newsletter 0802-1.pub

1 www.war-eagles-air-museum.com

Editorial W e’re trying something new in

this issue of Plane Talk. In the past, our “Featured Air-

craft” have been flyable aircraft that are actually in the War Eagles Air Museum collection. We strayed a little from that norm last issue with the story of our Tu-polev Tu.2 Soviet bomber. While not fly-able, that aircraft generates a lot of visitor interest, so it seemed appropriate to cover it at length. Between the “Featured Air-craft” articles and Robert Haynes’ “His-torical Perspectives” columns, we have in the past five years covered virtually ev-ery aircraft in the Museum collection.

So we have a choice. We could up-date and re-run articles on aircraft that we’ve already covered. Another option—the one we’ve chosen to try—is to broad-en the scope of Plane Talk to include art-icles about other interesting aircraft, even though they are not in our collection. We plan to keep a local connection as much as possible. Some of the aircraft that we may cover in the future are the Republic XF-91 Thunderceptor (a distant relative of our own F-84F Thunderstreak), Boe-ing’s B-17 Flying Fortress and Consoli-dated’s B-24 Liberator World War II bombers (in which many of our volun-teers flew), and Convair’s huge post-War B-36 Peacemaker intercontinental bomb-er, one of which crashed in El Paso’s Franklin Mountains in 1953.

We hope to make Plane Talk more of an overall aviation education resource. We hope you think, “Wow, I didn’t know that!” at least once each issue. Enjoy!

Contents Editorial......................................1 Featured Aircraft ........................1 From the Director.......................2 NASA Astronauts Visit ..............5 Membership Application ............7 Corporate Youth Sponsors ........7 P-38 Mystery Photos .................8

Featured Aircraft

T his issue’s “Featured Aircraft” is not in the War Eagles Air Muse-um collection. In fact, none of

them exist anywhere in the world. Only two were ever built, and both crashed more than 50 years ago. But there is a lo-cal connection. One of them met its end in El Paso in 1956. More importantly, the aircraft is of exceptional historical signif-icance in that it incorporated more inno-vative design features than any other air-plane ever built before or since. And yet few people know anything about it…

The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum

Second Quarter (Apr - Jun) 2008

Volume 21, Number 2

The Glenn L. Martin Company built some of the world’s most advanced high-perform-ance aircraft. None was more innovative, or pushed the state-of-the-art further, than the sleek, futuristic XB-51 bomber.

Featured Aircraft (Continued on Page 2)


From the Director

A t this time of year, many people think about their income taxes. Most taxpayers take all of the

legitimate deductions they can find, so it’s not too early for you to start thinking about your deductions for next year. We hope you will consider joining War Ea-gles Air Museum as a member, or mak-ing a generous contribution. We are an IRS-approved 501(c)(3) charitable organ-ization, which means that all of your do-nations and contributions to us are deduc-tible to the extent provided by law.

Contributing to War Eagles Air Mu-seum is a win-win situation. As a donor, you get a tangible tax deduction, and also the intangible benefit of knowing that you are helping to preserve, maintain and fly historically important aircraft for the enjoyment and education of current and future generations. As the beneficiary of your generosity, we get funds to pay for aircraft and automobile restorations, sup-plies, parts and 100-octane low-lead avia-tion fuel, which currently costs nearly $5.00 a gallon. Our only public funding sources are admission fees, memberships and contributions—which come nowhere near meeting our expenses. Our admis-sion fees of $4.00 and $5.00 are excep-tionally reasonable, and are far less than those of most other similar museums. We increased them only once in our 19-year history, and have no plans to raise them again, despite the current inflation. So your contributions really help. Thanks for thinking of War Eagles Air Museum.

