Several aviation museums lost their Tomcats last year after the government showed up and removed them, citing security reasons. Recently the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino California reached a financial settlement with the US Government over the matter, which also absolved it of any wrong doing.

Many of these old Top Gun birds were rendered useless, without engines and elevated onto pedestals in the museum’s front yards. Perhaps a business opportunity exists now for any handy craftsman to construct full scale models as replacements, but that remains to be seen.

One may recall the guy who had FBI agents knocking at his door (Note the source of the previous article - Ed) after he put a retired, deconstructed Blue Angles F-18 on eBay and said it could be flight ready after only a few hours of re-building. Not. It didn’t have it’s flight computer brain anyway, thanks to prior actions by the government.

I do not know if the confiscated Tomcats were demilitarized, but after seeing the Feds reaction, one could guess that they were probably not.

Capt’n Chris

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