Takeaways from visit to Yanks Air Museum in July 2016, part 2: Starfighter Hangar

In the first part of my discussion of my July 2016 visit to the Yanks Air Museum, I talked about the planes on display in the Legends Hangar of the museum that were built in Southern California before and during World War II, with huge emphasis on displayed aircraft built by North American Aviation. Considering that Douglas, North American Aviation, and Convair led the way in warplane production in Southern California after World War Two, I found it plausible that the Starfighter Hangar of the Museum might contain jet aircraft from the Cold War era, including the A-4 Skyhawk and F-86 Sabre. As luck would have it, this section of the museum contained a number of familiar Cold War planes built in Southern California, including the F-86 Sabre and F-5 Tiger II.

Left: North American FJ-1 Fury BuAer No. 120349; Right: North American F-86E Sabre (built by Canadair as CL-13) RCAF 23682 (painted in USAF livery)

One of the most familiar sights inside the Starfighter Hangar was the presence of two virtually similar jet fighters built by North American Aviation of Inglewood, California, the straight-wing FJ-1 Fury and backswept wing F-86 Sabre. Just as the Mustang was North American's most famous product of World War II, the F-86 Sabre itself was destined to make its mark on the Korean War, striking fear into the hearts of MiG-15 pilots. When noting similarities in the fuselage and tail empennage of the FJ-1 Fury and F-86 Sabre, it is noteworthy that the F-86 design was originally a straight-wing combat jet design like the US Navy's FJ-1 (33 built), itself one of the earliest US Navy jet fighters. However, when learning of captured wartime German aeronautical research indicating that swept wings were crucial for supersonic flight in order to delay the buildup of air in front of a plane's wings in near-supersonic conditions, North American had the original Sabre design revised to incorporate backswept wings, and the F-86 flew on October 1, 1947. During the Korean War, F-86 Sabres were credited with shooting down 792 MiGs for a victory ratio of 10:1. In the meantime, the Navy procured Sabre jets under the designations FJ-2, FJ-3, and FJ-4, even though these aircraft differed from the original Fury in the sweptback wing. Odd as it may seem, the F-86 I saw in the Starfighter Hangar was never actually built for the US Air Force, despite being painted in Air Force livery. Instead, it was license-built in Canada by Canadair and delivered to the Royal Canadian Air Force in the 1950s bearing the RCAF serial 23682, before being later given to the South African Air Force, with which it served until 1979.

Left: Republic of China Air Force (RoCAF) Northrop F-5 Tiger II at Yanks Air Museum Starfighter Hangar

Right: RoCAF F-5 Tiger II on takeoff.

Another interesting sight at the Starfighter Hangar that I glanced upon was a Northrop F-5 Tiger II in the markings of the Republic of China Air Force (RoCAF). The Northrop F-5 was designed and built by Northrop in the late 1950s because the United States was concerned about the ability of its Cold War allies in Europe and Asia to defend itself from communist aggression with existing combat jets. The first flight of the F-5 occurred on July 30, 1959, and more than 2,100 aircraft were built for the US and its allies in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The F-5 at the Yanks Air Museum is of the F-5E Tiger II variant, and was delivered to Taiwan in January 1974, serving with the RoCAF for 24 years until July 1998, when it was retired. The F-5E/Fs in use with Taiwan were locally manufactured by the Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation (AIDC), and 308 Tiger IIs were built in Taiwan. The F-5 is still in use with a small number of countries like Brazil and Iran, even though it no longer serves many longstanding US allies.

Convair F-106B Delta Dart serial number 57-2513 at Yanks Air Museum

One last important exhibit at the Starfighter Hangar that is worth discussing is the Convair F-106 Delta Dart. An improved version of the F-102 Delta Dagger, the first delta-wing jet aircraft built for the US Air Force, the F-106 Delta Dart differed from the Delta Dagger in having a Pratt & Whitney J75 turbojet, a vertical stabilizer with a squared-off upper edge, a slightly bigger wing, and more powerful interception radar. It first flew on December 26, 1956 and it gradually supplanted the F-102 Delta Dart as the primary American long-range interceptor, and like the F-102, was tasked with protecting US skies from armadas of Soviet strategic bombers like the Tupolev Tu-95 'Bear', Tupolev Tu-16 'Badger', and Myasishchev M-4 'Bison'. Unlike the Delta Dagger, however, the F-106 was not as mass produced, with only 342 built. The F-106 on display at the Yanks Air Museum is of the two-seat B variant, which was slightly less heavy and had a better area ruled fuselage. F-106 Delta Darts would serve with the USAF until 1988, when they were replaced by F-15 Eagles. Several F-106s were converted to drones under the designation QF-106, and NASA used six in its Eclipse Project of 1997-1998, which aimed to test the feasibility of an Aerotow-launch vehicle.

