USAF Thunderbirds 60th Anniversary

The operational career of the F-111 came to an end on 3 December 2010 at RAAF Amberley, as a crew in an F-111C (serial number A8-125) of the Royal Australian Air Force touched down for the aircraft’s last landing. The RAAF had operated the F-111 since 1973. A8-125 was the first F-111C to land at Amberley that year.

Two months shy of twenty-seven years since it was first flown, the F-117 was retired in ceremonies on 21 April 2008 at Holloman AFB, New Mexico, where it had been operated by the 49th Fighter Wing since 1992, and then on 22 April in Palmdale, California, for the people who had designed and built it at the then-Lockheed facilities there.

Many of the photos in this collection were taken specifically for a special cockpit issue of Code One that was published as the No. 1 issue in 2007.

The fifth generation of fighters, the Lockheed Martin F-22 and F-35, fundamentally changes the concept of operations for combat. A review of the first four generations of fighter aircraft around the world shows why.

The Multi-Axis Thrust Vectoring system allowed the F-16 to maneuver effectively beyond its twenty-five degree angle of attack limit to almost 100 degrees AOA.

Beryl Arthur Erickson was the pilot for the first flights of the B-36 Peacemaker, YB-60, and the B-58 Hustler. He began his career at Consolidated Aircraft in California in 1940 delivering PBY Catalinas to Europe during World War II.

The thirty-sixth NATO deployment to secure air space over the Baltic States began on 1 September 2014 when four F-16 Fighting Falcon fighters of the Portuguese Air Force, or Força Aérea Portuguesa, landed at Šiauliai. The F-16s came from Esquadra 201 Falcoes (Falcons) and Esquadra 301 Jaguares, (Jaguars) at Monte Real AB in Portugal. The deployment ended in January 2015.

Boyd's theories are now used as a yardstick for measuring and comparing the maneuvering capability of all modern fighters. He planted the seeds for the Lightweight Fighter, cultivated those seeds, and helped harvest them in 1972 while playing a major role in defining the requirements that were put into the request for proposal for the Lightweight Fighter. The proposal led directly to the YF-16 and YF-17 technology demonstration prototypes. His influences can be seen in world-class fighters such as the F-15, F-16, and F/A-18.

Joe Bill Dryden was a graduate of the US Air Force Academy, Class of '62. After retiring from the Air Force, Joe Bill became an experimental test pilot for General Dynamics. His experience with the F-16 began when he was selected to represent Tactical Air Command as one of the original members of the YF-16/YF-17 Lightweight Fighter Joint Test Team. He subsequently flew and helped develop various combinations of F-16 airframe, engine, wing, flight control system, and avionics. Joe Bill died on 24 May 1993 when his F-16 crashed in North Central Texas during a company acceptance flight.

Willis Hawkins had many highlights during his nearly fifty-year career with Lockheed, but he considered the C-130 Hercules one of his greatest successes.