National Training Center Aviation Company, April 1999

[alhenderson]

Fort Irwin, in California's Mojave desert is home to the US Army's National Training Center. Aviation support for the training activities that go on there was (and still is?) provided by the NTC Aviation Company based at Barstow-Daggett airfield. On our SW USA tour in April 1999 we had a base visit arranged here, looks like we were given free reign to photograph the various helicopters that were out, including some rather tasty Hueys!

A number of the UH-1s were painted in an aggressor scheme with Soviet style side numbers, much like the fighters at Nellis. Here 73-21858 basks in the Californian sun:

Aggressor Huey by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

As well as the colour scheme, some of the UH-1s had a nose job, making them look more like the Hinds they were supposed to represent. 74-22459 was one such machine. I have this down as a JUH-1H although I don't think the 'J' designation was due to the change in nose profile... Maybe she was a test machine of some sort in an earlier life?

HindSight by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

73-21785/06 was another "HueyHind". If you squint really hard, you can see a Hind... honest...

73-21785 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

71-20057 was a much more traditional "Chocolate Mouse":

71-20057 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

At least 69-15325 had a splash of colour, even if it was only the red cross markings!

Barstow UH-1 325 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

Looks like the medevac Hueys were in the midst of being replaced:

Barstow UH-60 453 by Alistair Henderson, on Flickr

I've struggled with scanning a lot of my slides from this trip, but these ones have been pretty good. Think they were on Kodak film rather than Jessops which may have helped.

Al.

[paddyboy]

Now they're a bit different, All

Thanks for posting

Paddyboy

[The Phantom]

Great Huey action

Interesting to see those aggressors!

Great info you put with the post as well