Quonset Air Museum

The Quonset Air Museum is a nifty little spot in Rhode Island. Located on a former Naval Air Base that closed in the 70’s. It’s currently surrounded by facilities owned by the Electric Boat Corporation, the folks that build some of the Navy’s nuclear submarines. It’s a small place, but worth the visit. The outdoor area is full of aircraft waiting to be restored and some that have been.

Stony Brook

Out in central Massachusetts is the former Stony Brook Air Force Station. Originally built by the Air Force Materiel Command in the 1950’s it was a major storage area for convention weapons as well as the storage and maintenance area for nuclear weapons for the neighboring Westover Air Force Base. The base was turned over to the Air Force Reserve in the mid 1970’s and Stony Brook was closed and handed over to the local municipality. Today the land is home to a jail as well as the Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC). Two very kind employees from MMWEC were kind enough to grant me access to the area and show me around.

Here and There

As I travel to work on the Cold War Project there’s always a few sites that I visit that might only yield a worthwhile photo or two and they tend to not end up on the blog. So I decided to take a bunch of them from the large amount of shooting I did for the project towards the end of last year and make a post out of them. So here we go:

A somewhat eccentric military museum outside of Los Angeles:

A small aircraft museum in the suburbs of Philadelphia:

A former Nike Missile base turned batting cage in the suburbs of Philadelphia:

An aircraft museum outside of Los Angeles:

A former radar station in the hills surrounding Los Angeles:

And lastly, a small aircraft park just outside the main gate of Edwards Air Force Base:

Out In The Desert

An hour or so outside of Los Angeles smack in the middle of the desert is Palmdale, the home the Air Force’s Plant 42 and the post Cold War home of Lockheed Martin’s famed Skunk Works. Just outside the fence line is a small park, run by the city of Palmdale. It houses a collection of the aircraft built at Plant 42 over the years and some of the more notable aircraft built by the Skunk Works, including the U2 and Blackbird.

Loring Air Force Base: The Last Little Bit

On my way out I stopped to make a few last pictures.

 

 

 

 

Loring Air Force Base: The Nukes

And now for the nuclear weapons storage area at Loring.

Going Back To Loring

A few years back I made my first Cold War Project related trip up to Maine to photograph the former Loring Air Force Base and some other sites in the area. On my trip, there were a few areas of the base that I couldn’t get access to and others that I was only given a very short time in. So I had always promised myself that at some point I would go back. Late last year I did just that. And thanks to some great folks at the Fish and Wildlife Service, I was able to get access to those areas.

This will be the first of a few posts from Loring. So, let’s start with the conventional weapons storage area. Loring was a major nuclear weapons base, but it also housed a great deal of conventional bombs. A large portion of those bunkers have been bulldozed since the base closed, but there is one area that’s still intact.

 

Way Up North

In northern Maine is the former Presque Isle Air Force Base. Originally a fighter interceptor base, it eventually became the only base to house Snark Missiles, an early intercontinental cruise missile. The missiles never really worked that well and after only 4 months the unit that operated them was inactivated and the base was closed shortly after that. Today the base is used a municipal airport and is home to a community college and industrial park. Most of the original buildings are long gone. Though the old Snark hangers are mostly still there in various states of use and a few of the original fighter hangers remain as well.

Back To The Cold War: South Weymouth NAS

About 30 minutes south of Boston is the former South Weymouth Naval Air Station. Closed in 1997, it formerly served as a base for submarine hunting aircraft that patrolled the east coast. Today, much of the original base is gone. The runways have been almost completely dug up and new housing is being built in their place. But there is a small part of the base that remains, though it is also slated to be mostly torn down and replaced with more homes and retail space.

Missile Park

About an hour and a half north of Los Angeles is Naval Base Ventura County, a very active and very not accessible base. But right on the edge of the base is a small park that displays some of the more interesting items that have been tested at the base over the years in various states of preservation. It was a neat little stop and something I was happy to discover by accident on the last day of my trip out there.