Takeaways from visit to Yanks Air Museum in July 2016, part 1: Legends Hangar

One day in July 2016, me and my dad made plans to go to the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, California. One interesting aspect of the museum that made me want to go there was that it preserves the earliest American jet engine ever designed and built, the Lockheed L-1000 turbojet. When we left Newport Coast bound for Chino, we were excited to go inside the museum. However, things turned haywire when we accidentally went to a different aviation museum in Chino, the Yanks Air Museum. As we went inside the museum, we were kind of stunned to see a wide variety of planes built in the United States. Therefore, I wanted to give an account of the planes built in Southern California on display at the Yanks Air Museum. This post focuses on the first part of my tour at the Yanks Air Museum, in the Legends Hangar.

During the first leg of my first trip to the Yanks Air Museum, I took a tour of all American aircraft designed and built in the 1900-1920 period and the Golden Age of Aviation. It's common knowledge that most US aircraft manufacturing during the first two decades of powered flight took place on the east coast but also in Ohio, but the Loughead brothers Alan and Malcolm set up the first aviation company along the West Coas tin San Francisco, in 1912, paving the way for men like William Boeing and Donald Douglas to establish an aircraft manufacturing base on the Pacific Coast. Off all the planes from the hangar covering the early aviation period and Golden Age of Aviation, there was only one plane from this era built in southern California, the Ryan B-1 Brougham. 

Ryan B-1 Brougham NC1159 (top); Ryan B-1 Brougham NC6956 at the Yanks Air Museum (bottom) 

The B-1 Brougham was a high-wing monoplane airliner similar in most respects to the Ryan Aeronautical Company's M-1 mailplane, but it differed from the M-1 in that it had a fully enclosed cabin for both the pilot and the passengers. Early Broughams, including the B-1 variant I saw on display at the Yanks Air Museum, used a Wright J-5 Whirlwind, but the later B-5 and B-7 used a Wright J-6 and Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine respectively. A total of 212 Broughams were built, and they served small US airlines as well as foreign countries like China, Guatemala, Mexico, and El Salvador. One Brougham was used by John Moncrieff and George Hood in their ill-fated January 1928 attempt to cross the Tasman Straits between southern Australia and Tasmania.  

Side front view (left) and oblique rear view (right) of North American B-25J Mitchell serial number 44-86791

The Legends Hangar containing WW2 aircraft was, in my view, quite ubiquitous for containing military planes built in Southern California during the war. One interesting aspect of the WW2 planes that I saw on display in this hangar is that three of them that were made in Southern California were built by Inglewood-based North American Aviation: the P-51 Mustang fighter and B-25 Mitchell medium bomber. The B-25 Mitchell was made famous by the April 1942 Doolittle Raid on Tokyo, and it bore the name of General William "Billy" Mitchell (1879-1936), an early advocate of American airpower. The B-25 Mitchell medium bomber I saw on display was built three years after the Doolittle Raid and given the serial number 44-86791. It was purchased by Ace Smelting of Phoenix, Arizona, in May 1959, and later was used by civil operators in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Front side view (left) and front view (right) of P-51D Mustang Miss Judy (serial number 44-74910)

The P-51 Mustang, on the other hand, was the best-ever USAAF fighter plane of World War 2, with over 15,000 produced and 287 fighter aces having flown the Mustang. Early P-51s had an Allison V-1710 piston engine, but the V-1710 itself proved woefully inadequate at high altitudes, so all subsequent P-51 production versions were fitted with a Packard-built version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin (designated V-1650). The P-51 Mustang I saw during my July 2016 tour of the Legends Hangar was of the P-51D variant, which, like the B and C versions had the Merlin engine but sported a new cockpit canopy. The P-51D was the most mass-produced P-51 version, with 8,200 built (6,600 at Inglewood, 1,600 in Dallas, Texas).

