P-3 Orion

Moffett Hanger 1 Reborn

The last time I sketched Hanger 1 at Moffett Field near Sunnyvale, the side panels had been removed leaving the skeletal supports. The massive hangar was in the process of being restored.

The hangar was built in 1933 to house the dirigible USS Macon. It covers eight acres of floor space. It is one of the largest freestanding structures in the world.

The hangar size comparison with the RMS Titanic at the Moffett Field Museum.

After Moffett was decommissioned as a Naval Airbase, the hangar sat unused. Eventually Google agreed to restore the hanger to the tune of $33 million. This would be my first time sketching the hanger reborn.

To enter the former Naval base you have to show an id at the front gate. This morning it was manned by four policemen. I was a little early for the opening of the Moffett Field Museum but I figured I would get a sketch in of Hangar 1 with the P-3 Orion in the foreground.

The newly restored Hangar 1 and the aircraft of my youth: the P-3 Orion.

I picked a spot in the shade and set up my sketching chair. I planned to sketch and paint the scene before me.

Hanger 1 and the distinctive MAD boom or stinger tail of the P-3A.

For this sketch I first penciled in the shapes in my panoramic sketchbook and then laid in washes. When the washes dried, I tied the scene together with pen work.

Around this time I noticed some movement behind me over my right shoulder. I turned to see a young police officer approaching me.

Oh no, here we go!

He asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was drawing the refurbished hangar and the P-3. He said he saw me photographing the airplane and (in his head), I might be photographing classified equipment on a military plane (that wasn’t there) on the tarmac.

The young officer was soon joined by three other squad cars. This was clearly the most exciting thing that has happened all week!

At this point a more senior officer took over the questioning. Perhaps to see if I had any dangerous weapons about me like a mechanical pencil or a soft eraser.

I told him that I was drawing the hangar and the Orion (at which point he complemented my work) and that I grew up in Sunnyvale and the P-3 was the plane that flew past my bedroom window. With this explanation and the evidence of my field sketch, I think he realized I was not a threat to National Security and perhaps his young officer had overreacted a bit.

The officers retreated to their vehicles and talked shop as if they were reluctant to leave me to my sketch. They eventually left, I finish my sketch, and then headed over to the museum.

This is one massive building. The structure is so large it generates its own weather system inside usually in the form of fog.

When I visited the museum I related my encounter with the police to a docent who was retired Navy and was also very opinionated. He said their behavior was chicken sh*t and that was one reason he left the Navy.

I talked to another docent at the museum about what Google planned to do with the new and improved hangar and no one seems to know. Mysterious.

Pima Air & Space Museum Part 2

In this post I included a few of my favorite aircraft. This time they were not the giants such as the Boeing 747 or the B-52.

They were the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom II and the Lockheed P-3 Orion.

The F-4 is only aircraft flown by both the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds. One of the museum’s F-4s is painted in the Thunderbird red, white, and blue livery and is No. 7.

This P-3 looks like it just came from the Boneyard and is now in the museum’s maintenance area waiting restoration work.

I have sketched and written about the Hunter: P-3 Orion. This was the airplane of my youth and I knew it by site and sound.

I was glad that the museum had a few of these wonderful aircrafts on display.

I found a bit of shade a sketch two versions of the Orion: the EP-3E Aries II and the P-3 awaiting restoration. I rendered the planes in a continuous-line sketch (featured sketch).

The Airplane Boneyard

High on my Tucson sketch list was the Airplane Boneyard east of downtown.

From the Pima Air & Space Museum’s website I learned that tours of the Boneyard had been discontinued since Covid (it is an active military base) and the only way to view the aircraft was from perimeter roads.

The Boneyard at Tucson is part of Davis–Monthan Air Force Base and contains over 4,400 aircraft on 2,600 acres. They use these retired aircraft for parts and also restore some back to service. This is the perfect spot for aircraft in the desert climate because the dry atmosphere does not induce rust or corrosion.

Using Google Maps I thought East Escalante Road would be a good place to start. I chose this road for two reasons: it ran parallel to the perimeter fence and it was close to one of my favorite airplanes: the Lockheed P-3 Orion.

