11 April 1975: “The only time the five ship fleet of NASA Dryden’s F-104 Starfighters was ever airborne at the same time. Pilots were: F-104N #811-Bill Dana; F-104N #812-Tom McMurtry; F-104A #818-Einar Enevoldson; F-104A #820-Gary Krier; and F-104B #819-Fitz Fulton and Ray Young. Photo taken from T-38 #821 flown by Don Mallick.”
11 April 1975
AviationDryden Flight Research Center, Edwards Air Force Base, Einar K. Enevoldson, Fitzhugh L. Fulton Jr., Gary Krier, Lockheed F-104A Starfighter, Lockheed F-104B Starfighter, Lockheed F-104N Starfighter, NASA 811, NASA 812, NASA 818, NASA 819, NASA 820, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Tom McMurty, William H. DanaBryan Swopes
Was Tom McMurtry at the Air Force Academy a few years before this?
Thomas C. McMurtry was a graduate of University of Notre Dame, 1957, and a U.S. Navy test pilot. He died 3 January 2015 at the age of 79 years.
More on 818 here: https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/lockheed-f-104a-starfighter/nasm_A19761017000
and My God…. even more impressive than the once in a lifetime collection of Starfighters is the collection of pilots and flight engineers flying them and also captured in the photo … you could fill a book, just on them….
I believe 826 was the last government Starfighter to fly. Now a gate guard at NASA Armstrong. The last experiment to fly was a Flight Test Fixture UCLA supersonic jet injector. I was the NASA POC. https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/3.24153
Thank you, Al.
Sean Smith, I was think the same about the pilots. Hall of Famers one and all.
I don’t know anything about Einar Enevoldson. It jumps out at me because I love the name Einar; it was my grandfather’s.
(Just to keep this post airborne— he was a mechanic in the Air Corps during WW11.)
Here’s the Einar E bio from NASA:
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/armstrong/about/biographies/pilots/einar-enevoldson.html