It’ll Get Loud
Notes From the Great American Air Show
The first thing you notice when you arrive at an air show – aside from the gargantuan airlifters and tankers on static display – is the noise. A constant stream of announcements from an unseen master of ceremonies blares from the public address system strung out up and down the flightline. Ambient chatter fills up whatever space exists in between. When the engines start turning, high-pitched whines and stutters quickly grow into a constant din.
The next thing that you notice at an air show – usually after you’ve picked out your spot along the flightline where you’ll bake in the sun for the rest of the day and start perusing aircraft on static display – is the smell. Acrid exhaust streams from jet and piston engines as well as scattered diesel generators and propane-fired grills, and the faint aroma of aviation gas occasionally wafts through the air. A musty odor surrounds the aircraft on static display, the stale olfactory cocktail of paint, petroleum, rubber, metal, and time that seems to be the natural emission of an aging aircraft.
I’m no stranger to these often-blistering and always ear-splitting spectacles, having attended air shows since my family and I went to see the Concorde fly in my home state of Minnesota when I was just three years old. More shows followed over the years, and I made my first acquaintances with the U.S. military’s two main demonstration teams, the Navy’s Blue Angels and the Air Force’s Thunderbirds. During an air show drought in Minnesota that ran from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, my dad and I would travel as far as Omaha, Chicago, and even Las Vegas to catch a show just about every year.
Today at Andrews Air Force Base, it’s an exceptionally bright and clear day – almost too bright, as the glare of the sun overpowers everything else and turns the sky an exceedingly pale shade of blue. A cool breeze comes in often enough to keep the weather nice and mild; the sun doesn’t beat down and there’s virtually no humidity to speak of. It’s some of the best air show weather the area’s had in years, and it’s easy to understand why - after all, we’re right in the middle of the roughly two weeks of gorgeous late summer weather in Washington, just after the season releases its steamy stranglehold on the nation’s capital.
The start of the show is delayed by President Biden’s departure for Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral aboard Air Force One; he choppers in aboard one of three drab green helicopters before boarding the heavily modified 747. As huge as it is, Air Force One lifts itself into the sky with surprising grace and ease. The plane seems long more than anything else, a striking visual impression enhanced by Air Force One’s own classic blue and white livery and the 747’s iconic dorsal hump. It’s the sort of distinctive aircraft design that’s gone out of fashion in recent decades, replaced by bland efficiency of modern transcontinental airliners like the 777 and A350. Soon enough, Air Force One starts to slowly but steadily recede from view. The show itself can now begin in earnest.
Early on comes a trio of passes by the otherworldly and aptly-named B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. The flying wing looks like something out of a science fiction movie, materializing first as a thin black sliver in the sky before revealing its ominous bat-like visage as it soars directly overhead. But it’s the plane’s relative quiet that’s the perhaps the most uncanny thing about it, and only when it passes right above us does the roar of its four engines overpower the music blaring from the flightline loudspeakers.
Up next are a pair of World War II era aircraft, in this particular case a B-17 Flying Fortress and a B-25 Mitchell. There’s little of the glaring jingoism that typically accompanied these kinds of old warbird displays before the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a far more subdued presentation, especially in comparison to those of a decade and a half ago when the Iraq war was in full swing. The usual paeans to the sadly dwindling World War II generation remain, but the rhetoric doesn’t go much further than that. It’s as if the time for middling reactionary verses exalting the soldier over the musician or the physician or what-have-you has come and gone, consigned to what now feels like the distant past.
Later on, professional aerobatic performers tumble their custom-built prop planes across the sky in impressive daredevil fashion, throwing their machines end over end or dipping to just feet off the ground to cut a ribbon held over the taxiways. Another act conjures up the spirit of the original barnstormers, landing his World War II era civil monoplane on the back of a moving truck and flying no-power, dead-stick maneuvers before coming to precise stop at show center. It’s a welcome bit of frivolity and carefully calculated aerial derring-do in a day otherwise dedicated to displays of raw power and breakneck speed.
When the C-17 airlifter takes center stage and demonstrates its ability to take off and land in staggeringly short distances, I can’t help but think of the bravery and courage displayed by C-17 crews amidst our shameful retreat from Kabul just over a year ago. It’s not difficult to imagine pilots using some of the very maneuvers we’re watching here as they flew in and out of an airport under siege – sometimes carrying more than double the maximum number of passengers on their way out. These cargo planes don’t receive the public attention or possess the glitz and glamour of their smaller, faster stablemates, but they’re quite capable and even majestic aircraft in their own right.
By now, it’s early afternoon and time for the two main events: the F-35 stealth fighter and the Thunderbirds. The sky remains strikingly clear for these marquee attractions, with maybe two or three puffy white clouds low on the horizon and well off in the distance in front of the flightline.
Even more so than the F-16 flown by the Thunderbirds, the F-35 seems almost entirely built around its massive power plant – lending the plane a sleek but squat appearance, with sharp angles offsetting the metallic grey bulk needed to house its enormous engine. It waddles along the taxiway, low-slung and giving little indication that it’ll deliver the blistering demonstration we’re about to witness. The F-35 whips violently around the sky like nothing else I’ve seen - not even the F-22 Raptor, its larger and more powerful cousin. Watching this demonstration, it’s hard to not think that the F-35’s numerous critics should take back everything bad they’ve ever said about the plane.
As the clock nears three in the afternoon, we get to the traditional grand finale of any worthwhile air show: the Thunderbirds. The team certainly earns its name today, with their glossy red, white, and blue F-16s tearing across the nearly clear sky. They’ve added some new tricks to their show since I last saw them perform back before the pandemic, but they’re still as graceful as ever – whether in tight formation or putting the F-16’s raw power on full display.
It's the first Thunderbirds high show I’ve seen in a good while, and as usual it closes with the magnificent high bomb burst: the four-ship diamond formation pulls straight up into the sky, then splits apart in four separate directions. After a brief delay, the lead solo screams straight through the burst and spirals upward. The four diamond pilots loop back on one another, carefully missing one other as they swiftly converge at show center. Soon the diamond reforms and the Thunderbirds peel out one by one to land, concluding a typically impressive performance. As their engines wind down, so too does the show.
I’ll spend an hour slowly trudging down the concrete apron to the shuttle bus that takes us all back to our cars. Leaving an air show is typically its worst part of the day: too many people trying to use too many exits, waiting in lines for shuttle buses or creating traffic jams in their attempts to drive out of makeshift parking lots. Everyone’s worn out and eager to get home, or at least somewhere with air conditioning. It’s not pleasant, but it’s an inevitable part of the air show experience and acknowledging that ahead of time makes it go over much easier.
Despite all that, the great American air show remains what it’s always been: a loud, sweaty, and exhausting - if occasionally jingoistic - playground for aviation enthusiasts of all ages.