North American SNJ-5 Texan BuAer No.43771 at Legends Hangar

The third airplane built by North American Aviation that caught my eye at the Legends Hangar was the North American AT-6/SNJ/T-6 Texan. Known to the British as the Harvard (in accordance with the Royal Air Force tendency to name trainers after academic institutions [Note: American trainers were named for American academic institutions by the RAF]), the Texan was the most mass-produced and widely used Allied trainer aircraft of World War 2, with a total of 15,495 aircraft built for the US Army Air Force, US Navy, and the armed forces of the British Commonwealth. Given that the Army Air Force and Navy had different designation systems for their aircraft, the Texan was designated BC-1, BC-2, AT-6, and AT-16 by the USAAF, and the SNJ and TJ by the Navy. The Texan trainer I saw at the Legends Hangar was of the SNJ-5 version, of which 1,357 were built. 

A P-38L Lightning (serial number 44-27183), later converted to F-5G configuration, photographed by me in the Legends Hangar of the Yanks Air Museum on July 10, 2016.

The Lockheed P-38 Lightning on display in the Legends Hangar has a superfluous operational history. Bearing the serial number 44-27183 and christened 23 Skidoo, it was built as a P-38L, the most mass-produced P-38 variant, of which 3,923 aircraft were built (113 made by Vultee). Photo-reconnaissance versions of the P-38 Lightning (designated F-4 and F-5 by the US Army Air Force) were used for reconnaissance flights in the European and Pacific theaters of World War II, and the P-38L with serial number 44-27183 was one of an unknown number of P-38Ls converted to the F-5G variant, which differed from the F-5F (also a reconnaissance conversion of the P-38L) in having revised nose contours to provide extra space for photographic equipment and a wider selection of cameras. After World War II, it was used for aerial survey of the North Pole by Kargl Aerial Surveys, Mark Hurd Aerial Surveys, Pacific Aerial Surveys, and the Aero Exploration Company, operating in this capacity until the 1970s. In the late 1980s, this aircraft was donated to the Yanks Air Museum, where it remains on static display to this day. 

Reflections from visit to San Diego Aerospace Museum, September 2017

I have long known that San Diego was the home of Consolidated Aircraft, later Convair, which built some of America's strategic bombers, flying boats, jet interceptors, and space rockets and missiles during World War II and the Cold War. However, even though San Diego has its own aerospace museum, the San Diego Aerospace Museum, I did not visit the museum until the summer of 2011. I've gone to the museum again since a number of times, most recently in September 2017. Therefore, I wanted to discuss highlights from my last visit to the SDAM as they relate to aviation development in Southern California, including San Diego.

Top: Convair YF2Y-1 Sea Dart (BuNo 135763) flanking entrance to San Diego Aerospace Museum

Bottom: Convair XF2Y-1 Sea Dart during flight testing in San Diego Bay 

The most noticeable sight that I've noticed as I walk into the San Diego Aerospace Museum is a pair of planes mounted on pedestals -- a Convair F2Y Sea Dart seaplane fighter and a Lockheed A-12 spy plane. While the A-12 is better known as the precursor of the famous SR-71 Blackbird, the F2Y Sea Dart is quite notable as one of a few designs in the world for a seaplane jet fighter. The F2Y was conceived in the early years of the Cold War in response to a US Navy requirement for a supersonic seaplane fighter, largely in response to whether supersonic aircraft could be made to operate from carriers. Convair specialized in the design of delta-wing aircraft, namely the XF-92, F-102 Delta Dagger, F-106 Delta Dart, and B-58 Hustler, and the design philosophy for these aircraft was carried over to the new seaplane fighter, designated F2Y (FY was allocated to Convair's tail-sitting VTOL fighter). The Sea Dart first flew on January 14, 1953, and flight tests were conducted involving various ski configurations, including a single-ski configuration. The F2Y became the first (and only) seaplane fighter to go supersonic, with the first YF2Y (BuNo 135762) breaking the sound barrier on August 3, 1954 in a shallow dive. However, this aircraft was tragically lost in an accident on November 4 while carrying out flight demonstrations over San Diego Bay, killing test pilot Charles Richbourg. Although an interesting design, the F2Y was cancelled without entering production as the Navy solved problems dealing with operating supersonic jet fighters from large carriers. Nonetheless, the Sea Dart remains a valuable piece of aviation heritage from San Diego because it was the only US jet fighter built to operate from water.

Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout unmanned rotorcraft and RQ-4 Global Hawk long-range, high-altitude UAV on display inside San Diego Aerospace Museum. A Ryan B-5 Brougham and BQM-34F Firebee II drone are in the foreground.

