Fallen Jet Fighter Fuel Tank

We found this old fuel tank off of some kind of a jet fighter. It is located in the middle of the Rasor Road OHV area nestled between Basin Road, Rasor Road and Afton Canyon and is hard to find. We put a desert cache in it. Please respect this artifact, enjoy the cache and leave something when you open it. Don't forget to sign the sheet.

NOTE: Upon installing the cache, we were listening to some music and having a Black & Tan beer. The song that was playing was 'Roxanne'.... so we named her ROXANNE

UPDATE: I knew that this tank was dragged to JR's cabin in about 1990 by a guy I know and JR told him to drag it back out to the desert and get it off his property. I could not remember who it was. I received this email from an old buddy of mine, enjoy...

From Howard Eglett

Just wanted to mention a little something about the jet fuel drop tank. 

About 20 years ago I dragged that very same tank back to the cabin and Jr. told me to take it back where I found it. I didn't know how to get back to the location so we followed our drag marks back to where it was found and Jr. verified the location with his GPS.

About the tank;

This is a drop tank from a Douglas A-4 skyhawk. These tanks were made to store extra fuel to get the fighter to the battle theatre then the external tank would be released before the sortee was carried-out, which made the plane faster and more maneuverable during the mission. Since the planes burned a lot more fuel while carrying bombs and missiles, they didn't need nearly as much fuel to get them back to base after the ordnance was dropped.

Sometimes the tanks were used to transport or deliver the plane to new stations that were long distances between fuel stops. These tanks were phased out with the development of in-flight refueling with the KC-10 and newer fighter aircraft. The A-4 was developed in the late 1950s and early 60s and had been used in the early stages of Viet Nam war. Senator  John McCain also flew the Skyhawk. The Navy and Marines don't typically drop these tanks on public lands unless the jet was in some kind of trouble and needed to lighten the load in order to stay in the air. No other crash related debris has been found in this area of the desert where the tank hit the ground.