Vance and Malden fields 1950s pictures

Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:25 pm

A customer gave me a CD of pictures today of some AF training bases from the 1950s. Some of the shots are just amazing.

http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y113/gardnerpilot/Vance%20and%20Malden%201950s/

Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:43 pm

great photos Chuck, is that a 650 Bonneville I saw

Wed Oct 14, 2009 8:55 pm

Great stuff there!
All those T-6's!
Love the XC-99 and B-29 shots!
The casual around the base shots are a real "snapshot" of life.

Thanks for sharing.

Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:01 pm

Indeed a bunch of cool vintage shots, don't forget the B-25s, B-57s, C-119, L-5 (I think), and V-tailed Bonanza? The ground running rig for the T-6 looked a bit scary!

Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:25 pm

Amazing group! Did a quick look through Scott Thompson's B-25 survivor book and found at least two amongst the photos.

Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:31 pm

Thanks for sharing them...

Lynn

Wed Oct 14, 2009 9:47 pm

Thanks for posting those great pictures! PMed you.

Gary

Thu Oct 15, 2009 6:26 am

Cool shots.

I just got to Vance, so it was fun trying to match up the scenery and envision what it used to be like.

Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:04 am

Excellent images!!! I share one of them on my Facebook account!

Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:39 am

Great stuff Chuck. Reminds me that I have a bunch of old pictures from my brother taken over the twenty something years he was in the Air Force.

Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:43 am

Holy smokes! What's the story behind the T-6 being run up on the wooden stands???

Gary

Thu Oct 15, 2009 9:44 am

That was for training pilots with a fear of heights!!!

Thu Oct 15, 2009 10:41 am

Yep, the Air Force had a bunch of those. I think they were called "Captive Trainers" or something like that, and were used to train fledglings in proper cockpit procedure. The other photos I've see of them, at Randolph, I seem to recall, were in a more sophisticated fixture than this one.

One of my areas of interest is WWII airfields. These photos are the best I've ever seen of Malden and Vance, with many of the wartime structures still intact. Great stuff!!!!!

Scott

Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:05 am

Boy, a few of those wrecked airplane pictures are pretty sobering, huh? Yikes.

Gary

Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:50 am

I was thinking the same thing, Gary. You don't often see that side of the training programs.

Scott