Antique WWII warplanes
There are hundreds of different aircraft “in flight” to be seen on Google Earth, waaaaay too many to post them all here on Google Sightseeing1. But every now and then there’s a rare sighting that we feel the need to share.
A field in North Carolina features two antique WWII warplanes flying overhead: a Grumman TBF Avenger and a yellow North American T-6 Texan, which you can clearly see has “USAF” written on the right wing.
Of the 9,836 Avengers built, just 42 are still considered air-worthy (including the one we see here!). What’s even more amazing though is that the nearby Hickory Regional airport has two of the same rare aircraft parked on the tarmac!
OK, it’s not really a coincidence, this second image is a different aerial photograph so it’s almost certain that these are the same planes.
Thanks to morgantongis, Delta102 & jtouran at GE, via GEarth Blog
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The excellent all aircraft in flight collection on the Google Earth forum currently features 3,527 placemarks! ↩
And of course the amazing City of Lincoln Lancaster Bomber seen flying over Huntingdon, now sadly gone after an image update.
You would have thought the Google Pixies would have weaved some magic and left the Lancaster bomber in and just updated everything around it.
They are pretty ruthless in that respect arent they?
Does anyone actually use Google Earth for anything more than looking for cool stuff? Updates are always welcome but you would think it would be in Google’s interest to leave cool, random stuff in wouldnt you?
Awesome find here! This is particularly exciting to me, because I work in Hickory and surrounding counties. I have seen these on the ground at the airport. See the Hikcory Aviation Museum website for ground shot photos and check out their latest arrivals, F-27 Fedex cargo plane and F5-E! There are some great photos of the mechanics putting the F5-E together after its arrival.
http://hickoryaviationmuseum.org/index.shtml
The Hickory Airport has a small collection of planes for their aviation museum. Currently, all the planes are at the south corner of the tarmac.
At the time this was taken they were spread out. I also do not see the F-14 Tomcat, not sure exactly when it arrived, but this aerial shot was apparently taken prior to its arrival.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
And for a bonus here is some large type font.
Placemark: Google Maps / Google Earth
Cool! In the 70’s several Avengers were based at the airport in my small hometown in British Columbia during the summer and used for forest fire fighting. They had been converted to drop loads of fire-retardant. I can still remember the sound of them flying low over our house, and we’d know there was a fire somewhere!
They’re not really antique, but you can now spot the planes of the Dutch air force as well! Google Maps blocked all Dutch military objects (due to some old Dutch law, I think), but it turns out Microsoft doesn’t bother with such (or any ;)) laws. If you go east from here, you arrive at Volkel air force base, where Nato supposedly has some nukes lying around. There’s on F-16 taxiing somewhere on the base.