At the Swedish Airforce Historic Flight, they have three J32 Lansen aircraft. Two of them have previously done service as target tugs, one of them was used for testing by the airforce testing center. Two of the aircraft has been repainted in the all over olive green paint job that the J32 wore early in its career. The third so far remains in the green-blue camouflage pattern of its later career. It´s well worn, faded and weathered. I hope they never repaint it!
Since the birds have been in active duty until quite recently they are not 100% representative of the original J32B, especially not when it comes to cockpit instrumentation. But in main fuselage detail they still are. Some parts are quite identical to the A32A, and this walk around thus adds to the one of the A32 I recently posted.
First some comments regarding some photos:
Here, two of the three main external differences between the A32 and J32 can be seen. First one is the different openings for the guns (30mm guns instead of the 20mm guns of the A32). The second difference is also due to the guns. It´s the slight bulge in the fuselage beside the nose gear doors.
The aileron have a much thicker trailing edge on the J32. Compare with the corresponding photo on the A32 walk around.
Notice the grey aluminium boxes above the seat gun, between the seat rails in this picture, It was missing from the A32. I guess it really belongs there too.
The white spot on the nose is a GPS-antenna, NOT used on the original J32B aircraft.
Main gear bay, looking aft. In the A32 walkaround there are two large openings here, one in each bay. They were missing their covers. This is how it looks like when they are in place.
The tow bar is attached on to the lower scissors link of the nose gear. The upper link is spring loaded, so that it is lifted up out of the way.
Very, very nice sequence. My only criticism would be I would like some close ups of the nose landing gear, canopy interior and seats.
It’s always like that, I take hundreds of pics of a subject, but I always miss one crucial angle or detail.
Regarding the seats, I had hoped to be able to photograph a complete seat that had been lifted out of the a/c, but they were placed in storage somewhere, so I had no access to them.