F-104A "6740" (56-0740) US Navy at NAF China Lake for Sidewinder air to air missile tests 1960

F-104A, construction number 183-1028, model 183-93-02, US serial number 56-0740, built by Lockheed

Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, the high desert home of the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division,
is where the Navy and Marine Corps have developed or tested nearly every significant airborne weapon system in the past five decades.
China Lake is located 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles on the western edge of California's Mojave Desert.
The Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) was established on November 8, 1943 and its mission defined in a letter by the Secretary of the Navy,
"...a station having for its primary function the research, development and testing of weapons, and having additional function
of furnishing primary training in the use of such weapons."
In the years following WW II, China Lake projects included development of the famed Sidewinder air-to-air missile,
the Shrike anti-radiation missile, the Zuni rocket, a series of aircraft rockets, an entire family of free fall weapons, torpedoes and the TV-guided Walleye glide bomb.

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