Well, the Air show this weekend was fun...

But the rest of the weekend was a bust; no trip to Austin to eat at Papsito's, no weed pulling, no studying for the mini term class that begins Monday, no cleaning the house. I am SUCH a lazy fuck, it's pathetic! I think I'm getting desensitized to squalor, which CAN'T be good. And to top that, I think I've come down with a cold. Some student sitting up front coughed on me last week. Fuckers gave me Chicken Pox last year, remember? I need to start going to class in one of those oxygen bubbles. That'd be a sight, wouldn't it.

Dad and I did our regular Friday evening trip to the Chinese food place in Temple, and the food was great as usual. Then, we went out to the local Airport to check out the Friday night show at the annual Commemorative Air Force Air Show. This thing is always fun for dad and I, and sometimes sis. Dad gets to see lots of planes from his era, and a few that he flew at one time or another.

I found a good spot to plant the old dude close to the porta johns and close to the taxiway so he can see the action, and he managed to bump into another old Air Force couple to sit and watch the festivities with. I never got this guys name, but he'd been an F-105 pilot in 'Nam, from 69 to 70. They live down in Georgetown, at a retirement community called Sun City, and drove up to Temple Friday for the Air Show. Apparently this guy keeps a small plane in a hanger here. Both of them were very nice, and it was great to have them pay attention to dad, let him tell his stories, while I went around to check out the sights.

We arrived during a dramatic flying display by an F-16, and by the time we got dad situated it was doing a slow fly by with a P-47 from the Commemorative Air Force (click on any of these for a larger image).



After the fly by, the F-16 zoomed off back to it's base, and the P-47 landed and taxied right past us. It's a beauty. These guys with the Commemorative (formerly "Confederate") Air Force keep all these cool planes flying, and keep the history alive. We've been going to see these planes since the 1970s, when they were based down at Harlengen, near the Mexican border. After the P-47 landed, the other World War 2 era planes all taxied out and took off to begin the major fly by.


In the larger program on Saturday and Sunday, they do a reenactment of Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, and other things, using whatever planes they have on hand. The show includes two B-25s, like the one here on the left, and a Grumman Hellcat fighter, seen below here on the right. They set off huge explosions and have smoke streaming from the wings. It's cool as hell to watch.

The Commemorative (formerly Confederate) Air Force has a bunch of old T-6 trainers that were modified to look like Japanese planes for the movie "Tora,Tora, Tora". Now they fly them around to give today's generations a little look at what the folks in WW2 had to deal with. It's always a lot of fun to see them all flying together, and to see the explosions going off in time with the fly by.

My dad flew these planes, as trainers, and remembers them fondly. You've seen them in the movies, as well as the old TV show "Ba, Ba, Black Sheep". These things look so realistic, it always amazes me.


The plane dad and I always look forward to seeing is the one that he was trained to fly just before the end of the war. There's a black one based in Waco, painted to look like the planes that were used in Korea and Vietnam. It's an A-26 Invader, called the 'Spirit of Waco". I think it's the sleekest, coolest plane we produced in WW2, but I'm partial.



Here's a shot if it taxiing out to start its flight program.



Here's a great shot of it that I found on the web. I tried to take a shot like this with the digital camera, but I guess I still need practice.



Here's what I was able to get. Gives you a feel for how sleek the plane is. It's a refined version of the WW2 era B-26, which dad was also trained to fly, but the A-26 was much faster, easier to fly, and had the same payload capacity as a B-17. We used them till the early 1970s in Vietnam, to bomb the Ho Chi Min trail at night (hence the black paint). The Air force had renamed them B-26s by then, to some people's endless confusion. Most of them were sold off after the war, and they were rebuilt to be used as everything from passenger planes to fire fighters. In fact, if you want to see A-26s in action, check out the movie "Always", with Richard Dreyfuss. He flys one in the movie.