Skip Trammell

Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum Second Quarter 2008

Plane Talk Published four times per year by:

War Eagles Air Museum 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008 (575) 589-2000

Author/Editor: Terry Sunday Chief Nitpicker: Frank Harrison Final Proofreader: Kathy Sunday

[email protected]

Glenn L. Martin (January 17, 1886–December 5, 1955) was one of America’s earliest aviation pioneers. In 1909, at the age of 24, he taught himself to fly—he was only the third person in the nation to learn how to do so—in a flimsy, silk-and-bamboo airplane of his own design that he built in a rented church in Santa Ana, California, helped by mechanics from the Ford and Maxwell auto dealerships that he then managed. He quickly became fa-mous in southern California as an intrep-id aviator, and incorporated the Glenn L. Martin Company there in 1912. He even starred in the 1915 silent movie A Girl of Yesterday with “America’s sweetheart,” Mary Pickford. For over 40 years, Glenn L. himself actively controlled his name-sake company. Many famed aircraft de-signers who later formed their own com-panies got their start working for Martin, including Lawrence Bell, William Boe-ing, Donald Douglas, James McDonnell and Chance Vought. In 1917, Martin re-located his company to Cleveland, Ohio, and then in 1929 he moved it to its final location on the banks of the Middle River near Baltimore, Maryland.

Featured Aircraft (Continued from page 1)

B-10 “Martin Bombers” (a term that became generic at the time, as “kleenex” is today) forged America’s airpower doc-trine in the 1920’s and ’30’s. Martin air-craft such as the B-26 Marauder, and the big Navy seaplanes in which the com-pany specialized, served with distinction in World War II. Despite a post-War for-ay into commercial aviation with the ex-cellent but expensive 2-0-2 and 4-0-4 air-liners, the company depended for its live-lihood on military orders, which constitu-ted the vast majority of the 11,000-plus aircraft it produced until it stopped build-ing aircraft entirely in 1960.

The story of Martin’s XB-51 (unoffi-cially named the Panther) begins with a November 1944 U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) requirement for a new aircraft to replace the Douglas A-26 Invader in the ground-attack role. Martin won the competition on April 1, 1946, with its XA-45, a big, armed-to-the-teeth aircraft with a straight wing, a crew of six and an unusual powerplant arrangement of two General Electric TG-110 turboprops and two GE I-40 turbojet engines. Martin used a similar engine arrangement on its XP4M Mercator U.S. Navy patrol plane, which was then under development. However, just a few weeks after announ-cing that Martin had won, the USAAF changed its mind, dropped the whole “at-tack” category of aircraft and gave Mar-tin a set of new requirements that empha-sized speed over payload and range. That changed everything. Martin engineers lit-erally went “back to the drawing board.” By February 1946, they came up with a smaller, lighter, faster and much more advanced design—the Model 234. The USAAF accepted the design on May 23, 1946, and awarded Martin a $9.5-million fixed-price letter contract for two proto-types and the usual assortment of spares, tools, drawings, wind-tunnel models, etc. The XB-51 was born.

And what an aircraft it was! Slim and elegant, Martin’s sleek new bomber was a technological showcase of innova-tive features from nose to tail. Nearly all pushed the state-of-the-art for the time, and many of them still appear on today’s

Featured Aircraft (Continued on page 3)

Pilot, “movie star” and aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin was one of America’s most influential aeronautical industry leaders.


The XB-51’s inno-vations did not end there. Its pilot sat under a narrow fighter-style “teardrop” canopy, and the navigator had a posi-tion behind and below the pilot, a departure from the contemporary practice of side-by-side crew seating in bomb-ers. It was also the first aircraft to use Martin’s patented “rotating bomb bay.” The conventional hinged bomb bay doors as normally used caused a lot of buffeting when they were opened. The rotating bomb bay had bombs mounted on its inner surface and simply rotated 180 degrees on its longitudinal axis to drop them.

The XB-51’s most obvious unusual feature was its “bicycle” land-ing gear, consisting of two big tandem dual-wheel main gear units in the fuse-lage and two small stabilizing outriggers near the wingtips. Martin used this ar-rangement on its six-jet XB-48, which was under development at the same time as the XB-51. Boeing adopted it for its short-lived B-47 Stratojet, and for its big B-52 Stratofortress, which still domin-ates America’s strategic bomber fleet to-day, more than 55 years after it first flew. But Martin developed, proved, tested and refined the concept. The company modi-fied a B-26G Marauder bomber, designa-ted the XB-26H, by removing its tricycle landing gear and installing the radical bi-cycle gear. In May and June 1945, the so-called “Middle River Stump Jumper” be-came a familiar sight at the Martin plant as it careened around the ramp, wringing out the gear under a range of conditions.

