Luiper

For today's installment we present a dramatic snap of a South African Air Force (SAAF) Mirage IIICZ just after tuckin' the gear up on takeoff. This particular jet is said to be #802, operated by the Flying Cheetahs of 2 Squadron and flown by Captain Mark Edwards. Dubbed 'MAD MAX' during ACM exercises at Air Force Base Langebaanweg in early 1990, she was lost not too long afterward on February 14th, 1990 after loss of control due to wake turbulence. Captain Edwards went for a ride on the bang seat, and the jet wound up in the water somewhere between Yzerfontein and Saldanha, Cape Town. The type was retired from SAAF service that same year.

Enjoy, and remember kids: jet wash ain't soap...

From: The Dassault Mirage III in South African Air Force service Part 1

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Blunt Blade

Today we bring you a fine shot of a Vought F7U Cutlass, snapped by the man, the myth, the legend - Rudy Arnold. 'Tis the very first Cutlass, to be exact... XF7U-1 BuNo. 122472, though we have no additional intel on the date or location. If we find out more, we'll give a yell.

The Cutlass was a flop in US Navy service, with roughly one-quarter of the production run written off in accidents and twenty-five pilots killed over the course of the type's short time in service during the 1950s. This particular jet was one of those destroyed - she met her demise during a takeoff accident on September 28th, 1949, though thankfully Paul Thayer, the Vought test pilot on that occasion, survived.

Anyhoo, again, we dunno when or where this snap was made, though we're guessing it might have been at Pax River, Maryland.

Whatever the case, enjoy, and watch 'yer step getting in or outta the jet...

National Air & Space Museum (Rudy Arnold Photograph Collection)

Sometime back we featured a rather nice painting of the 'Gutless Cutless', which you can see HERE...


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Super-Heated Sunset

 For today's quickie we bring you a 'purty one... 'tis a silhouette snap from the early-mid '80s showing an F-4S Phantom II from VF-202 'Superheats', one of the fighter RONs from CVWR-20, the US Navy's Atlantic Fleet Reserve Carrier Air Wing.

Enjoy...

From: VF-202 Superheats Facebook page

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Vandy One, Baby!

As the readership may be aware, we love us some Tomcats here at TWW, and we love us some 'purtiness, too. Well, here's one of the 'purtiest Tomcats you'll ever see... 'Vandy One' from VX-9, 'Vampires' as seen in 2002 or thereabouts. Actually, 'twas October 17th of that year, to be precise.

Back in the 1990s, after the Red Russkies threw in the towel and brought an  end to the Cold War, there was alotta reorganizin' taking place in Uncle Sam's arsenal, and the US Navy lost alotta RONs. Among those losses were AIRTEVRON FOUR; VX-4 'Evaluators', which was consolidated with VX-5 'Vampires' to form a new Air Test and Evaluation Squadron, VX-9. 

The new RON inherited the 'Vampires' name from VX-5, and though VX-4 was now gone, some of that squadron's traditions lived on, including the adornment of the skipper's jet, call sign 'Vandy One' ('Vandy' being short for VX-4's full call sign, 'Vanderbilt'), with an overall black paint job and a white Playboy Bunny on the tail. The call sign and black paint were preserved, but the Bunny's days were numbered. The punchy, cheeky little emblem was apparently too suggestive for those with egg on their covers and it soon fell prey to that load of utter horseshit known as political correctness. But, for a brief while in the early years of the new century, it would seem that somebody with a functioning brain and balls enough to tell the flags to take a long walk off a short pier decided to revive the Bunny for the F-14's final days with VX-9.

The result is what y'all see below - F-14D BuNo. 164604, the very last Tomcat to roll off'a the production line at Bethpage, NY. She served only with VX-9 and never touched down on a boat. Never fired her gun, either, apparently.

Anyhoo, enjoy, test, and evaluate, baby!

