![]() The aircraft, piloted by David "Doc" Nelson, departed Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base at 11:31 a.m. Navy's first stealth fighter, arrived at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md. 6, 2010) The first F-35C Lightning II carrier variant, the U.S. Is the Navy in the process of developing a new fighter to replace the aging F-18 Hornet?.(Because of the popularity of the designation, the USAF Museum's Internet page lists a "Lockheed F-19 CSIRS," but its link connects the F-117A.). Yet, much like with those little green men they scraped off the Roswell landscape, folklore and wishful thinking took hold, and there came many reports from "usually reliable sources" who saw the real Testors F-19 flying around in remote desert regions usually off-limits to reliable sources. There was so much speculation that the USAF, with uncommon humor, even roped off a vacant plot at the 1988 Edwards AFB Air Show with a sign identifying the "F-19 Flying Frisbee." But when the much-heralded stealth fighter was designated F-117A and was anything but smooth, the F-19 idea lost most of its lustre, and folks generally accepted that the designation had been purposely skipped when F-20 showed up. Stealth technology at the time was one of our military's worst-kept secrets, and it was assumed that F-19 had been reserved for that department. However, somebody had pulled a plug in the Pentagon. By May 1986 their kit was on hobby shop shelves and nearly 700,000 were sold in 18 months. Striving to keep pace with technology, Testors hit the market with an F-19 kit based on eyewitness reports from "usually reliable sources," research, gut level guesswork, and patterned it after the smooth-surfaced Lockheed SR-71. It is officially undocumented, but generally assumed that the F-19 designation was skipped in 1982 in order to honor the Northrop F-20 (qv) with an even "next-generation" number. My father once was on theį-19 - No such animal. In 1983 or so Tom Clancy wrote "Red Storm Rising". ![]() ![]() ![]() I have a question that might be unable to be answered, but its been in my mind for years. ![]()
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