mcdonnell | Blind Bat News

Eagles like to nest at the top of trees. 14AUG1986.

Rome Air Development Center-Newport Measurement Facility (New York), aka USAF Super Lab, aka Newport Research Site-Griffiss Institute, aka Griffiss Air Force Base.

A pole dancing F-15 Eagle? Researching the tail number I came across info that says it is an F-15A (72-0113). It is mounted upside down on a pedestal at the Rome Air Development Center’s (aka USAF Super Lab) Newport, New York, test site. A radar warning system pod mounted on the fuselage is being compared to the onboard radar warning system, 06OCT1988.

I’ve read the official 1991 “in-house report” on Super Lab activities and it made no mention of the pole dancing F-15A, it talks about the late 1970s pole dancing F-111, and middle 1980s F-16 (which took place at about the same time as the F-15 testing).

Information that was issued with the publicly released photos incorrectly says this Eagle is a F-15C!

Photo via Rome Air Development Center.

F-15A 72-0113 was one of the first production Eagles. Interestingly it was quickly retired, after only a few years of testing over Edwards Air Force Base in California, to The Bone Yard (Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona) in 1977. Then, in 2005 it was reported as being “preserved on a pole” in Newport, New York!

Photo via ‘USAF Super Lab’.

Supposedly, F-15A tail number 72-0113 was spotted still hanging around the USAF Super Lab, in 2016. Unfortunately, Newport Research Site-Griffiss Institute’s website doesn’t give any information about the F-15.

U.S. Air Force photo, 24SEP1979.

Photographic evidence shows that #72-0113 was delivered to the Rome Air Development Center in September 1979.

An F-15 Eagle pole dances while a YA-10 waits its turn.

The elaborate ‘antenna test site’ use several different height, 3-axis position, towers. The site tests the effects of radar, electronic jamming and the effectiveness of experimental electronic countermeasures.

A July 1986 photo showing 72-0113 on top of the Irish Hill tower. The info that came with the photo incorrectly states that it is in Rhode Island!

Photo via ‘USAF Super Lab’.

The aircraft that have been tower mounted, so far, are the YA-10, AC-130, F-4, F-16, F-15, F-18, F-22, F-35, MH 60 SEAHAWK and sections of the B-1B, EC-135 Snoopy, and others.

Photo via Rome Air Development Center.

They even mounted a HMMWV on a pole.

Cold War & Beyond: F-15 EAGLE NOW 50 YEARS OLD

In April 2012, I published a series of pics of the F-101B Voodoo ‘gate guard’ at Pocatello Airport, Idaho. That was before it underwent renovation, when it was surrounded by a fence, faded and dirty.

Before you go on to look at the pics, I was allowed to see a secret room in the main airport building where a very nice 1/48 scale Monogram model diorama of the very same F-101B was gathering dust. The diorama showed tail code AF-90 PO-417 on the flightline in Germany during the Cold War. Today’s gate guard is painted to match that diorama except it doesn’t have the Native American chief in his warbonnet painted on the nose of the aircraft, near the cockpit. There was a small plaque on the diorama explaining the aircraft history, but I didn’t get much time to read it. I asked if I could get my camera and take a pic of it, but was told I shouldn’t even be in the ‘room’. So, supposedly PO-417 was an actual F-101B, yet a quick internet search revealed no such thing (apparently ‘PO’ isn’t a real USAF tail code).

To update this story, I was recently ‘gifted’ a little red book called The First Fifty Years: Michaud Flats, U.S. Army Base, Pocatello Regional Airport. It explains the Pocatello Voodoo was originally slated to be burned up as a fire trainer for the Utah Air National Guard. It was one of two such planes that were already fully dismantled, the Utah Guard decided it wasn’t worth the effort to put them back together just to set them on fire. Around 1988, Idaho Senator Jim McClure used his pull to get one of the dismembered Voodoo’s to the Pocatello Airport. Funding for the project came from several donors including the J.R. Simplot Company (which at that time had its corporate HQ in Pocatello, along the border with Chubbuck), and the actual rebuilding of the plane was done by Idaho State University (ISU) Aviation Mechanics School (still located at the airport today). It was the ISU students who decided on the paint scheme, and created the fake afterburners as the real afterburners were missing.

The 238 paged, hardcover book was published in 1993, it’s available directly from the Pocatello Airport (208) 234-6154. I was also told the Idaho Unlimited gift shop carried the book, but it didn’t show up when I searched their website.

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