San Diego is also home to General Atomics, which has manufactured the Predator and Reaper drones that have been used since 9/11 to take out terrorists in Yemen, Afghanistan, and other hotspots in the fight against Islamic extremism, and the museum has a Predator drone on display, but it also features unmanned aircraft built by the Northrop Grumman Corporation, whose aerospace division is located in southern California. The RQ-4 Global Hawk long-endurance UAV (first developed by Teledyne Ryan before that company was acquired by Northrop Grumman in 1999) is the most prolific high-altitude surveillance drone in service with the Air Force,  relying on synthetic aperture radar and sensors to spy on enemy territory over an area of 40,000 square miles at an altitude of 60,000 feet. It first flew on February 28, 1998, and during service tests flew surveillance missions over Afghanistan in the early stages of Operation Enduring Freedom; Global Hawks have since overflown not only Afghanistan but also the Middle East. The Navy has adapted the Global Hawk for use as an ocean reconnaissance platform, the MQ-4C Triton, which complements P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft over high seas. Another Northrop Grumman drone at the museum that struck me was the MQ-8 Fire Scout unmanned rotorcraft. The MQ-8 is one of a growing fleet of unmanned air vehicles designed to take off and land like a helicopter, and it is widely used for reconnaissance, situational awareness, and aerial fire & support and precision targeting support for air, sea, and land forces. Based on the Schweizer 330 helicopter, it first flew in 2000 and has become the premier US Navy unmanned rotorcraft; the MQ-8C version is based on the Bell 407 and has enhanced range, endurance, and payload capacity.

Although the Ryan NYP (Spirit of St. Louis) is best known for being flown by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 to accomplish the first solo transatlantic flight from New York to Paris, it is noteworthy to point out that the NYP shares its design heritage with another plane built by the Ryan Aeronautical Corporation based in San Diego, the B-5 Brougham. The B-5, like the NYP, was a high-wing, strut-braced monoplane of all-metal design, but was used as an airliner. The Ryan company would later go on to build a number of airplanes, including the Navion light aircraft, ST sports aircraft, PT-22 Recruit trainer, and FR Fireball and F2R Dark Shark mixed power fighters, but the most well-known flying machine built by the Ryan company after 1945 was the Firebee, of which over 7,000 were built. Firebee drones were used for reconnaissance over Vietnam (AQM-34/Model 147 variant), being launched from DC-130 drone control aircraft. The Firebee drone on display at the SDAM is the supersonic BQM-34F, which could fly at Mach 1.5 and flew in 1972. The supersonic Firebees were retired in 1990, but some subsonic BQM-34 drones continued to serve in the early 2000s, seeing combat in the Iraq War, although they have since been replaced by the newer BQM-167 Skeeter drone. Teledyne Ryan was absorbed by Northrop Grumman in 1999.

 

North American P-51D Mustang "Bunnie" s/n 44-73683 in WW2 gallery (left) and Douglas A-4B Skyhawk BuNo 142905 in Modern Age gallery (right). 

Although much of the display halls in the annular section of the SDAM feature aircraft from the dawn of flight, WW1, and the Golden Age, my tour of the WW2 gallery and Modern Age gallery offered me sights of a handful of planes built in southern California in the World War II and Cold War periods. The P-51 Mustang that I saw is one of the most recognizable exhibits in the WW2 gallery because it was the quintessential American fighter plane of World War II, with over 10,000 aircraft produced. Designed by Edgar Schmued (1899-1985) and flown in 1940, the P-51 was second to the Grumman F6F Hellcat in the number of Axis aircraft destroyed by the Allies (4.950 planes destroyed by the P-51 vs. 5,223 destroyed by the Hellcat). Early versions of the Mustang (including the A-36 Apache ground attack variant) more powerful Rolls-Royce Merlin piston engine as the Royal Air Force judged the V-1710 to handicap the Mustang's performance in high-altitude combat operations. The Douglas A-4 Skyhawk (originally A4D) was quite interesting because it was the most prolific attack aircraft design of American aircraft designer Ed Heinemann (1908-1991) after the SBD Dauntless and AD/A-1 Skyraider. Nicknamed the "Hot Rod", the Skyhawk flew in 1954 and served as the Navy's lightweight attack aircraft until the arrival of the A-7 Corsair II in the late 1960s, with 2,960 built. The Skyhawk no longer serves with its country of origin, but still flies with the Argentine Air Force and the Brazilian Navy.

