GERMAN JET FIGHTER REPLICA HEADS OVERSEAS (US Gov. alarmed at "war weapon export")

AOPA Online | 1/13/06

[Jackknife]

Yeager got to fly one and had nothing but praise for it.

I read Yeager's autobiography last summer. It talked about how he was the first one to be able to shoot an ME-262 down. He developed a little pullup maneuver at slow speed in a type of arc, with machine guns blazing in a spray pattern. I highly recommend the book.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Hah!

Lots of jets leak fuel while flying - Check the wing of the first of 3 F-16's.

http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/113152.html

Gotta admit though, the SR-71 did it intentionally....8<)

[Little Ray]

Thought so. Didn't think there was any jet to jet combat in WWII.

[tanknetter]

I believe the SR-71 used to launch supersonic RPVs. Could that have been used to photograph the "mother ship"??

Not the SR-71, but the M-21, which was a two-seat derivative of the original CIA A-12 Blackbird.

That picture is purely fanciful, as it shows an SR with the D-21 drone. You can tell that it's an SR by the increased flair in the nose chine (which also seems to have the "pinch" that didn't show up on the SR fleet until the ASARS nose was introduced pretty late in the aircraft's life), as well as the contours of the canopy area.

[ReignOfError]

I've been trying to find the drones at AMARC, but I can't quite make them out from the resolution of Google Earth (which just came out for Mac, and I've been compulsively surfing it this weekend). The Google Earth images still have a fair number of intact B-52s, and I think they've all been chopped up and carted off, so I think the pics are a few years old.

AMARC also had a number of Titan II boosters when I was there, decommissioned as ICBMs and mothballed for use as satellite launch vehicles. I think they've completely depleted that stock.