On October 27, 1949, with its turbo-jets shrieking at full takeoff power and two howling RATO (Rocket Assisted Takeoff) motors belching thick clouds of acrid smoke, XB-51 number 46-685 took to the air from the Middle River factory

most modern aircraft. For instance, con-sider the engine arrangement. The XB-51 used three GE J47 turbojets. Two were in nacelles under the front part of the fuse-lage—unorthodox, but not groundbreak-ing. Germany’s 1944 Junkers Ju.287 had similarly located Jumo 004 turbojets. But the XB-51’s third J47 was very unusual. It was mounted in the tail and it got its air through a curved tube from an inlet on the top of the fuselage in front of the ver-tical fin—the world’s first “S-duct,” as also used in Boeing’s ubiquitous 727 and Lockheed’s L1011 Tristar. Another pio-neering XB-51 feature was the “T-tail.” The horizontal stabilizer was on the very top of the vertical fin rather than on the fuselage. Boeing’s 717 (nee McDonnell Douglas DC-9/MD-80) and C-17 Globe-master II, among many other aircraft, use such a tail today. The XB-51’s 35-de-gree-swept wing was also innovative. It had no conventional ailerons. Spoilers on the upper surface provided roll control—another historic first. The pilot could change its angle relative to the fuselage over a four-degree range, for better take-off and landing performance, in the first-ever use of “variable incidence,” later prominent on Vought’s F-8U Crusader. The wing had a marked six degrees of negative dihedral (“anhedral”)—the tips sloped down, not up, a configuration that Hawker Siddeley later adopted for its in-stantly recognizable P-1127 Harrier.


Second Quarter 2008 Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum

airfield on its maiden flight, with Martin test pilot Pat Tibbs at the controls. He landed at nearby NAS (Naval Air Sta-tion) Patuxent River after the uneventful 34-minute hop. Phase I (contractor) flight testing had begun.

Just over five months later, Phase I testing ended after 45 flights, including one on December 28, 1949, in which the rear landing gear collapsed on landing and the aft fuselage suffered minor sheet-metal damage. Phase I revealed very few deficiencies in what turned out to be a surprisingly well-behaved aircraft “right


Martin XB-51 Panther General Characteristics

Powerplant Three 5,200-pound-thrust General Electric J-47-GE-13 turbojets

Cruise Speed 540 miles per hour

Maximum Speed 645 miles per hour

Service Ceiling 40,500 feet

Length 85 feet 1 inch

Wingspan 53 feet 1 inch

Range 1,075 miles

Weight (empty) 29,600 pounds

Weight (maximum) 55,900 pounds

The “Middle River Stump Jumper” was a modified B-26G Marauder that Martin used to test the bicycle landing gear concept. Note the external bracing just behind the wing to strengthen the fuselage for the gear loads.



aircraft—the “deep stall.” At high angles of attack, a T-tail’s horizontal stabilizer and its all-important elevator can become “stuck” in the airflow behind the main wing. The elevator may lack sufficient authority, even at full deflection, to lower the nose, effectively locking the aircraft in a stall from which recovery is impossi-ble. NASA later investigated deep stalls in stretched versions of McDonnell Douglas’ DC-9-series airliners. Did the last XB-51 add yet another “first” to its remarkable aviation legacy even as it died in the El Paso desert? Was it the first aircraft to succumb to the insidious, deadly deep stall problem that was not seriously recognized until years later?

