The Neptune 566 was built for warfare, equipped with surveillance gear and depth charges that could deliver a devastating hydraulic blow to any enemy submarine it spied.
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But circumstance and French Marine oversight made the Lockheed aircraft more a lover than a fighter.
Built in 1959, it spent its working life patrolling the peaceful waters off Tahiti.
It was used for a little firefighting training then abandoned at Papeete Airport in 1984.
Volunteers from the Illawarra’s Historical Aviation Restoration Society came to regard it as the world’s finest example of an in-tact Lockheed Neptune. It was donated to HARS in 1989.
On Saturday a six-man French Navy jet crew flew into Albion Park to inspect the retired bird.
Arriving in a Dassault Gardian maritime surveillance jet, the men marveled at the piston-powered equivalent of old, said HARS’ Ian Badham.
“It gave them a feel of what life was like in French Navy aircraft before any of them started flying,” he said.
“They were fascinated.”