Gallery of Convair aircraft and desktop models of an Atlas ICBM (left), F-106 Delta Dart (middle), and B-24 Liberator (right)

One of the interesting sights I encountered in the museum hall was a display of the history of Convair, including models of Convair products and photos highlighting Convair's heyday as an aerospace company and some little-known Convair products. The B-24 Liberator stands out as the best-known Convair product of WW2 because it was more mass-produced than the B-17, while the F-102 and F-106 epitomized the Air Defense Command's efforts to defend the US mainland from Soviet bombers. The Atlas ICBM (originally designated SM-65, later CGM/HGM-16) was the first American ICBM ever built, but its career as a missile was brief compared to the Titan and Minuteman, so it ended up as a space launch vehicle for most of its career, launching the first American into orbit (John Glenn) and ferrying a plethora of spacecraft into space including reconnaissance satellites, interplanetary probes, and weather and navigation satellites. I happened to notice a photo in the display of the Convair YB-60, a jet-powered derivative of the giant B-36 Peacemaker intercontinental bomber that served as Convair's rival to the B-52 Stratofortress. The YB-60 was judged inferior to the B-52 in speed and the Boeing ship was chosen for production, freeing Convair to develop the first American supersonic bomber, the B-58 Hustler.

  

Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina on display at Edwin D. McKellar Pavilion of Flight (left); Catalina flying boat on patrol over North Atlantic, early 1940s (right).

While taking a tour of the Edwin D. McKellar Pavilion of Flight, I came upon a Consolidated PBY Catalina flying boat mounted on a pedestal. The flying boat impressed me, especially with the nature of the landing mechanism and the wing arrangement. The PBY Catalina was the most widely used American flying boat of World War II, with over 3,300 built, and Catalinas played a vital role in the fight against "wolfpacks" of German U-boats in the North Atlantic and patrolled the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the war. The PBY-5 I saw was the most mass-produced Catalina version (1,486 built), and the PBY was named in honor of Catalina Island. A number of Catalina flying boats are still in use as waterbomber aircraft designed for firefighting operations.

Highlights from visit to USS Midway Museum, April 2017

I first went to the USS Midway Museum in the spring of 2005, and I was astounded to see the array of planes housed in the museum but also to find out that the USS Midway served in three conflicts during her career before leaving the US Navy in 1992. I went to the carrier again in January 2009, and subsequently in 2013 and 2015, but I wanted to share highlights of my most recent visit to the USS Midway Museum in April 2017.

Douglas SBD-4 Dauntless BuNo 54654 (left) and North American SNJ-5 Texan BuNo 91091 (right) inside the hangar deck exhibit of the USS Midway Museum.

The hangar deck of the USS Midway Museum contains planes that were/are stored in the hangar of an aircraft carrier below the flight deck. Although the hangar deck of the Midway houses a plethora of Navy aircraft, just two of the planes in the hangar deck hailed from Southern California, the Douglas SBD Dauntless and North American Texan trainer. 

The SBD Dauntless (also called A-24 in US Army Air Force service) was one of the Navy's premier American dive bombers of World War II, playing a key role in delivering a one-two punch to the Imperial Japanese Navy's carriers at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Designed by Ed Heinemann in the late 1930s based on the earlier Northrop BT dive bomber and first flown in May 1, 1940, the Dauntless became the US Navy's linchpin in checking the wave of Japanese aggression in the Pacific, sinking all four Japanese carriers at Midway(Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, and Soryu) and attacking Japanese shipping at the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in November 1942. A total of 5,936 SBDs and A-24s were built, and some airframes were built at a Douglas plant in El Segundo, California, while the rest were built in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The SBD was nicknamed "Slow But Deadly" by pilots because of its slow speed relative to propeller-driven fighters but lethality in dealing with the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The North American Texan trainer I photographed in the hangar deck was built for the United States Navy and designated SNJ-5 (SN=Scout Trainer; J=North American Aviation). The Texan was the most mass-produced American monoplane trainer aircraft of World War II, with over 15,000 aircraft built for the US armed forces, the Commonwealth, and many other countries. In US Army Air Corps/US Army Air Force/US Air Force service the Texan was known by several designations, including BC-1, BC-2, AT-6, AT-16, and T-6, while the US Navy referred to the Texan as the SNJ and later TJ. The Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, on the other hand, allocated the name Harvard to the Texan in accordance with the tendency to name trainer aircraft after universities and other places of tuition.

Douglas attack aircraft on USS Midway deck, from left to right: Douglas AD-4W Skyraider (BuNo 127922); Douglas EKA-3B Skywarrior (BuNo 142251); Douglas A-4F Skyhawk (BuNo 154977).

