Warbird Information Exchange

Found these surfing, one for the Navy and Marines.

COOL pix!! whats the time frame? mid 60's? 'cause I see early Scooters, Viggies, B model Phantoms and a couple of Willy Fudds mixed in

_________________
Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

What's the deal with the blackened planes in the next-to-last pic?

My guess is these were taken from the Golden Gate Bridge as Enterprise returned from a cruise and those 3 aircraft were damaged in some sort of flight deck fire started by the F-4 who's nose gear collapsed, probably during a trap.

All cool aircraft! You dont get to see all those different types on carriers anymore. What its mostly F-18s anymore. Boring.

_________________
Shop the Airplane Bunker At
www.warbirdbunker.com

What's with the turbine look of the "stack" on top of the central island ?

They change orientation at each level.

Please help the uneducated HEHE

I'm not sure about the "vanes" orientation, but that big, square blockhouse on Enterprise's island is supposed to create quite a mess of turbulent air at high speed, making coming aboard a little different than conventional carriers.

In the second-from-last photo, the Scooter, F-4, and A-7 in the center of the formation--are they in Cosmoline? Or what would that be on them? Or is that primer from the repair process?

Thanks in advance,
Scott

The vanes appear to be solid state radar antennas, IMHO.

_________________
It's what you learn after you think you know it all, that counts.

I'm guessing the "black" planes up front are hangar queens preserved until return to the states. Or they might be broke-dick birds kept on the ship and used for training newbie yellowshirt flight deck directors and blueshirt GSE drivers and deck handlers. Every carrier's got at least one plane like that. Though these look more like mothballed birds awaiting return to the states and the NARF (Naval Air Work Facility...depot level refurbishment).

Because the USS Enterprise was the first nuke carrier, the island would not need to be designed around the usual smokestack, so was instead designed to house a fixed two-part radar array. Here's a brief description I copied from another site:

"[Their is a] twin element phased planar array radar system (these were the vertical and horizontal "billboard" radar antennas on the island's upper surfaces) and the complex "inverted ice cream cone" ESM antenna array on the top of the island. The phased array radars, the horizontal SPS-32 air surveillance and the vertical, target tracking SPS-33, combined to form the SCANFAR system, itself a modified version of the SPG-59 track-while-scan phased array (the precursor to the SPY-1 Aegis system.) Technological limitations made the single antenna SPG-59 unreliable and so the system was converted to the SPS-32/33 pairing and installed on both the USS Long Beach (CGN-9) and Enterprise."

Unfortunately, even this "division of labor" proved to be unreliable and in January of 1979 the entire island was replaced, eliminating both the billboard radar arrays and the ESM cluster.

Hope this helps.

--Tom

MORE PIC'S ANOTHER TIME..