Naval Air Station Miramar 1980's

[gwoof]

Between 1981 and 1990 I was lucky enough to visit San Diego 4 times and it would have been rude not to pop up the road to what became one of the most famous air stations in the US.

1981 was the most frustrating visit as having got a base tour it was no photos and no numbers (!) which when stood on the tower above the RF-8Gs of VFP-63 was almost too much to bear

Got two visits to two units at different ends of the ramp in 1983 though catching the reserve F-4s of VF-301 Devils Disciples and VF-302 Stallions. Couple of days later was back for VF-126 Bandits one of the adversary units. Sadly the Crusaders were gone

So a few shots from their ramps although can't find shots of the bandits on the hard drive at present (note sort filing system!!) so a flying shot taken in 1988 of which more will follow!!





Plus a visitor down by the Top Gun ramp:

[Beemer]

Nice photos, gwoof. Is the Skyhawk painted as say, an Su-25 Frogfoot for war games as it has the red star and red 11 scheme. Regards Beemer.

[gwoof]

Beemer

Miramar housed 3 "Adversary" units as the Navy liked to call its Aggressor squadrons.

There was the Navy Fighter Weapons School aka Top Gun, VF-126 Bandits and VFC-13 Saints. The latter two mainly provided "opponents" for regular units while Top Gun was a graduate course. Have to say that as far as the Saints went the majority of their aircraft I saw were grey but NFWS and VF-126 had a wide variety of colour schemes, similar to the F-5s that used to live at Alconbury but even more wacky in some cases!!

They were designed to represent the sorts of colour schemes that US Navy pilots might encounter while on deployment. The aircraft were flown to simulate different types of threat depending on their size and agility. The A-4 representing MiG-21s but other types were used, F-5s, F-14s, F-16s and F-18s over time. Other units at bases such as Oceana and the Marines at Yuma used the IAI Kfir known as F-21A in US Service. They too carried some cracking colour schemes ;D

VF-126 is no more but the NFWS and VFC-13 are both now based at Fallon and acquired some former Swiss AF F-5Es a few years ago to carry on the training role.

HTH

Ian

PS more pics will follow at some point!

[gwoof]

1981 no Tomcat pics

1983 no Tomcat pics

1988 and 1990 more Tomcat pics than you know what to do with!! Anywhere between 20 and 30 different machines in the circuit during the course of the day! Here's 5 ;D

[johnoakes]

Not a great lover of the military but these are cracking good shots.

Don't our members get into some super places.

Top quality-well done. 11/10.LOL

[gwoof]

It took some persistence to crack Miramar but yes it did pay off ;D

Some more of the colourful A-4s





And just to show it wasn't just the A-4s that were "colourful" this was one of the IAI Kfirs or F-21 from VMFT-401 Snipers based at MCAS Yuma.


On the day I shot this one there were a number of visitors from Miramar at Yuma to take advantage of training against a different sort of threat.

[gwoof]

Next instalment. A couple more Scooters one from the Top Gun school the other from VFC-13. The base was also home to the Pacific fleet Hawkeye squadrons and their training unit which used Greyhounds as well as E-2s.

Final chapter will cover visitors ;D

[gwoof]

The Final Countdown ;D

First some smaller images as I can't find the original scans!! Couple of Navy F-16Ns one from VF-126 the other a visitor from VF-43 at Oceana then a couple of F-18s from El Toro






Finally some more visitors an A-3 and EA-6A from VAQ-33, a USAF KC-10 and an Oceana based F-18 that appeared to be on some sort of exercise!






That's your lot for Miramar, hope they were of interest

[Deleted]

Jan 22, 2010 20:45:44 GMT 1 gwoof said:

The Final Countdown. First some smaller images as I can't find the original scans!!

Great thread and photos gwoof.

If you want to you can increase the size of the smaller photos using your photo editing software. Simply go into resize and select the pixel width you want, the hight should adjust automatically. Your smaller ones have a width of 800 so I've increased this one to 1040 just to give you an example. Hope it helps.

Steve

[gwoof]

Steve

Thanks for that. However call me picky but I know those had originally been resized down from 1024 x and just wasn't happy with the resulting quality scaling them back up again!!

Glad you enjoyed them - I'll have to pick another subject soon ;D

Ian