Going up to the flight deck of the USS Midway Museum, one of the most formidable sights on display on the deck was a trio of attack aircraft designed at the El Segundo Division of Douglas Aircraft by Ed Heinemann (1908-1991). Capitalizing on the success of his SBD Dauntless dive bomber, Heinemann worked on advanced piston-engine attack aircraft for the US Navy in the last years of World War II, including the SB2D/BTD Destroyer, TB2D Skypirate torpedo-bomber, and eventually the BTD/AD Skyraider (designated A-1 under a 1962 Tri-service aircraft designation system), but only the Skyraider entered mass production. Despite arriving too late for World War II (its first flight was on March 18, 1945, about 6 months before V-J day), the Skyraider would go on to see action in Korea and Vietnam, with over 3,100 aircraft built, serving with Navy, Air Force, and Marines in ground attack and counter-insurgency (COIN) functions. During the Vietnam War, the Americans and South Vietnamese used Skyraiders to launch rocket attacks against Vietcong positions in South Vietnam. The A3D/A-3 Skywarrior, on the other hand, was designed by Heinemann himself in response to a US Navy requirement for a nuclear-armed strategic bomber that could operate from large carriers. Nicknamed the "Whale" by Navy crews due to its large size, the Skywarrior became the mainstay of the Navy's strategic nuclear strike force in the 1950s, but as the Cold War progressed, it became adapted for use as a tanker, electronic warfare platform, and photo-reconnaissance plane, especially during the Vietnam War. The A-4 Skyhawk on the Midway deck, however, was the most prolific Cold War aircraft design conceived by Ed Heinemann. Nicknamed the "Hot Rod", it was originally designated A4D and became popular with Navy pilots accustomed to close air support, with 2,960 built. The Skyhawk served in the Vietnam War, Yom Kippur War, and Falklands War, and A-4s were exported to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore; Argentina used its A-4s against British vessels in the Falklands. Although the A-4 no longer serves its country of origin, a small number of Skyhawks still fly with Argentina.

North American T-2 Buckeye jet trainer (BuNo 156697) (left); North American RA-5C Vigilante reconnaissance jet (BuNo 156641) (middle); Lockheed S-3 Viking ASW aircraft (BuNo 159766) (right)

The flight deck of the USS Midway also has three other jet aircraft built in Southern California on display. The North American T-2 Buckeye (originally T2J) was a jet trainer developed and built in the late 1950s to conduct flight training for a new generation of Navy and Marine Corps aviators. For most of its career beginning in 1959 it was the US Navy's premier jet trainer until the early 1990s, when it began to be supplanted in service by the T-45 Goshawk, a US-built copy of the British BAE Systems Hawk jet trainer. A total of 529 Buckeyes were produced, and a small number were delivered to the air forces of Greece and Venezuela; the Hellenic Air Force remains the only foreign operator of the T-2 Buckeye. The North American A-5 Vigilante (originally A3J) was originally developed as a supersonic bomber to replace the Navy's A-3 Skywarriors in the strategic nuclear warfighting mission. First flown in August 1958, the Vigilante's career as a nuclear strike aircraft was brief because of the deployment of the George Washington-class ballistic missile submarines and Polaris SLBM, so the Vigilante ended up becoming a tactical reconnaissance plane, the RA-5C. During the Vietnam War, the RA-5C served as a tactical reconnaissance strike vehicle, and in 1979 the last Vigilantes were retired from Navy service. The Lockheed S-3 Viking was an anti-submarine jet aircraft built in the early 1970s as a replacement for the Navy's piston-engine S-2 Tracker fleet. Although primarily designed for anti-submarine warfare, by the late 1990s, its primary mission shifted to surface warfare and aerial refueling. Over 180 S-3s were built, and they became known as the "Swiss Army Knife of Naval Aviation" due to their use for anti-submarine warfare, electronic warfare, refueling, and surface surveillance. US President George W. Bush flew an S-3 to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 in preparation for his announcement of the end of major US combat operations in Iraq (not to mention the controversial "Mission Accomplished" banner on the mast of the Abraham Lincoln) The Viking was retired from Navy service aboard carriers in January 2009 due to its primary role being taken up by the P-3 Orion ocean reconnaissance aircraft and SH-60/MH-60 Seahawk ASW helicopter; a small number were reactivated by the Navy in June 2010 and served with experimental Navy squadron VX-30 until January 2016, while NASA operates a small number of S-3s for aviation safety research, environmental research, and satellite communications testing.

