One of the premier airshows in the world is held at Edwards Air Force Base
in the Mojave desert about an hour north-east of Los Angeles.
It's a show like no other, held at America's most historic aviation test
facility, adjacent to Roger's dry lake bed which is used as an emergency
landing area during flight tests, and for occasional visits by the Space
Shuttle returning from orbit. This is the only show anywhere
in the world where you'll hear military aircraft break the sound barrier
(twice in one day at the 2005 show, once by an F-16 fighter and later by
a B-1 bomber).
Even the static displays at Edwards are unique, with air force test equipment,
NASA aircraft from the Dryden Flight Research Center on the grounds of
the base, and other goodies, like this marine corps CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter,
the very aircraft which evacuated the American ambassador from the embassy
in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war, repainted in the field green color
scheme used at that time.
The
air force's Heritage Flight program commemorates equipment used to defend
America in bygone days by putting them in formation with modern equipment,
in this case a world war two P-51D Mustang with an F-16 Fighting Falcon.
This
wasn't the only Mustang flying at the show, nor was it only historic equipment
on display. Here's a piece of living history, Chuck Yeager
taxying a P-51D Mustang after landing. It's especially appropriate
that Yeager flew at this show, since Edwards is where he piloted the rocket
powered Bell X-1 research plane to become the first person to travel faster
than the speed of sound. It's extraordinary to think that he's
still flying today.
This
is the first time I've seen the full Commemorative Air Force "Tora, Tora,
Tora" display team do their re-enactment of the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor which brought America into world war two. It was an
impressive sight, with the replica "Zero" fighters at the bottom flying
in tight unison with two replica "Kate" torpedo bombers and fixed undercarriage
"Val" dive bombers. Combine all of these with a 10 or 15 minute
pyrotechnic display of fireballs and black smoke and you've got quite a
routine! As an interesting footnote, the Japanese phrase "Tora,
Tora, Tora" broadcast after the first wave of attacks on Pearl Harbor means
exactly the same as the English phrase "Tiger, Tiger, Tiger" which was
broadcast after the CH-46 on static display had evacuated the American
ambassador in Saigon.
Moving
a few years ahead in time, there was a Korean War display by the Planes
of Fame Air Museum F-86 Sabre, a type which made its first flight in this
very location on October 1st, 1947. A long and dazzling list
of aircraft made their first flights here, largely because of the huge
dry lake bed which has been called "God's gift to the US Air Force".
But
here's an aircraft whose first flight definitely wasn't here, a Russian-designed
MiG-15 jet fighter, whose NATO reporting name was "Fagot".
The MiG-15 was the F-86's adversary in Korea, however despite being very
durable and having a 37mm cannon and two 23mm cannons compared to the Sabre's
less deadly machine guns, the F-86 still manage a roughly nine-to-one kill
ratio against the MiG-15.
Another
leap in time brings us forward to the Vietnam war and America's premier
fighter of the era, an F-4D Phantom II owned by the Collings Foundation
and flown at Edwards by Frank Romaglia, who has over 5000 hours flying
this type, much of it in Vietnam. This is the only privately
owned Phantom in the world, and it's a great thing that the air force is
willing to have it along to a show, when they could just as easily have
brought along one of their own slightly less authentic QF-4 Phantom drones
to the show. Although one of the drones is painted up in much
the same color scheme as the Collings bird, it's still not quite the same
as having an unmodified aircraft of this type. You can also see an
air-to-air photoshoot I did a few weeks earlier with the Collings F-4.
And
now to the present day, a T-6A Texan II trainer. As well as
doing this marvellous low-level display, the Texan II also flew one of
an ongoing series of "Historic Flight" formations with its distant predecessor
and namesake, the world war two T-6 Texan, which was used to train many
thousands of pilots both during that conflict and afterwards.
Unfortunately, the runway is an awfully long way from the spectator area,
so sights like this are restricted to accredited media types or people
who browse the magazines or websites of accredited media types!
Spectators do, however, get an excellent view of most of these aircraft
taxying at close quarters before and after their displays.
Here's
another new aircraft in the air force inventory, but if the Texan II was
at low level then this C-17 Globemaster III is nearly over the moon!
