...Almost literally. My dad joined the US Navy in 1950, when he was 17, just old enough to get in with a parent's signature. This was the 1950s Navy and he hadn't a clue what he'd wind up doing, they made him an "ordie," ordnance man and sent him to the Korean coast to load bombs and rockets on AD Skyraiders on a carrier deck. He once told me one of the Skyraiders returned from a strike with three hung 500lb bombs and had a hard landing. The bombs promptly tore loose and went rolling down the deck and my dad and a dozen or so other sailors were sent after them to roll them off the fantail.
Later, the Navy assigned him to a P4M-1Q Mercator squadron at Port Lyautey Morocco (there's one for my list, the elusive Nostalgic Models P4M kit.) All dad had to do was clean and load the turreted 20mm guns on the plane until the squadron commander said he couldn't have them sitting around all day with nothing to do, so since the guns were radar directed, he sent dad and his buddies to the Navy's avionics school. Dad said they had 100 sailors vying for 50 avionics slots, about a third flunked out and, when it came down to the wire, the rest with the poorest test scores were let go.
Dad went on from there to NAS Sanford Florida where he worked the Navy's biggest avionics headache of the day, the AJ-2 Savage and where he met my mom and they married. Soon my brother Mike came along and about two years later I was due to show up. At the point, the Navy sent my dad to China Lake and I was born shortly after on March the 8th, 1957. The Douglas F3D in the photo was long in the tooth in '57, but they hung on at China Lake because there was plenty of room for interesting modifications and my dad was there for just that. He put the world's first terrain following radar system on one along with three civilians. It wasn't very sophisticated, dad said they used a piece of 2x4 and some nails for a circuit board. When time came to test the system, they asked the civilians if they wanted to go and they all said no, so dad was "voluntold." He said it was okay on the way out, his pilot chose some rocky peaks and the radar was set to keep a 500ft altitude above them, there was no control connection, my dad kept his head in the radar scope and the pilot followed his instruction. The way back was different, the pilot wanted to see if he could fly by the radar and dad had to sit back and let the pilot lean over almost into his lap so he could see the radar scope while going on rollercoaster ride at 400mph, and 500ft with rugged mountain peaks close enough to touch.
For years every project at China Lake was classified, but with the fall of the Soviet Union, they went public. Dad told me there was only one Skynight at China Lake so 744 shown in the picture from my research had to be it.
Also a search for the Sword F3D turned up two kits in Japan and the owners want upward of $100 for them, shipping included. So I opted for the nearly as impossible to find Matchbox kits, which were pricey enough themselves at nearly $40 apiece. Thankfully, Omar the trench digger had moved on to other employment by the time Matchbox cut the molds and the panel lines are much more petite.
Anyway, two nearly complete projects to finish and this one's next...
1 attached image. Click to enlarge.