This was the four turbo prop submarine hunter that was stationed at Moffat Field in my hometown of Sunnyvale, California. The plane that passed my bedroom window on final approach to the Naval Base. I can still hear the mighty roar of the turbo prop engines. The soundtrack of my childhood.

Apparently E. Escalante is one of those long Tucson streets and Google Maps led me not too close to the Boneyard. I closed Google Maps and found the location with instinct, cunning, and eyes.

After a short search I found the street and the location. I pulled off on a side street near a backyard with two very protective dogs in the yard. Now it was time to find a good sketching location.

P-3s use the same engines as the C-130 but the props of the Orion are rounded.

Escalante was a busy street even at 7:45 in the morning. I crossed the road like a roadrunner and walked along a parallel bike path to a picnic shelter.

The bike path and fence with more P-3s than I have ever seen in one place.

I sat on a table and started my sketch. There was a lot going on in front of me! I chose to not include the chain link perimeter fence in front of me.

In the foreground are rows and rows of P-3s all parked with military precision with purple peaks in the background. This is the most P-3s I’ve ever seen in one location and I wondered if any of them were stationed at Moffett. The answer: very probable.

Rows and rows of Lockheed’s C-130s.

I returned to a different part of the Boneyard a few days later on my way to Saguaro National Park. This time the road that paralleled the Boneyard was East Irvington Road.

There are a lot of P-3s here. The plane closest is actually an EP-3 Aries II.

At this location, the aircraft were parked parallel to the fence and the tails receded into the distance towards the mountains in the horizon. This would be good for a sketch. The two types of aircraft near the fence were the Lockheed C-130 and P-3. Both of these turboprop planes had long years of service both in the United States and around the world. These planes are still flown today.

Now some of these planes are just expensive pigeon perches.

For this sketch I sketched across the gutter with a continuous-line sketch. And on this spread I did sketch in the fence.

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P-3 Orion: The Submarine Hunter

There was one airplane that loomed larger than others in my childhood: the Lockheed P-3 Orion, the submarine hunter. I loved this plane more than the supersonic jets like the F-4 Phantom or the F-14 Tomcat.

The four turboprop patrol plane would pass by my bedroom window on it’s final approach the Navy Base, Moffett Field. The roar of the four props where as recognizable to me as the call of the scrub-jays. I could identify the P-3 in flight as readily as a soaring turkey vulture.

I wanted to make another sketch of my past and bolstered by my sketching experience at the Castle Air Museum, I wanted to find an example of a P-3 on static display because sketching large unmoving objects makes sketching a bit easier. Much easier.

After doing a little research and reconnoissance through Google Earth, I found my subject near the control tower for what is now known as Moffett Federal Airfield. It was a P-3 Alpha or P-3A for short. Now it was time to sketch it.

Parts of the former Naval base are now open to the public so on a Saturday morning, Grasshopper and I ventured forth with our sketching bags to put the P-3 Orion into our sketchbooks.

While we were at Moffett we also visited the excellent Moffett Field Historical Society Museum which covers all the stages of this former base, from the USS Macon to NASA.

A P-3 flight simulator in the parking lot of the Moffett Field Historical Society Museum.

After visiting the museum we walked south, past the enormous Hangar 1, to the patrol plane, set up our sketching chairs and began to sketch.

The Lockheed P-3 Orion was an extremely successful marine patrol airplane which made it’s way upon the world’s stage in October 1962 as it buzzed two ships bound for Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was designed to be used for marine patrol, reconnaissance, and anti-submarine warfare. The P-3 joins the list of aircraft which includes: Boeing’s B-52 and KC-135, and Lockheed’s C-130 and U-2 which have been in service for over 50 years.

Moffett Field was home to squadrons of P-3s which patrolled the Pacific Coast, on the look out for Russian submarines. In honor of this workhorse, one P-3 was put on public display. This was the plane now sat in front of me as I began to sketch.

The airplane before me was a P-3A BuNo. 150509. It had a long career serving as a training aircraft and served in many squadrons. She flew 9,914 flying hours and was retired after a 29 year career, where she was the last Alpha in service. This is much more efficient and economical than the Navy’s dirigibles or blimps.

I did three sketches of the P-3A. One head on and two detail sketches of the front and tail of the plane. The distinctive “stinger” tail of the the P-3 houses the Magnetic Anomaly Detection (MAD) boom which detects submarines under the water.