Dad's Old Photo Albums

SrFnFly227

SrFnFly227

Well-Known Member
My family was looking through our old photo albums on Thanksgiving and I came across 2 books from my Dad's old flying days. Thought some people on here may enjoy them as much as I did. As I understand it, these are all either taken by my Dad (from the back seat) or are of my Dad, but some were bigger prints that may have been squadron photos.



















 
Last edited:
Thats awesome, great pics and thanks for sharing! Kind of the golden age of Navy fighter aviation (or the USAF for that matter), always cool to see pics.
 
most-american-photos-ever-1.jpg
 
Damn! awesome pictures. Was your dad a photographer for the Navy or just got lucky with all these shots?
 
Thanks everybody. It was a lot of fun going through the albums and I'm glad to see some others enjoyed them also. I'm 32, he's been retired for 21 years, and I'm honestly not sure I'd ever seen them before. To answer the question asked in the last post, Dad was not a photographer. He was a back seater in the F-4 and F-14 and has 1000+ hours in both. He's the backseater in the last photo of my original post. He was Junior enough at the time that he didn't have his own plane, so that is not his name on the fuselage.

I took the albums back to him Sunday morning and got to ask a few questions.

The Bicentennial plane is one that he flew in the air show circuit. I knew that already and actually grew up with a poster size photo of it on my bedroom wall. Thought I should mention it though.

The SR-71 was doing intercept/radar stuff and Dad's squadron had F-4s and 14s. The sent 2 of each out to meet up with it and after they were done, they got in formation and did a low pass down the runway. I can't remember which airport.

The Russian Bear photo is the one I really wanted to ask about. It seemed odd that we would be flying with the Russians at the time in history, and it turns out we weren't. The Bears would come over and we scrambled our planes to intercept. They would often go up next to them and there were pictures taken. Still enemies and they weren't flying together. I made a joke about getting a shot of the Russian plane while "inverted" and he didn't get the reference. Made me sad.
 
If you don't know anything about it (which maybe you do), VX-4 in that timeframe was a pretty impressive place to be/be from. They were kind of the designated tactics development shop, in conjunction with TOPGUN, and most of the USN guys who had MIG time over US soil wore a VX-4 patch in the "white" world. I bet he has some cool stories. Wiki "Red Eagles" or "4477 TES" if you don't know what I'm talking about.
 
///AMG said:
3 different cold war interceptors, none of which could turn :)

j/k awesome pic!
Click to expand...
Haha - yea the Phantom with that high wing loading, pull back and I imagine it just kind of sits there and buffets a bit as the nose slowly rates around. Wouldn't be good to get into a slow speed scissors / angles fight. I'm sure it had enough thrust to unload and extend relatively easy though.
 
SuperCubRick said:
Haha - yea the Phantom with that high wing loading, pull back and I imagine it just kind of sits there and buffets a bit as the nose slowly rates around. Wouldn't be good to get into a slow speed scissors / angles fight. I'm sure it had enough thrust to unload and extend relatively easy though.
Click to expand...

My old CO got some backseat time in one (I was supposed to as well the next day but it was a WX canx which he has yet to let me live down). Said about as much. Burner was a pretty big kick in the pants, just a lot of brute force behind you. Above 400 knots it could turn pretty easily up to the load limit (think 6.5 ish?) but below and it was just wallowing. Said trying to fly form was pretty challenging compared to what we are used to with FBW controls and pretty good throttle response. Maybe some of the old timers will chime in about it
 
SuperCubRick said:
Haha - yea the Phantom with that high wing loading, pull back and I imagine it just kind of sits there and buffets a bit as the nose slowly rates around. Wouldn't be good to get into a slow speed scissors / angles fight. I'm sure it had enough thrust to unload and extend relatively easy though.
Click to expand...

Depends if you're in a hard-wing F-4, or a soft-wing one; regards the turning fight and the chance of a departure from controlled flight. Lots of great improvement when they designed the soft-wing E models.

///AMG said:
If you don't know anything about it (which maybe you do), VX-4 in that timeframe was a pretty impressive place to be/be from. They were kind of the designated tactics development shop, in conjunction with TOPGUN, and most of the USN guys who had MIG time over US soil wore a VX-4 patch in the "white" world. I bet he has some cool stories. Wiki "Red Eagles" or "4477 TES" if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Click to expand...

SrFnFly227 said:
Thanks everybody. It was a lot of fun going through the albums and I'm glad to see some others enjoyed them also. I'm 32, he's been retired for 21 years, and I'm honestly not sure I'd ever seen them before. To answer the question asked in the last post, Dad was not a photographer. He was a back seater in the F-4 and F-14 and has 1000+ hours in both. He's the backseater in the last photo of my original post. He was Junior enough at the time that he didn't have his own plane, so that is not his name on the fuselage.
.
Click to expand...

F-4J 3783, the Playboy one, is sitting right here at DMA in the boneyard, right next to the perimeter road fence.

Oh, and I love the VF-84 Jolly Rogers. Especially with the Phantom. Tomcat was nice too.

Was your dad in a fleet squadron in the Tomcat? Or just the VX squadron?

Cool.....

NFO.png
 
MikeD said:
Was your dad in a fleet squadron in the Tomcat? Or just the VX squadron?

Cool.....
Click to expand...

I'd love to be able to answer that, but he was in so many squadrons that I have never been able to keep them straight. He stopped flying when I was about 5 or 6 and retired when I was 11. He's been doing mortgages ever since.

I know that he flew the F-4 in VF-84. I know he was in VX-4 and that he flew both in that squadron.
 
SrFnFly227 said:
I'd love to be able to answer that, but he was in so many squadrons that I have never been able to keep them straight. He stopped flying when I was about 5 or 6 and retired when I was 11. He's been doing mortgages ever since.

I know that he flew the F-4 in VF-84. I know he was in VX-4 and that he flew both in that squadron.
Click to expand...

Yeah the VXs had multiple types of aircraft, being test and all; not unusual to fly multiple types.

NFOs do all kinds of things when they leave the service. One DPS (state police/highway patrol) Capt here in AZ used to be an F-4 RIO in the USN also, in the early-mid 1980s.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top