Highlights from a visit to the Lyon Air Museum, March 2016

The Lyon Air Museum near John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California, was established in December 2009, named in honor of USAF Major General William Lyon. When I first went to the new museum months after its opening, I was amazed to see a dazzling array of aircraft on display from the World War II era, not the least of which are the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, Douglas DC-3/C-47, Douglas A-26 Invader, and North American B-25 Mitchell. Since then, there have been some changes to the museum's inventory, especially in the addition of the Cessna O-1 Bird Dog and North American AT-6/SNJ Texan. Therefore, I wanted to highlight some conspicuous sights during my trip to the Lyon Air Museum in March 2016.

Side view of North American SNJ-6 Texan advanced trainer aircraft (Navy BuAer No.112277)

The North American Texan was the most prolific single-engine American training aircraft of World War II, with a total of 15,495 aircraft built for the armed forces of not just the United States but also the British Commonwealth (UK, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa) and some other countries. Given the widespread use of the Texan, but also due to the different aircraft designation systems devised by the US Army Air Force and US Navy, the Texan was designated the BC-1, BC-2, AT-6, and AT-16 by the USAAF and the SNJ and TJ by the Navy, while the British referred to the Texan as the Harvard in line with the RAF tendency to name trainer planes after colleges or universities (e.g. Harvard, Cornell, Oxford). The Texan trainer that I saw at the Lyon Air Museum is an SNJ-6 delivered to the Navy in June 1945 and given the Navy Serial number BuAer (Bureau of Aeronautics) No. 112277. It was sold to civilian operators in 1950, and it was put on permanent display at the Lyon Air Museum in August 2013. 

Close-up view of North American B-25 Mitchell Guardian of Freedom (serial number 42-29465)

The North American B-25 Mitchell is the medium bomber aircraft made famous by the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo on April 18, 1942 (for starters, the B-25s had to fly from the USS Hornet because all island chains closest to Japan were under Japanese control). Designed by North American Aviation's chief designer Lee Atwood, it first flew on August 19, 1940 and became the premier American medium bomber of WW2, serving in all theaters of the war. Nearly 10,000 aircraft were constructed, and compared to another USAAF medium bomber, the Martin B-26 Marauder, the B-25 had a good safety record in contrast to that of the B-26, called the "Widow Maker" by airmen due to early models suffering high accident rates. It is also noteworthy that the B-25 Mitchell was named in honor of Brigadier General William "Billy" Mitchell (1879-1936), an influential advocate of American airpower in the 1920s (never mind that Mitchell viewed bombers as essential to smash an enemy into submission, while making the case for the United States having an air force independent of the Army and Navy).

Top: Douglas A-26 Invader "Feeding Frenzy" (serial number 44-34538) with shark mouth logo.
Bottom: Douglas XA-26B serial number 41-19588.

Next up on my trip, across from the B-17 and Texan trainer, is a Douglas A-26 Invader nicknamed "Feeding Frenzy". The Douglas A-26 Invader was a World War II close air support plane built by the El Segundo Division of Douglas Aircraft as a successor to the company's A-20 Havoc, which was designed for the same role as the A-26. The Invader, of which 2,503 were built, saw action in WW2, and when the US Air Force classified A-for-Attack aircraft as bombers, the A-26 was re-designated B-26 (not to be confused with the Martin B-26 Marauder). The Invader later saw action in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, but also the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961 and Angola, Biafra, Congo, and Indonesia. Besides being armed with guns and bombs, the A-26 could attack ground targets with a battery of ten 5-inch HVAR rockets mounted on pylons under the outer wing panels; these rockets were used to attack North Vietnamese and Vietcong positions in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The United States Navy operated ex-USAAF A-26 airframes for use as utility aircraft or target drone tugs under the designation JD-1 (J=Utility; D=Douglas).

Douglas C-47B Skytrain "Willa Dean" (serial number 44-76791)

The Douglas C-47B Skytrain "Willa Dean" was the most familiar non-combat military aircraft on display at the Lyon Air Museum. The Douglas DC-3, originally designed as a sleeper transport by Donald Douglas in the 1930s and one of the most successful American airliners of the Golden Age of Aviation in the 1920s and 1930s, evolved to become a prolific American transport plane in wartime after Pearl Harbor, under the designations C-47 and C-53 and the official names Skytrain and Skytrooper (official USAAF name) and Dakota (Royal Air Force name). (The C-53 differed from the C-47 in lacking the Skytrain's reinforced cargo floor and large cargo door.) Over 10,000 C-47s and C-53s were constructed by Douglas, and the C-47 itself was pivotal in the invasion of Sicily in July 1943 and the D-Day invasion of Normandy in June 1944, with C-47s and C-53s dropping paratroopers into the battlefield and towing troop-laden military gliders. The C-47B "Willa Dean" served with the United States Army Air Force until May 1945, when it was transferred to the French. The aircraft flew for a better part of its career largely unmodified, and in 1967 it was transferred to Israeli ownership. The DC-3, in all its iterations, was such a versatile plane that dozens of DC-3s and C-47s still fly with small civil operators and some air forces.

