Aircraft that never lived up to their promise

"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message nk.net...
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message
om...

Really? I'd take a gander at a map of US Bomarc sites if I were you,
unless you consider places like Newport News, VA "near the Canadian
border".


Langley AFB, to be a bit more accurate. Other sites planned "near the
Canadian border" but never completed were Charleston AFB, SC, and Vandenberg
and Travis AFBs in CA.


No, that would actually be more *inaccurate* in terms of location. The
Bomarc unit in question was technically assigned to Langley, IIRC, but
it most definitely was not located at that location (my Dad spent
about thirty years working at Langley on the NASA side of the house).
It was located between Jefferson Avenue (Rt 143) and I-64, just north
of Rt 17-- part of it was later taken over by the city as the home for
its school bus maintenance and operations (ISTR seeing the old alert
status board still standing by the entrance when the busses moved in).
I spent many an hour tromping through the woods behind the bunkers
hunting squirrels and sitting on a deer stand, and it was one of the
few places where us suburbanites could go and do some target shooting
(interesting exchange with the local Politzei occured once during that
activity). Those bunkers are now part of the Oyster Point business
park, IIRC; before the park developers decided that they could be an
amenity (made nice storage buildings), my old employer and I did a
survey of them to determine the feasibility of performing demolition
with explosives to remove them. FYI, just up the road another mile or
two was another Cold War relic--the Nike Hercules complex which was
located at (what was then) Patrick Henry Airport (it later picked up
an "I" in the designation after a couple of charter flights to Mexico
flew out of it--sort of a joke at the time), now known as Newport
News-Williamsburg Regional Airport IIRC. Pat Henry had another
interesting historical sidenote affiliated with it--I can recall
walking through old barracks buildings which were still standing in
the early seventies that had housed German POW's during WWII.

Brooks