5 December 1956 – A Northrop XSM-62 Snark, 53-8172, N-69D test model, fitted with a new 24-hour stellar inertial guidance system, launches from Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex, Florida. It wanders off-course, ignores destruct command, disappears over Brazil. It is found by a farmer in January 1983. The Day They Lost the Snark By J.
Dan Eliason now lives in Provo, UT. He says “I’m really a poser in the Super Saber Society. I only flew the F-100 part-time with the Ohio ANG when my real job was at a desk in W-P AFB. They did let me do anything they did and I was qualified in all range events and refueling so you can bet if they got called up, I’d have figured out a way to go to war with them and that old airplane.
Because the F-100 was THE tactical mainstay of the cold war—and the first aircraft I ever saw the Thunderbirds fly, it will always have a certain aurora and place of honor in my memory. Even as a grizzled old Major with 145 combat missions in the Thud, I nearly teared up the first time I got to slide into the slot position in a Hun 4-ship.”