Message posted by Chenstrap (Member since 11/26/2022) on September 26, 2023 at 20:12:43 PST:
Certainly an interesting bird to show up as going to a Museum on twitter... For those who don't know the back story on this jet, this seems to be one of 2 SU-27UBs which Ukraine sold to Tac Air in like 2010. The jets were demilitarized and imported with numbers 31 Blue and 32 Blue. A couple years later Pride Aircrat from Rockford, IL sold both the aircraft upon which they were loaded onto trucks, deregistered, and never seen again. The easy theory being their were taken to Groom for the Red Hats FME program. It is interesting that something like this would pop back into the public eye . Reading between the lines it could give some hints on the current status of the FME program. Based on learnings from the old 4477th at Tonopah, 2 seat trainers are a valuable commodity for an FME program. I would think they would go to great lengths to keep one flying. More interesting is Blue 32s sister aircraft, Blue 31, is suspected to be the aircraft that crashed at Groom in 2017, killing the Red Hats commander (More reason you would think they would keep a family model if one was lost in a crash). Steve Davies has a great video out on the subject and is the only original source I know of for the story. While he does not specify which aircraft was in the crash, I always felt it was a subtle hint that the only aircraft pictured in his video was 31 Blue, despite there being photos of 32 Blue available online. Link to Steves video on that matter is here: https://youtu.be/zidJB6qxlKs
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