On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 13:04:34 GMT,
(John S. Shinal) wrote:

(BUFDRVR) wrote:
I'm not sure who Chuckie is, but there are a few civilian owned T-38s.

Chuck Thornton owned one that was assembled from three wrecked
T-38 airframes purchased surplus. He allegedly really torqued some
people off over that since he had tried to buy one several times and
been rebuffed. It was painted like an Agressor from Nellis, in a
blue/white/gray scheme that would be hard to spot in the air.

Hard to imagine enough salvageable from three wrecks to put together a
flyable T-38. The magnesium under body and the honeycomb wing
structure would be hard to repair. The seats and the engines would be
the hardest parts to get.

As for the paint job, if his is the one that's been seen on several TV
commercials, it's done in gloss while the Aggressor T-38s were all
flat. The Nellis T-38 Aggressors came in all colors including the
basic white as well as blues, grays, browns and "lizard."

We got them all at Holloman while I was there. Over the NM desert, the
most effective was the brown.

In '83 we got the entire AT-38 fleet painted in a standard
blue-blue-gray gloss camo. That's still what is used by the 435th
doing the fighter lead-in portion of the SUPT syllabus.

The gossip is that MiG 17s are more of a fun flyer, with fewer
maintenance hours per flight hour, and an easy engine to deal with. I
think spins in the MiG 17 are unrecoverable, though.

Dunno. Never got a -17 flight, but it would be hard to pack more
performance into a little airplane than a T-38. Spins in a T-38 are
unrecoverable as well, but also virtually unattainable. The airplane
will spin, but it is a decidedly unnatural act and AFAIK only been
accomplished in very abusive flight testing at Edwards.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8