For the unfamiliar, Top Gun: Maverick is set 30 years after the original film. Maverick is still a naval aviator, highly decorated, but with an uncanny ability to get into just enough trouble to keep from getting promoted out of the cockpit. He is the test pilot for the hypersonic Darkstar scramjet. We’re never told explicitly what Darkstar’s mission is, but it is noted that the government wants to pull the funding for the project in part because it hasn’t yet reached the contract spec of Mach 10 (7672.691 mph).

Maverick suits up for a test flight. He is cautioned to obey the parameters of it and not to exceed Mach 9 (6,905.42 mph). But this is Maverick we’re talking about. He pushes the aircraft to Mach 10, destroying it in the process. Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, Maverick’s contemporary who has advanced in rank, saves his friend’s career by sending him to the Top Gun school at NAS North Island, where he is charged with training the next generation of naval fighter pilots while battling his inner demons—one of the nuggets is the son of his backseater, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, who was killed in the first movie.

There is a lot of fancy flying in the movie, and it has generated hours of debate in FBOs and online from pilots and aviation enthusiasts who wonder if Darkstar is real and not the Queen Mother of a scale model movie prop.

(Reality check: The closest a piloted aircraft has come to Mach 10 is the SR-71 Blackbird designed by Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson during the Cold War that reached Mach 3.3 or 2,531.988 mph.)

According to Fred Bell, vice chairman of the Palm Spring Air Museum, Darkstar represents the sixth generation of aviation stealth technology. The conceptual design for it—not to be confused with a drone project of the same name—was created by Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs.

• READ MORE: Taking a Transcontinental Flight in the Hypersonic Darkstar, Virtually

Lockheed Martin Meets Hollywood

In 2017 Hollywood producers who wanted a hypersonic design for the movie approached Lockheed Martin asking for a conceptual design—could anything go that fast? They knew aviators and other “rivet counters” (the polite term for the people who pick apart aviation movies as though their parentage has been insulted) would be unmerciful in their criticism unless some effort was made to at least embrace the laws of physics and reality.

The Lockheed Martin designers came up with an aircraft that looks very much like a cross between two other of its models: the SR-71 Blackbird—SR stands for Strategic Reconnaissance—the now retired, super-fast design; and the Lockheed Martin F-35, also known as “the world’s most advanced fighter jet.”

In the movie, Darkstar has some dramatic and moving scenes. For example, on the morning of the test flight the camera pans the aircraft in sort of a walk-around and shows a skunk image on the tail. The skunk is a trademarked by Lockheed Martin ADP, which is also known as Skunk Works, because in the 1930s the company was located in Southern California next to a plastics plant that gave off a horrible stench. Super-secret aircraft were developed there, and the term “skunk works” remains synonymous with a place where such technology is developed.

Secrecy is still a big deal, even with movie airplanes. The Darkstar designers are identified only by their first names: Jim, Jason, Lucio, and Becky. According to information provided by Lockheed Martin, when the movie premiered, Jim is credited with the conceptual design. Jason and Lucio handled the task of turning the conceptual designs into a realistic aircraft model with a working cockpit. Becky, a mechanical engineer, worked with the movie team to build the Darkstar vehicle, including the functional cockpit, and kept the model structurally sound during the filming process.

This is no scale model, noted Bell.

“It measures 40-feet wide by 70-feet long,” Bell said. “It is a dagger shaped aircraft with a tremendous amount of detail. On the landing gear the serial number of the tires are stamped on the wheels. The cockpit has an articulating canopy that opens and inside you will see a Lockheed Martin Skunk Works control stick.”

The aircraft even has panel covers that read, “REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT,” and on the tail there is the famous skunk standing confidently on its hind legs with his front paws folded on its chest. 

Darkstar belongs to Lockheed Martin. According to Bell, the company arranged to have the aircraft trucked to the museum and then its technicians and those of the museum reassembled it. When the aircraft was fully together, it was celebrated with a dual water cannon salute. It will be on display near other Lockheed Martin aircraft.

According to a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin, there are no plans to take Darkstar on the road for a tour as the size and complexity of moving it makes that untenable. If you want to see the aircraft up close, make the trip to Palm Springs to see the Darkstar Rising Experience. This includes a comprehensive design-to-cockpit tour, and talks from guest speakers as the museum explores the developments in stealth technology.

“We will have people talking about how the aircraft was created and how it was used in the movie, and will talk about stealth technology in general—where it came from and where it is going,” Bell said. “It’s no longer enough to be fast.”

Details, including ticket prices, can be found here.

The schedule is as follows:

February 24: The making of Darkstar

March 1: Behind the scenes: Darkstar comes to life, making movie magic

March 20: The next generation of stealth

March 27: The next generation of hypersonic aircraft

All viewings will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. PST.

The post Movie Star Airplane Appears in Palm Springs Aviation Museum appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Moffett Field Museum, Mountain View, California

Some airports are easy to miss when you drive by them—all you see is a flat area, some industrial buildings and a few aircraft. Moffett Federal Airfield (KNUQ) in Mountain View, California, is not one of them. It’s the home of Hangar One, one of the largest free-standing buildings in the world. The dome-topped hangar dominates the landscape of the Silicon Valley.