It did an excellent display including dropping multiple pallets by parachute,
as well as passes with undergear down and even some nice banking.
This
KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refuelling tanker is much older than the Globemaster
III, in fact it was a parallel development with Boeing's first jet airliner,
the Dash 80, also known as the Boeing 707. Almost all Boeing
707s have been retired, movie star John Travolta flies one of the last
ones still operating in the United States, but the KC-135 is still going
strong and re-engined examples like this one will continue in service for
a lot longer.
Edwards
is an excellent place to see a wide variety of modern American military
aircraft flying, and this year there was a special treat, an F-16 Fighting
Falcon jet fighter based at Edwards, but flown by pilot Gert-Jan Vooren
of the Royal Netherlands Air Force. His call sign is "Goofy",
but his display is anything but Goofy! In fact, the Royal Netherlands
Air Force F-16 display is widely considered to be the best demonstration
by this aircraft type anywhere in the world. It's very loud,
very aerobatic, stays very close to the crowd and is greatly enhanced by
the use of flares and the "smokewinder" smoke generators you can see in
action here. Sadly, the flares weren't on show at Edwards,
perhaps out of fear that they might set the desert scrub on fire, but the
rest of the display was as superb as ever, and several people said they
felt sorry for the US Air Force F-16 pilot who had to follow this act with
his own less spectacular routine. I don't have a full presentation
of the Dutch display on this website, but there
is a
computer wallpaper of it doing its full display at the 2002 Royal International
Air Tattoo in England.
Here's
the USAF's most exciting new aircraft, the
F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter. This is a replacement
for the ageing F-15 Eagle, which is still considered by most people to
be the world's best fighter aircraft. The Raptor has significant
advantages over the Eagle, including the ability to "supercruise" at about
Mach 1.5 without using its afterburners, and the same type of stealth technology
already employed on the F-117 Nighthawk and the B-2 Spirit.
You shouldn't be too surprised to hear that both the F-15 and the F-22
made their first flights at Edwards, the F-15 on July 27, 1972 and the
YF-22 on September 29, 1990. Oh, and the B-2 made its maiden
flight here on July 17, 1989!
Not
only are interesting aircraft types on display at Edwards, but the displays
tend to be more interesting than at other shows, perhaps partially because
this is the air force's test center and also because there's an awful lot
of empty space here, with little danger of damage on the ground in the
extremely unlikely event that something goes wrong. As an example,
Edwards is probably the only show anywhere where you'll see a pass by a
Raptor with all of its weapons bays open. Officially, the Raptor
is designated the F/A-22 Raptor to signify that it has abilities both as
a fighter and as an attack aircraft able to bomb ground targets.
In practice this is a claim forced on the military and its contractors
by politicians wanting to make a name for themselves as defenders of the
public purse - the Raptor was designed as a pure air-to-air fighter aircraft,
and while it is able to carry a small quantity of bombs within these bays,
its capacity is far lower than less high performance but more versatile
aircraft like the F/A-18 Hornet. To carry more ordnance the
Raptor has to use external bomb racks which almost completely obliterate
the aircraft's stealthy characteristics, as well as affecting its ability
to supercruise.
Like
the Stratotanker, the B-52 Stratofortress was designed by Boeing and entered
service in the mid 1950s, and like the Stratotanker it has a surprisingly
bright future. Continually updated since they were first introduced,
these two dinosaurs are expected to remain in service for several more
decades.
Although
the B-52 frequently appears at airshows as a static exhibit, it's not too
often that members of the public get to see a full display, taking off,
doing multiple passes and landing at the same place. Not only
did this demonstration include separate passes with landing gear down and
bomb bays open, but after one pass they also did this rapid climb out,
which I've never seen before. It certainly gives a different
perspective on the Stratofortresses massive 185 foot (56.5 meter) wingspan.
The
B-1B Lancer looks like it should have made the B-52 totally obsolete, and
on paper it certainly looks like a worthy successor, able to carry almost
135,000 pounds (61 tonnes) of ordnance compared to the B-52's 70,000 pounds
(32 tonnes), and able to fly at Mach 1.2 against the B-52's top speed of
Mach 0.86. The Lancer also has a much lower radar signature
and far better electronics.
