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by chymron » Fri Nov 22, 2019 2:59 pm
In response to the comment “if only these places still existed like that today” two of us who were with Kevin on the 1975 trip also did the March 2017 China Lake Open Day and what a different story! We logged over 150 US military at the 1975 show and just over half that in 2017 (ok, security was not quite as strict in days of yore).
What was so different was the sheer variety and number of types back then. These days of course we have a predominance of multirole aircraft, so in 2017 it was wall-to-wall Hornets/Growlers (yup, I do acknowledge that you will not have much chance of seeing VX-9 or VX-31 birds anywhere else) compared to 1975 which offered an amazing array of A-4s, A-6s, A-7s, B-47s, RF-84s, F-86s, QT-33s, F-9s, F-80s, F-89s to name but a few, both at the show itself, hangars and the various ranges if you were prepared for the desert hike with plenty of water and sunblock!
By the way in answer to one or two of the other questions posted yes indeed we ended up logging 15 B-29s in total, most of which were in Area R Explosives Test Facility along with the F-89s which were primarily Iowa and Oregon ANG.