If the XB-51 was such a great, inno-vative aircraft, why did it not go into pro-duction? The answer is the same one that has driven the procurement of military weapons since the dawn of time. The Air Force lost the advanced capabilities of the XB-51 and, in the process, forfeited for decades the aircraft-building services of one of its premier contractors, because of “politics.” A nasty feud arose between Glenn L. Martin and Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt S. Vandenberg over Martin’s backing of the Navy—his major, “bread-and-butter” customer—in the 1949 “Re-volt of the Admirals.” This bitter, public inter-service battle was about whether the


out of the box.” Martin’s engineers added a bullet fairing to the vertical fin/horizon-tal stabilizer junction to reduce vibration, beefed up the landing gear, strengthened the wing flap mechanism and revised the “feel” ailerons to prevent reversal at high speed and low altitude. That was it.

On March 31, 1950, the Air Material Command (AMC) took over 685 for its Phase II (service) testing. The Air Force pilots soon reported poor lateral stability, and AMC sent the ship back to Martin for a fix. The company worked on it all summer and returned it to AMC in Sep-tember 1950. After 41 flights, Phase II ended on November 10, 1950. According to the Air Force’s report, the XB-51 had “excellent” performance that “equaled or exceeded” contract requirements. Martin and Air Force pilots continued to fly 685 until it was badly damaged on February 28, 1952, when its Air Force pilot flared too late and hit the ground short of the runway at Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio. Martin repaired 685, at a cost to the Air Force of over $400,000, and it returned to flight exactly a year later.

The second XB-51, 46-686, flew for the first time on April 17, 1950. It was used for bombing tests at Edwards AFB, California, until it crashed on May 9,

Featured Aircraft (Continued from page 3) 1952, killing pilot Ma-jor Neil Lathrop during a high speed flyby.

Alas, the Air Force had already canceled the XB-51 in Novem-ber 1951 for reasons that had little to do with the aircraft or the flight test program results.

The first XB-51 saw continued use as an aeronautical testbed for several years, mak-ing key contributions to the development of the rotating bomb bay that Martin later used very successfully on its li-cense-built English El-ectric B-57 Canberra. On March 25, 1956, on a stopover in El Paso, Texas, while being ferried from Edwards to Eg-lin AFB, Florida, 685 crashed on takeoff from El Paso Municipal Airport’s Run-way 26. Witnesses said the bomber gained speed slowly for about 7,000 feet, then lifted off in a nose-high attitude. The gear retracted immediately, but the aircraft never gained flying speed and settled heavily to the ground near the airport’s west boundary fence. The mor-tally wounded bird slid across the desert

for 750 feet, disinte-grating as it went, and burst into flames when it stopped. The Crew Chief, Staff Sergeant Wilbur Savage, died in the crash. The pilot, Major James Rudolph, was severely burned and died a few days la-ter. The cause of the crash was “premature takeoff rotation lead-ing to a stall,” accord-ing to the Air Force re-port—pilot error. It is interesting to speculate whether Ma-jor Rudolph was the first unfortunate pilot to experience a pheno-menon unique to T-tail

This photo from above emphasizes the XB-51’s sleek layout and smooth finish. The streamlined fairing for the center engine air in-take is rotated closed here. The small surfaces on the trailing edge of the wing near the tips are not ailerons—they just give the pilot some control “feel” when the full-span spoilers deploy.

An XB-51 takes off at Martin’s Middle River plant near Balti-more, Maryland. Note the small round window behind the cockpit (the only view out for the navigator), the full-span trailing-edge flaps and the RATO units on the rear fuselage.


nation should procure B-36 bombers for the fledgling Air Force or aircraft carriers for the Navy. Vandenberg was reportedly so incensed at Glenn L.’s position that he vowed the Martin Company would “nev-er build another airplane of its own de-sign for the Air Force.” His threat held true for over 45 years. It took a merger with the Lockheed Corporation in 1995, creating aerospace giant Lockheed Mar-tin, to return the remnants of Glenn L. Martin’s proud, venerable company to the aircraft manufacturing business.

