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August 26, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Don Robinson, a former crew chief on the NF-104 56-0756 has graciously shared with our project some images and information to add to our collection of archives about the program our airframe was part of. We are grateful to Don for contributing to this collection. Below is his information he's shared with us. Our airframe - 56-0763 - was slated to become an NF-104, but due to problems encountered during testing, it never got its rocket at the base of the tail and became a chase plane instead.

The first picture is two pictures put together to make a panorama. It was a ground test of the ar-2 booster. There was a sticking valve in the mixer for hydrogen peroxide and the jp-4 and liquid oxygen mixing chamber just in front of the silver screen pack - silver screen was used as a catalyst to ignite the rocket - the test went well. However, two weeks later the AR-2 exploded in the mix chamber from a possible leak through the case into the afterburner of the J-79-17 engine. The result was the rocket separated at its mount point and also blew off the bottom hinge point for the rudder. The rudder rotated into the bottom of the horizontal stab, ripping one side in half off the plane. All this happened at mach 2 and a 70 degree nose up attitude. The pilot was able to do a couple of aileron rolls and a stall to be able to line it back up with the 15.000 ft main runway. That was the end of the NF-104 program. Don was the last USAF crew chief for this plane on the last flight for the test school and for the NF training program.

The left picture above is of Don standing in his fire suite just after the ground test. The right picture is NF-104 760 also doing a ground test of the ar-2 rocket booster, a week before NF-104 756.

We know a lot of our fans are on facebook.  Now the North American Eagle™ is on facebook!   In fact many of our team members are also!  It is just another great way to let everyone know what we're up to.  We have many of our latest Power-On systems test videos up on the site.  Just type in North American Eagle and you will find us!  Tell your friends! It's fun!

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