Built in 1933 to house the USS Macon, one of the navy’s dirigibles, the hangar measures 1,133 feet long by 308 feet wide by 198 feet high. Today the hangar is part of Ames Research Center and the home of the Moffett Field Historical Society Museum.

Speaking of History…

The construction on what was to be Airbase Sunnyvale began in 1931. The facility stood on 1,000 acres of reclaimed farmland between San Jose and San Francisco. Part of it was in the town of Sunnyvale, part of it in Mountain View.

Worried the name Mountain View would conjure up mental images of navy dirigibles crashing in high terrain, the navy opted to use Sunnyvale in the name.

Naval Air Station Sunnyvale was commissioned on April 12, 1933, but the name only lasted until September, when it was changed to NAS Moffett Field in honor of Rear Admiral William A. Moffett, the man behind the navy’s lighter-than-air program. Moffett was killed on April 4, 1933, in the crash of the dirigible USS Akron. The Akron, launched in 1931, had been designed to act as a flying aircraft carrier. The helium-filled ship was destroyed in a thunderstorm off the coast of New Jersey, taking with it 73 of the 76 souls on board.

Today, Moffett is a private airfield with an emphasis on new technology and research. Prior permission is required to land there—so it’s pretty much off limits to most pilots. However, you can access the base by car with relative ease and visit the museum.

The Curator’s View: F-8U-1 Crusader

Jeff Wasel is the executive director of the Moffett Field Historical Society Museum. According to Wasel, the museum’s artifacts are organized by era, starting with the 1930s all the way up through the Cold War and the space race.

Wasel oversees the curation, restoration, and preservation of the collection of aircraft, cockpit sections, and other major artifacts which he describes as “an unusual mix of one-off and historically significant aircraft.” His favorite is the Chance-Vought F-8U-1 (F-8A) Crusader cockpit section.

“The F-8 represents the ultimate in pure, pre-missile era U.S. Navy fighter capability, bridging the gap between the first generation of underpowered carrier-based jets of the early to mid-1950s, and the later arrival of the high performance, missile-centric F-4 Phantom II on carriers in the early 1960’s,” he explains.

“Nicknamed ‘the Gator’ for danger posed by its capacious under-nose, jet-air intake—as well as the ‘ensign eliminator’ for its unforgiving nature, especially in carrier landings—the Crusader was the hotrod of its day, and still remains legendary for its performance over the skies of North Vietnam, as ‘the last Gunfighter.’ This sobriquet is something of a misnomer though, as her four Colt Mk-12 20 MM cannons had an unfortunate tendency to jam under high G-loads, making them grossly unreliable in a tight gunfight. As a result, the F-8’s impressive 7-to-1 kill ratio was achieved primarily using early models of the AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missile. Crusaders just look mean, nasty, and very purposeful, and are an icon of USN carrier aviation.”

The museum’s cockpit section comes from an early production F-8U-1, BuNo. 145399, that according to Wasel, first flew from NAS Moffett Field with “The Gunfighters” of Fleet Replacement Squadron VF-124, and later saw active service as the mount of Capt. Gordon Hodgson, USN, Commander, Carrier Air Wing 19, (CVW-19) on the USS Bon Homme Richard off North Vietnam on “Yankee Station”, and who also served as CO of VF-191, “Satan’s Kittens.”

The aircraft was in service from 1958 to 1969 and was acquired by the museum in February of 2014.

The Visitor’s Favorite: Lockheed U-2C

As far as the favorite of museum visitors, Wasel says it is the former Central Intelligence Agency -USAF-NASA Lockheed U-2C spyplane.

“The Museum’s U-2 was delivered as an ‘A’ to the CIA’s Groom Lake Test Facility, Groom Lake NV, on March 5, 1956, under contract SP-1913. After a variety of short test deployments, she was transferred to the Strategic Air Command, (SAC), but was retained by Lockheed for testing through January 1959.” says Wasel.

Most people know the U-2 as the CIA aircraft American pilot Francis Gary Powers was flying when he was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over what was then the Soviet Union.

“After the Power’s shoot down over Russia on May 1, 1960, the CIA began research into using USN carriers as a means to deploy U-2s,” says Wasel. “As a result, she was returned to the CIA in 1963 for conversion to a U-2G variant, where a carrier arresting hook and other modifications were added. Only 2 airframes were converted to ‘Gs’, making this an extremely rare U-2 variant.”

According to Wasel, the U-2G successfully tested the carrier basing concept of the USS Ranger, then placed into flyable storage in 1969. In 1971 the aircraft was transferred to NASA and returned to U-2C configuration, then used for testing instrumentation on early Lansat Earth-observing satellites.

“The program was so successful that she and other U-2Cs were used as earth observation platforms in their own right,” says Wasel. “She was finally retired from NASA operations at Ames Research Center in August 1987 and transferred to Moffett Field Historical Society Museum in 2015.”

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