Word: f-86s
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...Force gave me a fleet of mothballed F-86s to keep my mouth shut...
...those days," recalls an ADC officer, "we were begging and borrowing whatever we could." Except for a few F-86s, the ADC had no interceptors or all-weather fighters. Its radar system included many "lash-up" sites, so called because the radar was literally lashed to the tops of telephone poles. Where there were gaps in the radar coverage, a Ground Observer Corps of housewives and farmers, gas station attendants and even commuters stood ready to phone in aircraft sightings...
Radar 9 to 5. The speediest operational craft in the Australian air force are ten-year-old, subsonic F-86s, which are only slightly faster than modern jet airliners. The air force is even short of grease monkeys, must farm out repairs to private mechanics. Australia's combat fleet consists of 14 antiquated vessels-the aircraft carrier Melbourne, three destroyers (there were four until the Melbourne accidentally sliced one in half last February), and a handful of frigates and minesweepers. The northern port of Darwin is garrisoned by only 150 troops; its coastal guns have been dismantled and sold...
With that background, Cooper could not resist the temptation to trade his college R.O.T.C. commission for an Air Force lieutenant's bar in 1949. He flew F-84s and F-86s with a fighter-bomber group in Munich for four years, earned an aeronautical engineering degree at Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, qualified for the rugged test-pilot duty at the pioneering Edwards Air Force Base in California-home of the world's highest, fastest jet, the X-15. A few years before his selection as an astronaut, Cooper took a friendly flight with another...
Late in the war, Glenn got a chance to hunt Russian-built MIG-158 when he was assigned to fly Air Force F-86s up along the Yalu. Characteristically, Glenn was well prepared for the switch to F-86s; back in the States he had taken leave to learn how to fly the hot jet. In his plane, which was named "The MIG-Mad Marine," Glenn got three MIGs in nine days. "Funny how the bullets sparkle when they hit a plane," he wrote home after one victory. "Just light up like little lights every time a bullet hits. Really...