While no traces of the two XB-51s exist today, you can still see this extraor-dinary aircraft in action. The 1956 Warn-er Brothers motion picture Toward the Unknown, filmed on location at Edwards AFB in 1955 and starring William Hold-en as Major Lincoln Bond and Lloyd No-lan as General Bill Banner, also featured XB-51 685 in a brief but impressive role. Masquerading as the fictitious “Gilbert XF-120,” and flown by well-known Air Force test pilot Pete Everest, the photo-genic XB-51 demonstrates its impressive performance and amazing maneuverabil-ity in a breathtaking sequence of stunning aerial scenes. Toward the Unknown is not available on DVD, but the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) channel occasionally airs it. As an interesting cinematic tale about the flight testing of advanced aircraft and Mach-busting rocket planes at Edwards AFB in the 1950s, it is top-notch enter-tainment. As the only place to see a Mar-tin XB-51 in flight, it is a priceless his-torical treasure.



NASA Astronauts Visit Museum

T hursday, March 6, was a special day for space enthusiasts and lo-cal “movers and shakers.” NASA

astronauts Brigadier General Charles M. Duke and Lieutenant General Thomas P. Stafford visited War Eagles Air Museum for a memorable evening of bonhomie. Sponsored by Omega Watch Company and El Paso’s Lacy & Company Jewel-ers, the event attracted 340 people who paid $50.00 apiece for the opportunity to hobnob with two of NASA’s most re-spected and well-known retired Gemini and Apollo astronauts. All proceeds ben-efited the YWCA El Paso del Norte Re-gion, including $5,500 from the auction of an Omega Speedmaster watch—the same kind the Apollo astronauts wore on the moon. Among other exhibits placed in the Museum for the event were a full-size mockup of an LRV (Lunar Roving Vehicle) and an Apollo-era spacesuit.

Charlie Duke was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on October 3, 1935. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy in An-napolis, Maryland, and upon graduation joined the U.S. Air Force. He flew fight-ers and served as a test pilot until April 1966, when he joined NASA in the third astronaut group. Duke was the CapCom (Capsule Communicator) for Apollo 11’s landing on the moon on July 20, 1969. After Neil Armstrong announced, “Hous-ton, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” (the first words spoken from the surface of another world), Duke’s was the voice that said, “Roger, Twan…Tran-quility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

On April 20, 1972, Duke (the Lunar Module Pilot [LMP]) and Mission Com-mander John Young landed Apollo 16’s LM Orion in the Descartes region of the rugged lunar highlands. Young and Duke—the 9th and 10th men to walk on the moon—stayed for 71 hours 14 min-utes, collected 213 pounds of rock and soil samples and drove their LRV over

very rough terrain. Duke filmed the only existing movie of the LRV (according to NASA) as Young put it through its paces in the hard vacuum of the lunar surface.

Tom Stafford was born on Septem-ber 17, 1930, in Weatherford, Oklahoma. After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1952, he entered pilot train-ing in the U.S. Air Force. He was an in-terceptor pilot and instructor in Germany until he joined NASA with the second group of astronauts in September 1962.

The first of Stafford’s four space-flights was on December 15, 1965, when he and the late Walter M. Schirra, Jr. pi-loted their Gemini VI spacecraft to within one foot of Gemini VII in the world’s first-ever rendezvous in space. The mis-sion had another distinction. On a launch attempt on December 12, the Titan boost-er shut down seconds after its first-stage motors had ignited but before it lifted off. Mission rules clearly required the crew to fire their ejection seats in such a situa-tion. But Schirra and Stafford had not felt the booster start to rise, so they made a split-second decision not to eject. Had they ejected, the first space rendezvous, and likely the first lunar landing, would have been delayed by months or longer. Their brave decision to stay put on top of

Astronaut Visit (Continued on page 6)

Website Update

T hanks to master web develop-er Bruce Quackenbush at Art Works Studio in Denver, you

will now find many Plane Talk news-letters available for viewing or down-load on our website www.war-eagles-air-museum.com. Just click the links on the home page for the most recent Plane Talk or for archived issues back to the first quarter of 2003. You’ll see them in all their full-color glory.

