Re: Cumbres & Toltec Official 40th Intern

Gavin, with those tiny wings the landing speed was something like 200mph. With all the bad weather over Germany there was no margin for error with inexperienced pilots. They were crashing all over the place until they started training at Luke AFB in Arizona to get experience flying the plane. (BTW, the F104 you saw in the movie Right Stuff, was one of the German birds). Then they could handle the extra burden of bad weather over Europe.

Tony LeVier who was Lockheed's chief test pilot took up his teenage daughter Toni, and taught her how to fly the plane safely. She was called the "worlds fastest teenager", (not many teenagers get to go mach 2). I am sure it was a publicity gimmick trying to put to rest the "Widowmaker" name the plane was earning.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2010 05:31PM by John Cole.