67Cougar wrote:
It's a zero. The USAF had that policy in effect in the mid-late 60s - any aircraft 10 years old or older had that '0-' preface instead of the FY, indeed to indicate it was 10 years old. The zeros does stand for obsolete, but the USAF didn't have letters in the s/n, so zero it was.
As many aircraft as were being built, they wanted to make sure there were no serial duplications. The serials only had the last numjber of the FY in it, hence the possibility of duplication. For instance, F-101A had 54-1455 had 41455 as the serial on its tail. When 1964 rolled around, it went to 0-41455, to avoid the potential conflict with a FY 1964 airplane 64-1455. The The policy didn't last long, and was dropped when the AF started putting the entire FY as part of the serial. 0-41455 became 54-455 (the one was included int he offical s/n, but was not displayed on the tail).
No such problem these days, when we're lucky if 50 planes a year are built ...
I was stationed at Edwards from 6/66 through 5/69 and that was also my understanding of the O and a dash before the number... it was over 10 years old. I must have just missed out on that particular event in your picture as I was discharged on a Monday around the very end of May that year. I do remember a red A-20 belonging to some eastern university being in one of the OMS hangars when I first was assigned there, it could have been from Cornell University but I can't remember for certain. I asked and was allowed to bring my camera out on AFD in 1967 and found that very little was off-limits then. Next year it was a different story.
BTW, your photo is taken looking east toward the old Rocket Site.
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