Spying On The Spy Planes, Toymaker Debuts New Models -- Flight Of Fancy Or Right On Target?

Want to sneak a peek at the super-secret spy plane causing mysterious sonic booms in the skies over the western United States?

Try your local hobby shop. Or under the Christmas tree.

That's where you'll find the SR-75 Penetrator and XR-7 Thunderdart, the latest in a series of highly speculative military miniature models put out by Testor Corp., of Rockford, Ill.

The jets would be little more than plastic-and-glue flights of fancy were it not for the company's track record. In 1986, Testor debuted the F-19, which it said resembled the Stealth flying secret missions over Nevada.

The Air Force denied the existence of such a jet. But when the F-117 Stealth went public a few years later, the Testor-designed plane wasn't far off. Testor sold more than 1 million F-19 kits, making it the biggest-selling model of all time.

Asked about Testor's SR-75 and XR-7 kits, Air Force officials throw up their hands and roll their eyes.

"We're not saying no comment - we're saying such a plane does not exist," said Capt. Mary Dillon, an Air Force spokeswoman in Washington.

But with its long history of secret "black budget" projects such as the 1950s CL-4000 Suntan and 1960s Mach 3 Oxcart spyjet programs - both canceled before flight - skepticism about the Air Force's denials remains rampant.

Belief in new jets that travel seven times the speed of sound has been fueled by accounts from North Sea oil workers and aviation buffs near the Air Force's secret Area 51 test range at Groom Lake, Nev.

Speculation over a new spy jet zoomed in February 1991, when the Air Force inexplicably retired the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance jet, holder of the world's speed record of 2,130 mph. Why mothball the best spy plane in the world if the Air Force didn't already have a replacement?

Since 1991, Southern California residents have reported seeing fast-moving lights and strange doughnut-on-a-rope vapor trails that some aviation experts say could be made only by a new kind of engine flying at very high speeds; they've also been awakened by window-rattling sonic booms that local military bases said didn't come from their jets.

On Jan. 30, 1992, many residents in Orange and Los Angeles counties experienced what felt like a small earthquake or a huge sonic boom.

Seismographs of the U.S. Geological Survey measured a shock wave traveling from the Pacific Ocean toward Nevada that could be produced only by an aircraft traveling faster than three times the speed of sound.

Cynics believed they caught the Air Force in a lie when a 1985 Pentagon budget request forgot to censor a project called "Aurora" grouped with other high-speed aviation projects. The Air Force denied any knowledge of such a project.

Testor said its latest "Top Secret" models were designed by analyzing sonic boom patterns over Southern California, jet exhaust patterns over Nevada, journals on stealth and high-speed jet technology, and informed aviation-industry speculation about what the aircraft would look like.

"We believe we're very close - about 80 percent," said John Andrews, an aviation historian in San Diego who designed the new models, as well as the F-19.

Andrews said he isn't worried about the Air Force denials.

"They may not be the agency flying the plane - it could be the CIA or another national-security agency," he said. "But there are people who have seen this plane; there are exhaust trails in the sky."

Andrews added: "If it isn't being flown by the U.S. government, then there is some alien spacecraft up there that the government had better check out."

SPY PLANE RIDING PIGGYBACK

According to Testor's scenario, the SR-75 would take off with the XR-7 riding piggyback, much the same way the space shuttle is moved around the country on the back of a Boeing 747.

After breaking the sound barrier, the XR-7 would release from the SR-75. The small plane's powerful engines would ignite, blasting it to seven times the speed of sound.

Testor says that if it exists, the SR-75 would be about 160 feet long, have a crew of three and a top speed of 3.5 times the speed of sound. The smaller XR-7, at 80 feet long, would carry a single crewman and top out at Mach 7 - more than 5,000 mph.

SALES REPORTS MIXED

The new models are big sellers nationwide, said Nancy Rainwater, a Testor spokeswoman.

"We don't have sales figures yet, but it's sparked a lot of interest and orders," she said.

Among hard-core model-aircraft fans in Southern California, though, reaction has been tepid.

"It's not doing all that well," said Al Okazaki, who minds the counter at Military Hobbies in Orange, Calif., a mecca for military-miniature experts.

"Testor is guessing at what this thing looks like, and people don't want to get stuck if it turns out it doesn't look like this."

Okazaki said people who buy the kit are intrigued by Testor's track record. But he said the myth of the F-19 has gotten out of hand. He pointed to Testor's MIG-37 Ferret, a supposed Soviet stealth fighter.

"The F-19 was a pretty good guess - they were right on that one," he said. "But they don't talk much about their kit for the Russian stealth fighter. Turned out they were completely off, that there was no such plane."