Here's the WW2 bomber version that dad flew. Note that the "Spirit of Waco" has the 8 .50s in the nose. That HAD to be fun to play with. Dad's had the Plexiglas nose like this one, for dropping bombs. He's got great stories about this plane, and the fun they had learning to fly it, low and fast and aggressive. They were crazy back then, learning to fly at the edge of the planes capabilities. He was in California, on his way to Kwajalain in the Marshall Islands when the Bomb was dropped. Otherwise he'd have flown this thing in the invasion of Japan in late 1945.

It seems like it all happened a thousand years ago, doesn't it? And yet there he sits, enjoying the hell out of himself, thinking about old times.

We've been going to these airshows to see this plane for over a decade. Dad wears the A-26B hat I found for him, and the guy who owns and flies the plane always looks for dad and chats him up. I'd love to get him a ride in it, but I'm afraid it might kill him. But then, what a way to go. The guy who owns the plane won't allow it though. Who wants that responsibility on their hands? Probably thinks we'd sue him.

After the WW2 show, the Vietnam era Cessna O-2 Super Skymasters taxied out and do their show. These things look like they'd be a lot of fun to fly. They have both a pusher and a puller prop, and they're highly maneuverable. The pilots fly over the crowd, reenacting the swaying back and forth flying motion that the Vietnam era pilots supposedly used to avoid getting shot down.

These planes were used as forward air controllers and as spotters, flying slow and low over the woods till they got shot at, and then they'd fire rockets to direct the helicopter gunships towards the enemy below. For everyone to survive, and for the troops on the ground to get the help they needed, the guys in these planes had to fly like maniacs, and everything had to be coordinated very closely. They saved many lives.

Along with the older planes, there were also modern things out there, and the services were doing their bit of recruiting, letting the next generation sit in the drivers seat of an Apache, Huey, or a Blackhawk.

The Air Force was there, with the F-16 flyover, and with a little motorized F-22 that they drove around, to the amazement of the big and little kids looking on. One thing that I was amazed to see, was a navy C-2 transport, parked next to an old C-47 from my dads era. I was shot off the deck of the USS Ranger in one of these after the gulf war ended in early 1991. It was hilarious to see one again.



You are sitting backwards in this thing when it is shot off the carrier, and you are suspended in your straps for a split second, till your body catches up to the speed of the plane. It was quite a ride ( I really need to get a scanner so I can post those pictures).

On Sunday afternoon, dad and I went out there again to see what we could see, and I was able to get a few good shots.



Here's a closeup of one of the B-25s taxiing out. Love the nose art on this one.



And here's the other one. This Blue one is a Marine Corpse plane called the "Devil Dog". Later, when both were back on the ground, I went by and took a few more closeups, and got a T-shirt.



For $2, you could climb up in the plane and check out the .50s. Thing is, the FHB ain't made for these small places. Not that I get nervous, but I get tired of bangin' my head and knees into things.



So I stood back and let the kiddies play, like I did when I was their age.



The A-26 was busted on Sunday. They had the cowling off one engine and couldn't get it started. That' was a bummer, but the rest of the planes still put on a great show.



The Hellcat always puts on a great show. These things are fast as hell, and shot down a lot of Japanese planes in WW2. At one point it began to sprinkle, and I ran back to see if dad was thinking to use his umbrella. Sure enough...



I found him sitting there, dry and happy as a clam, watching that A-26, waiting to see if it would ever take off. Notice the dry pavement under him, and that C-47 in the background. He flew that one in the Berlin Airlift, for about 6 weeks in '47 or '48.



The show ended Sunday with another F-16 fly over. This guy flew around for a while, and really showed off the capabilities of the plane. Reminds dad and I of the days when we'd be playing golf at Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth, across the runway from the plant where they build the F-16s, and every once and a while they'd take off and do a mini airshow for the onlookers. Now that plant builds the F-35, and I miss those impromptu air shows.

Anyway, It was a nice time for dad and I, and I hope you enjoy seeing the shots.