BAM'n'IVM

Man, that Bastrop Phantom has faded badly.

Sig, I'm loving those pics of the Bergstrom birds - both the 924th TFW and the 67th TRW - got any more? Brings back happy childhood memories. I remember just having to look up to see one or two at any given time...

Story I've always heard and read was that the "official" color of the paint was "Indigo Blue" for whatever reason, but the actual iron ball paint looked pretty freakin' black. And getting white paint to stand up to those temperatures for all the hi-viz markings Blackbirds carried for so long (such as U.S. AIR FORCE along the fuselage sides, and the buzz numbers and tail numbers) gave the engineers at Lockheed fits.

I had a USAF Photo Phantom pilot tell me when I was a kid that by the time his Phantom had taken off and gotten to altitude, his wing tanks were usually dry... He might've been exaggerating to impress a 12 year old, I dunno. But yeah, I always saw USAF Phantoms - both RF-4C's and F-4D's - with two wing tanks when they flew out of Bergstrom AFB.

Interesting. I also realized after posting that there's F-16's in San Antonio, too. Wonder why the Okies are gonna come down instead...you need some Vipers with a Texas flag on the tail down there.

What about the 301st FW at Fort Worth? They're not going away too, are they? Surely they're closer than Tulsa.

Maybe if they had painted a trainer up that way instead of a fighter...since that is a Stearman paint scheme...

A Cessna Skymaster in white and red. Sharp-looking.

I think they were going for the whole prewar Stearman look...but yeah, it's kinda glaring on an F-16. I'd love to see more WWII retro schemes, though.

Nice pics, Kolja. Keep 'em coming if you find more.

Yeah, definitely a danger of the first page or two of the forum being just the pinned threads once everyone's favorite aircraft are represented. Eventually, the "Post your pics of Airplane X Here" threads will die down, and things will settle. But the forum's new, and it's a good way to give us something to look at and topics a lot of folks can contribute something to instead of a blank page with three or four active topics on it. Have patience.

Another static from Lackland AFB (tossed a few of these into the other single-type threads):

Static display at Lackland AFB: F-4 MiG killer at the Cavanaugh Flight Museum - not sure what the deal is with the DeLorean.

The Cavanaugh Flight Museum's F-104 - unfortunately, it's hard to get a good pic of this airframe.

Me too. And I wish someone else would post some Tweet pics here.

As OP, I don't see why not. Killer Tweets are still Tweets at heart.

Hey, c'mon, it's a classic airframe, love it or hate it.

Here you go - as you can see, no badge, and I haven't noticed any squadron markings. It's displayed on-base at NAS Fort Worth - which I still call Carswell AFB.

Gate guard, NAS Fort Worth (Carswell) And a couple more airshow statics:

Well, she's already in the F-16 thread, but here's the NSAWC Adversary I've got. I've got one of an A-4 static display bird, but I don't know if it was TOPGUN/NSAWC or not. Wanna see it?

'Phraid the only decent photos I have are of phormer Phantoms, pholks...

'Fraid I'm not sure what squadron this one belongs to...pretty sure she's a legacy Hornet, though. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I'll move the pic to the correct thread.

The late, great VFA-201...