T
he thought of an aviation tour in the
United States was a mouth-watering
prospect. So it was that in 1974 I
made my rst sojourn to the US
not long after the end of the Vietnam War.
In those days big piston aircraft were still in
service in signi cant numbers. Organising all
the visits meant writing numerous letters and
in some cases following up with expensive
phone calls. The planning started in late 1973
and by early the next year myself, Mick, John,
Chaz and Colin, considered we had received
enough positive replies to put together a
trip. We focused on California, Arizona and
Nevada with a few other locations elsewhere.
To accomplish this two-week adventure,
we opted to y initially to New York then each
buy a Regional Air Pass to get around, as
well as hiring a car.
The trip started on April 25 and en route
to the airport we called in at RAF Northoltwhere we were greeted by the sight of
USAF Douglas C-118A Liftmaster 53-3225
belonging to the Sacramento Air Materiel
Area (AMA) at McClellan AFB, California.
Our BOAC ight was aboard Boeing 747-
136, G-AWNK, which departed at 1154hrs for
our transatlantic crossing to New York’s John
F Kennedy International Airport. We arrived
in bright sunshine at 1400hrs for our three-
hour layover until our onward ight to San
Francisco. I recorded a remarkable amount of
Boeing 707s, 727s, early derivative 737s and
747s as well as lesser numbers of McDonnell
Douglas DC-8s, DC-9s and DC-10s.
Our ight westward was on United Airlines
DC-10 N1812U. It routed through Denver
where, at the time, were stored 14 United
Boeing 720s and 11 of its DC-8s following their
retirement. Aircraft from other carriers included
Western, Frontier, Continental, Air Midwest,
Braniff International and North Central.Arriving at San Francisco after dark didn’t
dampen our spotting enthusiasm with 50
registrations recorded before we left the
terminal. The trip proper started the next
day, with a 90min tour of Naval Air Station
(NAS) Moffett Field, home to the west coast
Lockheed P-3 Orion units. We recorded 80
Orions of different variants from ten patrol
squadrons, including a rst-generation EP-3A.
Aircraft 152141 was noted uncoded and had
formerly own with the Naval Air Test Center
before being sold to Chile.
Also on our agenda was NASA’s Ames
Research Center where we discovered a
wide variety of unusual types including the
Ryan XV-5B, Bell X-14 and one of the NASA
Lockheed U-2As, N708NA formerly 56-- Surprisingly we were invited to sit in
this aircraft and take as many pictures as we
wanted before it set off on a training sortie.
Next up was NAS Alameda on the edge
UNCOVERING
THE USA
PART 1
Peter R Foster describes his fi rst spotting trip to
the USA in 1974 which unearthed some rare gems.
64 Aviation News incorporating Jets February 2018TALES FROM THE LOGBOOKTALES FROM THE LOGBOOK
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TALES FROM THE LOGBOOK...
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