A Dragon Lady and her Talons

[Blackbirdfan]

Beale AFB hosted an open house for the first time in about 7 years over the weekend and had some cool displays. The coolest, and perhaps the rarest was a tribute to a fallen U2 instructor who was killed last year. I've heard from a former U2 crew chief that even he had never seen this formation before.


Being a huge SR-71 fan, it was pretty cool to stand on the ramp knowing once upon a time there were SR-71s coming and going all day long there. Sadly there are only two SR-71 hangars on the ramp now. Still, it was equally cool to see 5 U2s there. As well as the all black T38s that the SR crews used on a regular basis. (Still being used by U2 crews.)







Will

[quemerford]

Nice: a U-2 take-off is a thing never forgotten!

(and also IMHO louder than an SR-71 on full reheat)

[ALOHADAVE]

Thanks for the pictures,
were there any interesting static display aircraft?

[wendovertom]

Those are great shots! Is that a Corvette chase car I see there? I wonder if they those ever come up on gov't auction

Tom P.

[blurrkup]

Those are great shots! Is that a Corvette chase car I see there? I wonder if they those ever come up on gov't auction

Tom P.

Think the chase car is a Ferrari F430. The yellow spot above the front wheel and in front of the mirror is where the Ferrari badge would be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_F430

[Blackbirdfan]

Those are great shots! Is that a Corvette chase car I see there? I wonder if they those ever come up on gov't auction

Tom P.

Its a Ferrari F430. They were doing demo rides in it, and using it for U2 takeoff and recovery. I guess you could spend $150 to have the opportunity to do 150 mph.


I have a ton of U2 shots that I'm still processing. I'll be happy to post them as I get them done. There were other interesting aircraft on display, including a Super Guppy. Should I post the pics here, or start a full Beale airshow thread? (Seems like the full thread might be a better one since that would allow other people to post their pics and not get off topic.) I shot about 1500 pics, lots of duplicates so I'm trying to weed the repetitive stuff out and only keep the good stuff.

Will

[menards]

The MIG 28s are pretty sweet. I once heard of a dude in a tomcat that was in a 4G inverted dive with one of them...he had the pictures to prove it! ;-D

[wendovertom]

Those are great shots! Is that a Corvette chase car I see there? I wonder if they those ever come up on gov't auction

Tom P.

Its a Ferrari F430. They were doing demo rides in it, and using it for U2 takeoff and recovery. I guess you could spend $150 to have the opportunity to do 150 mph.


I have a ton of U2 shots that I'm still processing. I'll be happy to post them as I get them done. There were other interesting aircraft on display, including a Super Guppy. Should I post the pics here, or start a full Beale airshow thread? (Seems like the full thread might be a better one since that would allow other people to post their pics and not get off topic.) I shot about 1500 pics, lots of duplicates so I'm trying to weed the repetitive stuff out and only keep the good stuff.

Will

Nice! Can't wait for more photos! great thread.

Tom P.

[Lon Moer]

Great pics Will,

<>

There were other interesting aircraft on display, including a Super Guppy. Should I post the pics here, or start a full Beale airshow thread? (Seems like the full thread might be a better one since that would allow other people to post their pics and not get off topic.) I shot about 1500 pics, lots of duplicates so I'm trying to weed the repetitive stuff out and only keep the good stuff.

Will

HA! I spotted the Super Guppy going into Moffett NASA/Ames last week. airplane spotting

Last edited by Lon Moer on Wed May 02, 2018 10:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Blackbirdfan]

I think I'm going to keep this thread just T-38s and U2 related. I'll start a second thread for the Beale show in general.




Will

[JohnB]

Speaking of U-2 Chase cars...
Back in the late 80s, circle 1989, the U-2 landing chase car at Mildenhall was a Mustang coupe with the 5.0 V-8. It had a stack of aviation radios were mounted on the transmission tunnel and various antennae. It wasn't a GT, just base model and looked to be painted the standard Mustang color closest to Air Force blue (as I recall a dark medium metallic blue. Likely Medium Shadow blue as seen here in a photo of a similar year convertible from the excellent Mustang Attitude web site).
http://mustangattitude.com/cgi-bin/show ... 9_00033_01
IIRC, it was unmarked except for the DoD license plate which look sated it's serial number, unit/base and command.

I never thought I'd see the day where there would be a Mustang staff car!

Other times I saw a Chevy El Camino used...again available with a V-8 and likely faster than the standard military pickups of the era.

[maxum96]

Speaking of U-2 Chase cars...
Back in the late 80s, circle 1989, the U-2 landing chase car at Mildenhall was a Mustang coupe with the 5.0 V-8. It had a stack of aviation radios were mounted on the transmission tunnel and various antennae. It wasn't a GT, just base model and looked to be painted the standard Mustang color closest to Air Force blue (as I recall a dark medium metallic blue. Likely Medium Shadow blue as seen here in a photo of a similar year convertible from the excellent Mustang Attitude web site).
http://mustangattitude.com/cgi-bin/show ... 9_00033_01
IIRC, it was unmarked except for the DoD license plate which look sated it's serial number, unit/base and command.

I never thought I'd see the day where there would be a Mustang staff car!

Other times I saw a Chevy El Camino used...again available with a V-8 and likely faster than the standard military pickups of the era.

Here's an article on the Mustangs the USAF used,

http://www.sspmustang.org/features/USAF_SSP.htm

[garbs]

Nice shots as usual, Will! Can't wait to see the rest.

Well, actually I can - I know how many you have to sort through

[Blackbirdfan]

A few more. No order to them.






I've got lots to go through. It wasn't a precision shooting day, more like accuracy by volume.

I'm off to Chino this coming weekend. That should be a photo overload...

Will

[lucky52]

What are the black U-2s used for?