Takeaways from visit to Western Museum of Flight, June 2016: Northrop flying wing cruise missiles and Alpha mailplane

I paid my first my visit to the Western Museum of Flight back in April 2005, when the museum itself was based at Hawthorne. At the time I was starting to gain knowledge of Southern California's role as a major plane manufacturing hub in World War II and the Cold War, but the motivation for me to visit the Western Museum of Flight was the fact that the original location for the museum was the original home of the Northrop Corporation (now Northrop Grumman). A little over a year later, however, a new real estate management company took over the property in Hawthorne and raised rent from $2,000 to the current market value of $5,000 a month, and because the museum itself could no longer afford the rent, it closed on July 26, 2006.

More than a decade passed before I found out that the Western Museum of Flight had moved to a new hangar at Zamperini Air Field in Torrance, California on March 25, 2007. Therefore, when I went to the museum's new location in June 2016, some of the planes built by Northrop planes originally housed at Hawthorne were located at the new location's hangar. Also, many Northrop/Northrop Grumman-related memorabilia and desktop models of Northrop-related aircraft were present at the museum's new location. Hence, I wanted to describe a few Northrop-built machines at the museum that I found endearing.

Left: The manned technology demonstrator for the Northrop JB-1 jet-powered flying wing cruise missile on display at the Western Museum of Flight. 

Right: The first Northrop JB-1 jet bomb being readied for launch from a rocket-propelled sled at Eglin Air Field, Florida, December 1944.

The Northrop JB-1 Bat prototype cruise missile that I saw at the Western Museum of Flight is unusual in terms of its design philosophy among early US guided missiles and one of only a few surviving Northrop flying wings from the 1940s (the others being the N-1M and N-9M flying wing tech demonstrators). In World War II, American guided missile technology was rather primitive and rudimentary, with early US cruise missiles manifesting themselves in the form of either winged torpedoes, straight-winged pilotless planes filled with explosives ("flying bombs"), or vertical glide bombs. However, the JB-1 stands out among early American guided missiles because its designer, John K. "Jack" Northrop, utilized the flying wing layout of his JB-1 design to store explosive material in a pair of bomb containers in the wing roots. Power was supplied by 2 General Electric B1 turbojets delivering 400 pounds (1.8 kN) of thrust. The US Army Air Force wanted the JB-1 to be used as a precision-guided weapon for Operation Coronet, the planned US invasion of Japan. As the JB-1 Bat was rather radical in design, Northrop built one airframe as an unpowered manned technology demonstrator to test the design's flight characteristics, which flew in August 1944. The first powered JB-1 flight occurred in December 1944 from a rocket-propelled sled, but ended in failure when the machine crashed 400 yards away seconds after launch. The  JB-1 was cancelled due to the unreliability of the turbojet and replaced by the pulsejet-powered JB-10, which had warheads in the wing roots. The maiden flight of the JB-10 occurred in April 1945; of the 10 JB-10 test flights conducted, only two were successful. By January 1946, in light of the end of World War II, the JB-10 program was cancelled.

Large desktop model of the Northrop Alpha mailplane (propeller, stabilizers, cockpit are missing).

The Northrop Alpha mail transport plane was one of the first planes designed by Jack Northrop, but this aircraft was actually built by the Avion Corporation of Burbank, California, which was formed in 1928 and later became a subsidiary of the United Aircraft and Technology Corporation in 1929 (as the Northrop Aviation Corporation). The Alpha was revolutionary in its all-metal construction, wing fillets, and multicellular stressed-skin wing, and it featured a accommodation for six passengers. It first flew in 1930, entering service on April 20, 1931; 17 Alphas were built in total, with most going to Transcontinental & Western Air (later Trans World Airlines), and 3 going to the US Army Air Corps as the YC-19/Y1C-19. Northrop would eventually use the Alpha as the basis of the more advanced Gamma mailplane and A-13/A-17/A-33 dive bomber series.