one showing up in restoration over here. It triggered a discussion between a few of us about the colors that were used at that time.

In 1991, I went to Mildenhall for the, then annual, Air Fete. The Air Fete went away a while back and now it looks like Mildenhall itself will follow into the realms of “once upon a time”. However, there was a time when the Air Fete was possibly the premier military air show in the UK. For a while it was a regular feature of my year. (The weekend before my university finals started was I a) studying hard at college or b) at Mildenhall for the show? I was studying aeronautical engineering so surely it counted?)

This was the first big show after the end of the war in the gulf and a lot of the aircraft that were on display were pretty much unchanged. This included the desert colors that had been applied in a hurry along with mission markings and less official images that the crews had painted. One of the Tornados on display showed how quickly things had been done. They had painted the jet with the flight refueling probe still attached which, when removed, left a grey patch amongst the pink on the front fuselage.

Not everything was pink. The tankers that went over had already adopted a hemp color in the previous years so they were already quite well prepared. Also, a Chinook was on display that had a mottled finish that was supposedly the result of being used for special forces missions.

Needless to say, most of these colors were pretty quickly removed as the aircraft where cleaned up after their return and put through some deeper maintenance and the rapid war modifications either removed or upgraded to a clear condition. (Lots of mods were done under a “war only” approval. They were less likely to kill you then the opposition but hadn’t gone through the full clearance process. They weren’t approved for peacetime use until a more thorough evaluation had been done. Of course, we had a fair bit of testing experience to do the clearances with given how much they had flown in theater!)

The pictures are scanned from old negatives so not fantastic but they are a snapshot of an interesting time!

Brian Shul

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One great advantage of social media is that you find out about something before it happens rather than after – well, at least some of the time. I saw a Facebook post about a talk being given by Brian Shul at the Hiller Aviation Museum. Brian is a retired Air Force pilot who flew a variety of aircraft types culminating in the SR-71 Blackbird. He has published a number of books and talks to various groups about aspects of his life and career.

After Brian had finished his talk, I managed to grab some time with him to conduct an interview. The piece that resulted is now live on the Global Aviation Resource website at the following link. http://www.globalaviationresource.com/v2/2015/01/23/aviation-profile-brian-shul-sr-71-blackbird-pilot/

Brian’s life has had many interesting turns. I will leave the story to the feature and you can always buy his books if you have saved some pennies. I do want to point out that Brian is a very engaging person. I sat with him for a long time while he dealt with so many people that wanted to talk to him that day and he never once shied away from taking as much time as any of them wanted, young or old. He was even given directions to visitors looking for the museum’s restrooms without batting an eye. When we managed to get some time to talk, he freely and frankly talked about anything I asked and provided plenty of material for the article. Meeting interesting people is a great part of writing for GAR.

Stead Field National Guard

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Quite a few years ago, I was on a visit to NAS Fallon with my friend Richard. (You can check out his work at http://www.aviationimaging.com/ and I recommend you do.) Another buddy, Paul, was also along and the day after we were at Fallon, Paul had arranged a visit to the National Guard facility at Stead Field, north of Reno. (Paul’s work can be found at http://skippyscage.com/) This base operated a variety of helicopters including Chinooks, Black Hawks and Kiowas. It was also once the home of CH-54 Tarhes. It was in looking for pictures of the CH-54 that is preserved there that I came across the rest of the shots from that day.

I took one Chinook shot that morning that I have used a number of times but the rest of them had kind of been forgotten. We had a great time wandering through the hangars seeing what was ready for use or undergoing maintenance. The high point of the day was that a Chinook was launching and we were allowed out onto the ramp outside the fence to be in place when the Chinook taxied out and took off.

As it happened, the Chinook pulled up into the hover and stayed there for quite some time. Since I had time, I progressively lowered my shutter speed to try and get more rotor blur on the famously slow turning Chinook rotor. I had just got as low as I could go when he suddenly transitioned to forward flight. I was at totally the wrong shutter speed and ended up with some parallax issues as he flew by but it was all good.

The Chinook obviously features here a bit but I wanted to share some of the other helicopters that were there that day. It was fun to see some shots that I had forgotten about long ago.

Fat Albert tearing the turf

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Lots of my retro posts come about because I was doing something else that led me to a shot I had forgotten about. Having a system like Lightroom is a great way of throwing up some interesting shots that appear when you run a keyword search. In this case, I was looking at an old air show which had featured the Blue Angels. As is usual for their shows, the first part of the demonstration was the USMC C-130 display, Fat Albert.

At the end of the display, they land the C-130 and throw the props into reverse aiming to stop as quickly as possible. (A little bit of bouncing is also apparent in the top shot!) On this occasion, I guess the ground alongside the runway was not too stable. The wash thrown forward by the props ripped the turf up ahead of the plane and threw it into the air. It made for a pretty dramatic view. Even through the viewfinder, I could see what was going on. The shots afterwards just confirmed how much material they threw around that day!