You need Adobe Acrobat Read-er to view them. If you don’t have this software, you can easily download it for free from Adobe’s website: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/

The two Martin XB-51 prototypes put on a flyby demonstration over the Middle River plant in this undated photo.



an armed, hissing, temperamental rocket made possible another launch attempt—this one successful—a few days later.

On June 3–6, 1966, Stafford com-manded Gemini IX, a mission intended to demonstrate critical orbital rendezvous and docking maneuvers. An on-orbit fail-ure of the docking target prevented Gem-ini IX from docking, but Stafford and his crewmate Eugene A. Cernan practiced rendezvous techniques and accomplished a two-hour “spacewalk.”

Stafford launched on his third space-flight, as Commander of Apollo 10, on May 18, 1969. As a full-up dress rehears-al of the moon landing, Apollo 10 did ev-erything that Apollo 11 did except for the actual touchdown. Descending to a mere 51,000 feet above the crater-pocked lunar surface—hardly higher than some com-mercial jets fly—Stafford and LMP Cer-nan, in the LM Snoopy, checked out all the procedures and maneuvers that Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. “Buzz” Al-drin used successfully for their historic landing just two months later. Was the Apollo 10 crew tempted to “accidentally” land? No, said Stafford. Snoopy was too heavy. If they had foolishly tried to land, they would have run out of fuel and crashed to their deaths. Even though they

Astronaut Visit (Continued from page 5)

did not land, the Apollo 10 crew earned a noteworthy distinction. Their Command Module Charlie Brown re-entered the earth’s atmosphere on May 26, 1969, at 24,769 miles per hour—a manned space-craft speed record that still stands today.

Stafford’s fourth spaceflight was in July 1975, as Commander of the Ameri-can side of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP). This mission was a bright spot in the gloomy days of the Cold War. It involved the rendezvous and docking of U.S. Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft, culminating in the historic “handshake in space.” Stafford and his crewmates Vance D. Brand and Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, and cosmonauts Alexei A. Leonov and Valeriy N. Kubasov, worked toge-ther in space for two days in what some crit-ics derided as a politi-cal “stunt.” But ASTP did improve relations between the two former rivals in the race for the first moon landing.

Duke and Stafford were accompanied on their visit by Ed Buck-bee, director emeritus

of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center and founder of Space Camp, both in Hunts-ville, Alabama. Buckbee is the co-author, with the late Wally Schirra, of The Real Space Cowboys, a 2005 book that chroni-cles the history of America’s manned spaceflight program from the early days of Project Mercury and the seven original astronauts (the “space cowboys” of the ti-tle) through the Apollo landings. Schirra was the only astronaut to fly in all three of NASA’s pre-Shuttle manned space-craft—Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

The War Eagles event started out in the hangar with an informal catered re-ception and a “meet and greet” session, where attendees got to talk with the as-tronauts personally. Then Duke and Staf-ford, with Buckbee moderating, delivered to the rapt audience an entertaining hour-long multi-media talk about their space-flight experiences. While probably not new to the true space “buff,” their anec-dotal stories of dedication, bravery, hu-mor and highjinks in the ranks of the as-tronaut corps were revelations to most of the listeners. For example, the tale of John Young and the “orange juice” was priceless. It was the only time a state Governor had to buy time on national tel-evision to “clarify” remarks of an astro-naut on the moon made over an acciden-tally open microphone!

Many thanks to our guests, General Duke, General Stafford and Dr. Buckbee, for a most memorable event.

Astronaut Charles M. Duke, ca. 1966.

Astronaut Thomas P. Stafford, ca. 1963.

Charlie Duke, Tom Stafford and Ed Buckbee (l. to r.) regaled a rapt audience with stories and anecdotes about the early days of the Space Age at War Eagles Air Museum. Photo by Chuck Crepas.



W ar Eagles Air Muse-um sincerely thanks the following indivi-

duals and organizations for their donations to the 2007 Corporate Youth Sponsors Program. This program educates local student groups about the contributions of military aviation to Ameri-ca’s history. For many students, visits to the Museum funded by these generous donors kindle an interest in aviation and related technical career fields.

