Phil Kane wrote:
On 15 Jul 2005 03:14:21 -0700, wrote:

I recall fondly a stunt I saw years ago at Moffett AFB in
California during a show there.

Moffitt (note spelling - everyone gets it wrong)

Well, not *everyone*.

See:

http://www.moffettfieldmuseum.org/index.html


was never an Air Force Base.

Yep, I was mistaken about that. It was used by the AAF during WW2,
but that was before the Air Force existed as a separate branch of
the US military.

In fact the Navy turned the place over to the Army, then got it back.

It was a Naval Air Station (NAS Moffitt Field) until it
was recommissioned as a NASA facility (Moffitt Field Federal
Airport, IIRC) NASA's Ames Research Center and Dryden Flight Test
Facility and others are there and the Navy is gone with the
exception of special flights.

NASA still has their big wind tunned there. An engineering school
classmate of mine worked for them for 30 years, retired, and came
back as a contract employee for another 20......our
taxpayers' money at work.

Yup.

At the south end of the field was a large building which we
affectionateley dubbed "The Blue Cube". It was offically
named
Onizuka Air Force Base after the Challenger disaster.
For a long
time it was the home of the National Reconnaissance Office
(What
office? What cube? What Building?) but they moved the
operation
elsewhere and caused a big layoff at Lockheed which ran it.
I did read/hear that OAFB was decommissioned recently.

--

Thanks for the info, Phil. The above website has a lot of history on
it.

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

73 de Jim, N2EY