Preserved Blackbirds

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If you ever want to find a way to lose a lot of time (this assumes you are an aviation guy), spend time on the Lockheed Martin in-house magazine’s website, Code One. Edited by Eric Hehs (with contributions including some by Jeff Rhodes), the magazine is full of great stories about Lockheed Martin products past and present. I should say I have met Eric and Jeff through ISAP and both are great guys so I am biased. When I am supposed to be doing something, Code One is the worst thing for me to look at since I can get lost in story after story. Recently they were celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the SR-71 and ran a piece about preserved Blackbirds. This got me wondering how many of them I have seen and photographed.

I will start by pointing out I saw them in service as well as preserved. Mildenhall was home of Detachment 4 of the 9^th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing for many years. Blackbirds made an appearance at the Air Fetes that were held at Mildenhall in those days. I also saw a couple from outside the fence during normal operations.

It turns out that, while there are a lot of them around, I have seen quite a few. Some I have seen but not photographed which is a little frustrating. However, most of the ones I have seen have made it in to the collection. Here are a selection of shots. (These also include A12 and YF-12 airframes so not all SR-71s but I doubt you care about that.)

Apache at Dayton

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One display at Dayton that I liked was the US Army Apache display. I have seen a few displays by Apaches over the years but they are not a regular feature of shows. The Apache is an impressive looking machine and given its nature, it can be kept close in front of the crowd to make a display that never loses your interest. Service pilots don’t tend to put the machine through as aggressive a flight demo as a company pilot might when trying to sell it. However, they do still show it off well.

The subdued finish on the Apache makes for a harder time getting shots on overcast days. However, it does take away the problem of harsh shadows on an already dark airframe. The subtlety of the different greens on the airframe are hard to show in some cases but here they do actually become apparent.

Smoke Squadron

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I previously talked about the visit to the Vectren show at Dayton a few years ago. One of the more unusual acts to make it is a team that apparently has a track record of appearing at Dayton and that is the Brazilian team, Esquadrilha da Fumaça or Smoke Squadron. They are equipped with Embraer Tucano turboprop trainers and the performance characteristics of the Tucano make for a tight display in front of the crowd combined with good maneuverability for the formations and the individual aircraft.

The weather was not great with low cloud and flat lighting but the lower speed of the Tucano meant that a good display could be presented, even if vertical maneuvering was restricted. The formations were tight and some good configurations could be set up with the planes maneuvering around each other during passes. I was disappointed to see how few shots I had of some passes. Now I would have a lot more to choose from but I guess I spent less time shooting in those days.

I suspect a lot of people have not seen this team so I am posting a lot of different shots in here. I would certainly like to see them perform again at some point in the future. I shall have to see where they next appear in the US.

NMUSAF

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All of my interest in Dayton that has shown up in some previous posts was originally driven by a search for some shots I had taken at the National Museum of the USAF at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton OH. I have been to the museum on a couple of occasions. The first time was not a planned visit and I was able to check out a good part of the collection but was too late to make a visit across the field to the hangars that hold the presidential airplane collection and the flight test collection.

Consequently, on my second visit I made the effort to get there early and secure a slot on the shuttle bus across to these hangars. The main collection is very interesting and had changed a bit between my visits but the rarities in the flight test collection were really what had drawn me back. Photographing in the main hangars is a little impeded by the light – or lack thereof. It is very dark and some of the aircraft are similarly dark which results in some very difficult photography conditions.

The majority of the main hangar aircraft are USAF aircraft but you do find some other types in there. There are a variety of MiGs on display as well as an RAF Tornado in Granby colors. The changes in the collection include the presence of a YF-22 demonstrator on my first visit which had been replaced with an F-22 development aircraft on my second. Also, an F-117 had appeared for the second visit which I hadn’t seen on the previous trip. The relevance of unmanned vehicles is reflected in a variety of types showing up as well as some research vehicles.

However, the research hangar was really what I wanted to check out. There are some amazing aircraft on display. I was fascinated to see them all but there were really three that were the focus of a lot of my attention. The B-70, the YF-23 and the X-29. Sadly, the variety of aircraft on display is a problem given the constrained size of the hangar. Everything is piled on top of everything else to make it fit. This makes it necessary to take care as you walk around to ensure that you don’t walk into things. Also, it makes getting photographs a little tricky. Something is always intruding in to your shot. They weren’t rolling stuff outside for me so I had to go with what I could get. Air data booms and propellers do tend to show up in odd places though.

Other aircraft of note include the AFTI F-16. Sadly, this aircraft went through many iterations during its life and the one in which it was when retired is not as interesting as when it was set up for control configured vehicle research. That was a plane I loved when I was young. It is funny that this hangar also includes a YF-12, the YF-107 and an X-15 and these only warrant mention this late in the piece. However, there are other equally unusual types there which don’t even get a mention although they will show up in the pictures. That is how cool this hangar is. For an aero engineer like me, these research types are really great – particularly when you have only read about them for many years. This place is great. What a shame you are limited in how much time you can spend there before they bus you back to the main museum campus.