A Buyer's Guide to Collector Aircraft
June 3, 2002
Astronaut Michael Collins flew in one of history’s most important and exhilarating missions when he blasted off in Apollo 11 and arrived at the moon on July 20, 1969. (Collins was the command module pilot.) However jaded a pilot he may be, Collins still is fascinated by the T-38 Talon, a twin-engine supersonic jet. “Being able to fly it is a dividend which an astronaut manages to mention in the first five minutes when you encounter old buddies,” Collins wrote. “Partly this is because flying a sleek new speedy jet on your own schedule is a status symbol of sorts, but more basically it is that this type of flying is exciting, demanding, even exhilarating at times—a wonderful outlet for pent-up desk frustration, a third dimension rarely available in our two-dimensional world.”; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc(); "T-38")
In 1954, Northrop Corp. began development of the T-38 Talon, a lightweight and inexpensive fighter plane for foreign markets. However, the U.S. Air Force liked the idea of a thin-winged plane to train student pilots for the fast, complex world of supersonic aviation. More than 60,000 military pilots earned their wings in the White Rocket, and today’s Air Force pilots-in-training fly the T-38 to prepare for advanced fighter aircraft such as the F-15, F-16, and A-10 jets. NASA uses T-38s as observers and chase planes, and as trainers for astronauts. (Click image to enlarge)
The plane, however, is not just for Air Force pilots and astronauts-in-training. Model 65-10462 is for sale for $3.5 million through Thornton Aircraft, a Van Nuys, Calif., company that restores and sells military aircraft. “The T-38 is everything a pilot wants in an aircraft,” says Chuck Thornton, the company’s president. “It climbs like a son of a gun, has supersonic capability, aerobatics are a dream in it—the roll rate is a phenomenal 720 degrees a second—and, of course, it looks great.”
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