Mojave jet fighters.

Neal Nurmi · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 1:08 am

I've been scanning stuff from the Wingman archives, and ran across a bunch of shots of the many and various jets that lived all over the Mojave ramp back in the late 1970s. This included several British fighters, Sabres at the Flight Systems facility and such.

If anybody here is seriously interested I'll work some up. If there is no interest I won't bother...

mexchiwa · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 8:30 pm **Posts:** 112

Yawn...

(Just kidding - would love to see these pics. Thanks for sharing them!)

JohnB · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 8:10 am

Back in the 1970s Flying magazine had an uncharacteristic story about two friends at Mojave with jets...a Meteor NF 11 and the other a Vampire.
One was Al Lechter (sp?) ...I can't recall the other person named. Can anyone help?

IIRC, The Meteor is now at the Edwards museum. I also recall that it appeared in the 1970s Wonder Woman TV series as a WWII-era jet fighter.
Also, anyone know what became of the Hunter that appeared in The Right Stuff as the D558-II?

Neal Nurmi · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:03 am

OK -- here's one. I Have little knowledge of IDs of all these airplanes, so I'll let those who know this stuff do the talking here...

Neal Nurmi · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:13 am

sandiego89 · **Joined:** Mon May 21, 2012 12:28 pm **Posts:** 1199

Neal Nurmi wrote:

If anybody here is seriously interested I'll work some up. If there is no interest I won't bother...

Are you kidding! Please post as many as you can. great stuff.

Mojave was a regular $100 dollar chessburger fly-in stop for my late father and I in the 1980's when I was a teen. Mojave was always great as you never knew what was going to be on the ramp. I recall the "bird-cage" Meteor very well.

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

I remember Art Letcher's Vampire, a flyable Meteor and I think Dave Tallichet had some Saab Lansens in storage there. That's in addition to the Flight Systems F-86s and F-100s.

Oh, and an old rotting Corsair...

Neal Nurmi · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:13 am

Don't rely on the dates I've been putting on these. I walked that ramp in both 1978 and 1979 (actually drove it one year). The sunset shots above were 1978.

I'm getting older and easily confused (though actually I was easily confused when I was younger, but these days I prefer to blame my age)...

Neal Nurmi · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 1:22 pm

This thing always looked as if they just topped off the airframe with used engine oil before each flight. It was pretty rough...

BigGrey · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 1:24 pm

Had friends who lived near Mojave and we would be riding dirt bikes in the area and get buzzed by these all the time. I remember an article that talked about the guys buying "contaminated" jet fuel from the govt for something like 25 cents a gallon and that was how they were able to afford to fly them as much as they did.

Neal Nurmi · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 1:43 pm

One of the Mojave boneyards, with Vampire turning in to the showline

ALOHADAVE · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:00 pm

Anybody know more about the history of this F-104? Photo shows
F-104 at Mojave Airport in May 1986 completely aluminum sprayed with fake serial “60731”. The documented fate of 56-759 (c/n 183-1047) marked as 56-731 is unknown after 1986.

Neal Nurmi · **Posted:** Thu Jul 23, 2015 11:36 pm

ALOHADAVE · **Posted:** Fri Jul 24, 2015 12:01 am

More jets (wrecks) spotted at Mojave Airport back in March 15, 2009 Anybody have any info on them?

Neal Nurmi · **Posted:** Fri Jul 24, 2015 12:43 am

This thread is getting a bit scattered and is beginning to feel somewhat pointless. Too bad -- I hadn't even gotten to the Sabres yet.

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Mojave jet fighters.

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