USS Midway At Sunrise
Sea King And The USS Stennis
A Navy Sea King helicopter flying past the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier. The Stennis is a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier.
I photographed this on January 10, 2004 from the deck of the USS Midway as it was being towed to it’s current mooring in San Diego to open as a museum on June 7, 2004.
Just Needs A Quart Of Oil
Just top it off with a quart of oil and good to go! Ok maybe not. Just brought in to the Palm Springs Air Museum yesterday morning. This is a Grumman F9F Panther. The Panther was the U.S. Navy’s first successful carrier based jet aircraft. It was also the aircraft of the Blue Angels from 1949 – 1954. There were 1,382 built and today it is a very rare aircraft. It will go through extensive renovation at the Air Museum and before too will be on display looking like the day it came off the assembly line.
I did some online searching and found what may be a photo (below) of this actual aircraft on board a carrier during the Korean War. It is in the VF-821 Fighter Squadron and may have been on the USS Princeton and the USS Essex. It certainly looks like it was damaged. The photograph below that is an intact Panther on the USS Midway in 1952. I find that photo pretty exciting because I was a photographer onboard the Midway when she was decommissioned and brought into San Diego Harbor where she is today as a Museum.
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