Membership Application War Eagles Air Museum

The War Eagles Air Museum collects, restores and displays historic aircraft, mainly from the World War II and Korean War time periods, to encourage awareness and appreciation of military aviation history through exhibits, educational programs and special events. The Museum is a nonprofit organization as defined by the United States Internal Revenue Code. Operated by staff and volunteers, the Museum is supported by funds obtained from admissions, memberships and contributions. All dues and contributions are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.

War Eagles Air Museum memberships are available in six categories. All memberships include the following privileges:

Free admission to the Museum and all exhibits. Free admission to all special events. 10% general admission discounts for all guests of a current Member. 10% discount on all Member purchases in the Gift Shop.

In addition, a Family Membership includes free admission for spouses and all children under 18 living at home. To become a Member of the War Eagles Air Museum, please fill in the information requested below and note the category of mem-bership you desire. Mail this form, along with a check payable to “War Eagles Air Museum” for the annual fee shown, to:

War Eagles Air Museum 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, NM 88008

NAME (Please print)___________________________________________________ STREET ____________________________________________________________ CITY ______________________________ STATE _____ ZIP _________—______ TELEPHONE (Optional) _____—_____—____________ E-MAIL ADDRESS (Optional) ___________________________________________ Will be kept private and used only for War Eagles Air Museum mailings.

Membership Categories

Individual $15

Family $25

Participating $50

Supporting $100

Benefactor $1,000

Life $5,000

War Eagles Air Museum Corporate Youth Sponsors Bronze

($50−$249) Silver

($250−$499) Gold

($500−$999) Platinum

($1,000−$2,499)

Alamo Industries, Inc. El Paso Aero, Inc. El Paso Electric

Company El Paso Community

Foundation

Frank and Susan Borman Jon T. Hansen William H.

Gardner, III

Coronado Cleaners

C. F. Jordan, L.P.

Diamond ($2,500 or more)

Jonathan Rogers

SWIFCO, Inc.


War Eagles Air Museum Doña Ana County Airport at Santa Teresa (5T6) 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008

know specifically where it was based or what missions it flew. The Fourth Quar-ter 2006 Plane Talk, downloadable from our website, features this aircraft, but its story still has many gaps. Now, thanks to an aviation enthusiast at the opposite end of the country from us, we know a little bit more about our Lightning.

Mike Szuberski, of Byron, Minneso-ta, bought these two photos on Ebay and was kind enough to send us digital copies of them. They show “our” P-38, at the time registered N345, in one of its former lives as a U.S. Weather Bureau weather research aircraft in the Midwest’s “torna-do alley.” One of the photos is dated Sep-tember 1959. It was taken in Fort Worth, Texas. We’d like to learn more about the two different “weather noses” seen in the photos. We’ve tracked down a couple of people so far, one of them the retired pro-ject leader of “Operation Rough Rider,” the tornado research program. Another was a friend of the late Jim Cook, who owned and flew the aircraft at the time. But we have not yet uncovered the defin-

P-38 Mystery Photos

T he history of War Eagles Air Museum’s Lockheed P-38 Light-ning, unfortunately, is not docu-

mented as well as we would prefer. For example, we’re pretty sure it was used in South America for aerial survey work from 1953 until early 1957, but we don’t

itive story of the research program, or of our P-38’s participation in it. If you have any information about the kinds of instru-ments that were in the noses, the kinds of missions that the aircraft flew into hazar-dous weather, or if you know anyone as-sociated with the program, we’d very much like to hear from you. Thanks.

Long before War Eagles Air Museum ac-quired it, this Lockheed P-38 Lightning, with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) registration N345, was used for weather re-search in Central Texas. Note instrumenta-tion probes and antennas on what appears to be a modified F-5G photo-recon nose.

This photo of P-38 Lightning N345 was taken in September 1959 in Fort Worth, Texas, by Roger Besecker, and shows a dif-ferent configuration of weather nose on the aircraft. The stenciling reads “U.S. Depart-ment of Commerce—Tornado Research—Weather Bureau.” Some of its flights must have been really thrilling!

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