Good pictures.

Cool. I have a recent photo of another B-53 casing, minus the attractive young lady and the doofus with her



It's at the National Nuclear Museum in Albuquerque. Also a neat place to check out. The last of the B-53s was dismantled just last year, made a lot of national news.

And it's not even the largest nuke we ever built. That would be the Mark 17 hydrogen bomb.


Mk 17, B-53 by CHS Girls Soccer, on Flickr

[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 3/22/2012 12:57p).]

Doofus? I had to be at least a little crafty to snag a girl like that and then convince her to leave her Austin-area hometown to move up to the barren Panhandle!

I was trying to persuade her to use that picture as our Christmas card for next year. Merry Christmas...hope your New Year is a blast.

You notice I never post pictures of myself....

And I didn't realize you were in the Panhandle, too. Where, if you don't mind the question?

Pampa, born and raised.

Ahhh. Been to Pampa a lot when the kids were in soccer and X-C. Also came to the auction several years ago when someone auctioned off his collection of Lincoln cars, and some other times when dad bought some antique tractors.

Love pics like that.

F-100, F-101, F-105, F-14, T-65 X-Wing, B-18 Bolo ....

Canyon - toured the Nat'l Nuclear Mus. when we spent Thanksgiving with ADjr who is stationed at Kirkland. He is serving on the IG team as a nuclear weapons security officer.

Great pics, Teacher. Funny thing - my dad enlisted when WWII broke out. He was trained to be an airplane mechanic/flight engineer.

The B-18 (based on the DC-2 airliner) was obsolete and the remaining planes were used for training new mechanics. First plane my dad worked on.

He mustered out in 1946, but reupped in 1949. For the next 24 years he was a nuke weapons technician and worked on the nukes in your pictures (and Canyon's picture).

So the B-18 pic and nuke pics had a special meaning for me - thanks.

And BTW, you are an excellent photographer - great pics.

Awesome pics. There is a nuke casing on base at NAS Fort Worth. I pass by it every time I go up there for drill. I'll try to get a pic sometime. Nuclear weapons are one area of history I don't get too excited about. Nuking people is kind of like shooting caged bears and calling yourself a hunter. But the times we did it it had to be done.

airplane driver-

Your son probably told you that there is also a classified museum of nuclear weapons, one where we peons can never enter. My spouse works in the Amarillo WMD factory....the reason we often travel to Kirtand and Los Alamos. Don't know if your son is in the same general area, but who knows.

My wife and I love to visit Los Alamos. Our last visit was 2 years ago, when my wife had a business meeting in Santa Fe.

My first visit was in 1956 when my Dad was stationed at the nuke storage base Manzano, outside Albuquerque. My parents met a family from Los Alamos and we got invited up to visit several time.

It was still a closed city back then. We had to be met by our "sponsors" at a security checkpoint at the edge of town.

I always laugh when my wife and I visit now because the old security checkpoint is now a Mexican Restuarant - the first building you see when coming on the main route from
Santa Fe.

Glad y'all have enjoyed the photos! I was using my phone camera, so the resolution isn't great, but such beautiful planes make even a mediocre photographer and camera look good.

Believe it or not, I took those pictures mostly with Texags History in mind. I probably would have snapped a few despite that, but once I walked in that hangar one of my first thoughts was....those air war buffs on Texags would love this.

Changing the topic a bit, but I made a bargain purchase at a gun show during my stay in Denver. Who will be first to identify this? Better jump in before Aalan gets the chance!

Great little museum up there in Denver.

B53 crowd pleasers, I might know a thing or two about those, might have touched some, somewhere or been assigned to a mission to drop some, that never happened but not at liberty to discuss any details. The 53s are the ones lost off Spain and on spain in the early 60s.

Actually it was B-61s that were lost off Spain.

Unless you know some classified intel that was never shared with the public????

EDIT: Wiki tells me I'm wrong and it was B-28s lost off Spain. Regardless, the casings from those bombs are in the museum in Albuquerque. I thought I had a photo from the museum, but all I can find is one online.



[This message has been edited by CanyonAg77 (edited 3/23/2012 10:51a).]

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Believe it or not, I took those pictures mostly with Texags History in mind. I probably would have snapped a few despite that, but once I walked in that hangar one of my first thoughts was....those air war buffs on Texags would love this

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Well thanks for thinking about us.

Cool pics! Thanks for sharing!

I grew up on Kirtland AFB - my dad worked at the labs there. Got to see just about everything we were allowed to. The rocket sleds and airplanes were my favorites.

We lived in Wherry housing when I was in the fourth grade and I went to Wherry Elementary. The B-36s used to rattle all the windows in the school when they flew over.

Teacher, you got me. I was thinking a Chrysanthemum (Japanese), but doesn't look like it. It could be Edelweiss and have some Austrian significance, but not sure. I'll cheat now and google it, but I'll leave room for others to guess.

Canyon:

My bad it was 28s.

Teacher:

I think aalan is on to something it's an Edelweiss for the German Jaeger Divison in WW2.

quote:

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it's an Edelweiss for the German Jaeger Divison in WW2.

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You guys are messing with my childhood memories of Julie Andrews.

Yep, y'all got it. It's the cap pin for the Wehrmacht Gebirgsjäger troops. I was happy to find it, read the memoir of a German mountain trooper a few years back and found it interesting.

Saw it on BoB

Clearly an Edelweiss insignia.

So what's the story on the X-Wing? Movie prop or just a "replica"?

Unfortunately I didn't get an explanation for why that was there or the story behind it.

I guess that is another museum I'm going to have to visit.

NormanAg, you're dating yourself. The B-36 last flew in 1958 or 1959 . I'm sure you got used to aircraft of all types flying over and around where you were stationed. BTW, thanks for your service.

[This message has been edited by Msgt USAF Ret (edited 4/22/2012 11:52p).]

X-Wing story

Short answer is that it is a 3/4 scale replica that Lucasfilm built for the 1996 re-release of the original Star Wars. It came to Denver for an exhibition. Local Nerds volunteered to restore and maintain it if Lucas would leave it in Denver. Offer was accepted, and the X-wing is on long-term loan to Denver.

It does leave Denver occasionally, so check with them first if you are hoping to see it.