Korean War Hellcats & Avengers

World War II veterans in the Jet Age. When these photos were taken on 23 May 1953, Hellcats and Avengers were starting to show their age but were still providing a valuable service in the training of fighter pilots (Hellcats) and anti-submarine aircrews (Avengers). The aircraft seen here are from Naval Auxiliary Air Station (NAAS) Kingsville, Texas. That base, shuttered since WWII, had been recommissioned due to the outbreak of the Korean War. The aircraft were assigned to Air Training Unit (ATU) 100 and ATU-400, respectively.

Griffith Park, Wednesday, June 19, 1935

Los Angeles’ Griffith Park Aerodrome/Airport/Field, home to the 115th Observation Squadron, California National Guard, was one of countless airfields that dotted the area in the 1920s & 30s (note Glendale Airport in the upper right of the photo). As a military airfield, Griffith Park was host to a variety of different aircraft, such as the ones seen in these photos, Douglas Y10-35/Y1B-7s. Only a dozen of these planes were built, and most of them are seen here, parked along the runway’s edge. The aircraft are visitors from the 88th Observation Squadron, Brooks Field, Texas, the occasion is the “1st Wing Concentration”, an Air Corps exercise that involved numerous airplanes and airfields assigned to that Wing. A close inspection of Glendale Airport in photo #1 shows that they, too, have a line-up of Air Corps planes.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck the next day, June 20th.  On that Thursday, a Y10-35 lost a right engine on takeoff and slewed toward the line of tents seen in the photo. Soldiers in the onrushing plane’s path scattered to safety, but at 70 MPH, the aircraft crashed through a fence and struck a parked car, killing three people. The victims, Daniel Krauss, his wife Freda, and two-year-old daughter Donna, had simply stopped by to watch the goings-on at the airfield. A four-year-old son survived, he being with relatives in Washington State. Congress later approved a bill that provided a princely $60 a month for that orphan’s upbringing.

The death of this family no doubt served to heighten ongoing concerns over Griffith Park Airport location, namely because it was built on the edge of, well, an actual park. The kind with green trees, nature paths, a zoo, etc. The field closed around the outset of World War II; today, it is buried under acres of freeway.

F-15 Reporter

The photo-snapping derivative of Northrop’s much-vaunted P-61 Blackwidow, the F-15A Reporter was dealt by fate an unfavorable hand and did not enjoy the fame of its darker-skinned older relation. First flown in late 1945, with deliveries commencing the following year, the F-15 looked promising, but with the war over and defense spending curtailed, the contract was sharply slashed. Only 36 planes were built. Some were allocated for test purposes, and of the remainder, there was scarcely enough to equip one squadron – the 8th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron (PRS) of Johnson Air Base, Japan – seen here in the featured photos. The squadron received their F-15s in 1947 and flew them for two years before transferring the surviving aircraft to the 82nd Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (also at Johnson Air Base), whereupon they were quickly retired.

When, in 1948, the USAF redesignated reconnaissance planes from “F” to “R” (the “F” was needed, of course, to replace the “P” in the fighter world), the F-15 was renamed the RF-61C, thus linking it closer to its forebear, the P-61 (now F-61) Blackwidow. That being said, the designation on the data block below the cockpit in these photos identifies the planes as the “F-15A”. Either the images were taken before the name change, or – this is quite possible given the narrow timeline of service for the aircraft in question – the designation painted on the planes was never changed before they were retired.