USAF photo by Staff Sgt. Shane A. Cuomo

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AM = Awful Monster

For today's quickie, we bring you this fine air to air view of the fairly obscure, much maligned, and short-lived Martin AM Mauler, a type that was a handful in the air and which had a tendency to hop over the wires and barrel into the barrier while landing on the boat.

Enjoy, and rig the barricade...

Project 914 Archives

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SEA Super Tweet

For today's installment we bring you a pretty cool if crapola quality AP wirephoto showing an RVNAF (Republic of Vietnam Air Force) A-37 Dragonfly over the lush jungle greenery of South Vietnam, dropping things that go boom (in this case, a couple'a 500 lb 'snake eyes') on their commie brethren. Oh, and this photo is stamped with the date March 13th, 1972, though y'all should keep in mind that sometimes those stamps were a bit late.

Enjoy, and remember: when in doubt, lay some iron...

 

Project 914 Archives

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With today's quickie we bring you a real beaut... an A-10A from the 81st TFW snapped from a tanker over the North Sea on February 1st, 1988. This jet spent a bit-o-time at the boneyard beginning in 2006, was returned to service and updated to A-10C standards. Your blogmeister isn't sure if she's still flying today, but he'd like to think so.

Enjoy, and go ugly early...

USAF Photo by Airman 1st Class Larry Young

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Stop Worrying...

Today's quickie is a screengrab from the opening credits of the film 'Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'. That sequence is composed of official USAF footage showing B-52s doin' the aerial refueling thang, and is one of a few treats for the wingnut to be found in the film.

Enjoy, and remember - if we was flyin' any lower, why, we'd need sleigh bells on this thing...

Screengrab from:  'Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'

Oh, by the way... you can watch the whole flick 'fer nuthin' on the Internet Archive, HERE.

'Yer welcome.


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Hoosier Favorite Horse?

For today's installment, we have an atmospheric and just plain cool-lookin shot from 1947 or thereabouts that shows a couple'a P-51 Mustangs (later F-51) from the 113th Fighter Squadron, an Indiana Guard outfit. This was the early days of the Air Guard, when the lines were still a bit blurred between the 'ole National Guard aviation outfits and the new organization called the Air National Guard, hence the 'NG' on the fuselages and tails instead of the eventually-adopted 'ANG'.

Enjoy, and remember - The Air National Guard Protects America...

Original image: M.Kyburz collection (enlarged and enhanced)

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Was the First 'Stealth Bomber' a UFO?

Okay, your blogmeister has to clear that one up right outta the gate - no, the YB-49 was not a 'stealth' aircraft. The technology, and even the notion simply did not exist back then, except maybe in the minds of a few overly forward-thinking aeronautical engineers (somewhat doubtful) and one or three pulp rag and/or radio science fiction writers (much more likely).

Nonetheless, it would seem that the YB-49 did indeed possess certain qualities that fit in with the idea of 'stealth', most notably its reputed small-ish radar cross section (RCS). Your blogmeister has no data, hard or otherwise, to support this, just anecdotal schtuff. But, given what little he knows of such matters, the idea that the YB-49 was kinda-semi-sorta 'stealthy' and had a small-ish RCS is plausible in his mind.

Okay, 'nuffa-dat-schtuff. UFOs? Well, to some, or even many back then, yeah... this thing definitely would'a brought UFO vibes, especially if viewed from the angle at which the photo below was snapped. And people's imaginations... well, this is neither the time, nor the blog. So let's just say that the YB-49 was undoubtedly futuristic for the time, no matter how you looked at it. And maybe a little otherworldly-lookin' as well. But it certainly wasn't flown by little green men of any description, unless the pilot had scarfed down a bad breakfast burrito the morning of a test-flight, but... I don't think breakfast burritos were a thing back then either, so... just forget it.

Come to think of it, forget all'a what you just read, cuz' it was a pretty long-winded way of saying "your blogmeister was just being funny with the title of this-here installment of TWW".

Enjoy, don't take yourselves too seriously, and remember that lead is better for hats than tin foil, but it'll kill you much morely...

Edwards Air Force Base / Air Force Flight Test Center Website

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