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My first airshow since 1967...My photo technique may have shown a little improvement over the years...(Although a misplaced trust in the camera operator's judgement resulted in the loss of all the McDonnell F-4 Phantom pics)...OK, OK, so the camera operator was me...Are ya happy now?...
Captions and links have been added to photos in this album...
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| WOH also includes many antique service vehicles, although mostly military... |
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| Boeing B-52 Stratofortress...I did some training on these in weapons school... |
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| Lockheed C-130 Hercules...One of the most successful aircraft ever designed... |
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| LTV A-7 Corsair II cockpit training module... |
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| Grumman F7F Tigercat... |
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| This is Fifi...At the time, the only airworthy Boeing B-29 Superfortress in existence... |
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| Twin .50's in the tail encourage good neighbor relation... |
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| Fifi draws a crowd wherever she is... |
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| She was also pretty good at getting rid of a crowd in her day... |
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| She could carry a 20,000 pound payload over 3,000 miles... |
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| "Ol 927" has been renamed "Diamond Lil," a fitting travel companion for Fifi in their annual travels... |
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| In total numbers, more than 18,000 B-24's were built during WWII...It is the most produced war plane in history...To day only a handful exist, most of which are not airworthy... |
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| "Texas Raiders" is another guaranteed crowd-pleaser... |
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| "tarheel Hal" is a Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, a tough and feared warplane in WWII... |
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| The best part of the show was a real surprise for me...I had seen two McDonnell-Douglas F-4's parked at the end of the flightline under cover...They were so far away, I could barely make them out with my 400mm lens and we couldn't get near them because they were fenced off...In the afternoon I was watching some of the WWII birds take off from the other end and behind me I heard the unmistakable sound of two GE J-79 engines spooling up behind me...I turned around and was face to face with the first Phantom II I had seen in person in over 40 years, rolling past the crowd...It was an "E" model with internally mounted M61 20mm cannon... |
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| The announcer started telling about it and, to my surprise, it was flown in from Holloman AFB where I was last stationed...All 75 aircraft in my wing had been permanently assigned there after they converted to F-16's...I had heard they were being used as unmanned drones for testing ATA and GTA missiles (a crying shame)...I didn't know until yesterday they are all kept in flying condition and available for air show demonstrations also...It was a real thrill to see put through it's paces...There's no other sound in the world like two J79's with 4th stage AB lit up moving full vertical right in front of you... |
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| This is the beginning of "Tora, Tora, Tora"... |
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| "Banzai!"... |
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| A Vought F4U Corsair, one of the most recognizable fighter aircraft ever flown... |
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| The fastest piston-driven fighter of WWII was the Grumman F7F Tigercat... |
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