Rebirth Of The Constellation.... [PIC]

As a kid in the early 50s, I lived near Newark Airport and I just fell in love with the Lockheed L-049 "Constellation" that was first produced for the military in 1943 as the C-69 and went into passenger service with TWA in 1945. To me, it was just the most beautiful passenger aircraft ever, save for the Concord SST. Gleaming white with red TWA livery, I love to see it both overhead and on the tarmac. Then, the Connie just disappeared, replaced by the noisy smokey and ugly first generation Boeing 707. I thought the Connie was gone forever. Flash forward to 1969. I was living in a snake infested 'hootch' in dusty, hot Camp Friendship in the Thai highlands that was attached to Khorat Royal Thai Airforce Base at Nakhom Ratchasima. You could tell it was a USAF base because the dirt road you were walking miraculously became paved and landscaped. As I enviously passed all the Air Force amenities like swimming pools and officer and enlisted clubs and got to the massive airbase itself. The base was mostly for the shark mouthed and camo'd  F-105 "Thud" fighter bombers that patrolled the Ho Chi Minh Trail with occasional forays to Hanoi and Haiphong. I watched the returning pilots do barrel rolls over the field when they hit the max number of sorties.

One day at the field I did a double take. Across the field, was my Constellation dressed in period Viet Nam camouflage with all sorts of little antennas on it. It was now known as the EC-121R Super Constellation"Batcat". It had become an ISR aircraft capable of 18 hours flight time. Soon the next gen Connie would be decked out with a large radome as the EC-121K "Warning Star" a precursor to the AWAC providing command and control of a battlefield situation. I always wanted a large (1/72) scale model of the Constellation and I chose this '69 Khorat RTAFB vesion instead of the classic. I'm now looking for a companion F-105G "Wild Weasel" to fly with it.