The B-1 might be far more technologically advanced than the B-52, but it
has an even more sophisticated counterpart in the B-2 Spirit, which is
popularly called the "stealth bomber". The B-2 demonstration
at Edwards is far better than the one put on at other airshows, so I've
put together an entire page about the
stealth bomber display at the 2005 Edwards AFB airshow.
This crazy looking aircraft was designed to penetrate heavily defended
territory which would be too dangerous for the B-1 or B-52, however some
critics say that since the collapse of the Soviet Union it no longer has
a credible opponent (a charge which is also levelled against the F-22 Raptor).
It has almost exactly the same maximum speed as the B-52, but can only
carry 40,000 pounds (18 tonnes) of ordnance compared to the B-52's 70,000
pounds or the B-1's 135,000 pounds.
Completing the lineup of America's front-line aviation weaponry is this
F-117 Nighthawk, commonly known as the "stealth fighter". It
would actually be more accurate to say that this is a YF-117A Nighthawk,
since this is the third prototype aircraft. This same aircraft
was painted up in this US flag scheme in 1983, but since the Nighthawk
was still a top secret project at that time, very few people ever saw it;
however because this aircraft was due to be retired straight after this
show, it was decided to paint it up again and put it on public display
in this scheme for the first time ever.
Just to say it again, this is the sort of display that makes the Edwards
show so special - it's the only event in the world where you have any hope
of seeing an F-117, a B-1, B-2, B-52 and F-22 all put on extended performances
in the same place at the same time.
But
wait, there's more! Since many of the aircraft at Edwards are
test planes rather than combat aircraft, you'll also see paint schemes
which are found nowhere else, like this very graceful T-38 Talon supersonic
trainer, which is used as a chase plane to follow aircraft undergoing flight
testing. This white scheme isn't one you'll see in too many
other places.
Nor
is the white-and-orange scheme on this two-seater F-16 Fighting Falcon
likely to turn up in too many places!
As
I mentioned earlier, NASA also has its Dryden Flight Research Center at
Edwards, so not only can you see interesting NASA color schemes, but you
can see some unusual NASA aircraft as well. Several were on
static display, and they also flew one of their F-18 Hornet chase planes
(which was itself chased by a NASA T-34 Mentor), as well as some real oddities,
like this highly modified F-15 Eagle code named ACTIVE, which not only
has large auxiliary canard wings near the front, but also has thrust vectoring
engines like on several
of the Russian fighter aircraft which displayed at the 2005 MAKS airshow
in Moscow. The ACTIVE F-15 also has an "intelligent flight
control system" which consists of an adaptive neural network which is intended
to allow the aircraft to continue to fly even after it suffers serious
damage in flight which would otherwise cause the plane to crash.
It has to be said that the F-15 is already able to survive a great deal
of damage and keep flying even without a computerized neural network -
an Israeli air force F-15 had a mid-air collision with an Israeli A-4 Skyhawk,
but the pilot was able to bring the Eagle in for a safe landing even though
it had lost nearly its entire right wing!
Here's
another interesting and unusual NASA aircraft, an ER-2 high-altitude research
plane, which was derived from the U-2 spy plane. This shot
of it taxying towards the crowd area after performing its demonstration
shows off its glider-like wingspan of over 103 feet (33 meters).
The aircraft has a bicycle landing gear with two sets of wheels mounted
fore and aft under the fuselage, so before liftoff and after landing a
support truck trails it, to retrieve and later refit the flimsy "pogo stick"
landing gears which you can see about half-way along each wing.
These wheels fall off automatically at takeoff, but are put back on after
the pilot slows the plane to a crawl and allows one wing to dip towards
the runway. All of this happened during the show, and I was
also lucky enough to see the same thing about 10 years ago when I was still
living in New Zealand, where NASA was doing ozone hole research.
Another
speciality of the Edwards show is the mass flyby done by many different
air force aircraft types. This year the display consisted of
a C-12 Huron, B-2 Spirit, KC-135 Stratotanker, MC-130 Hercules, C-17 Globemaster
III, B-52 Stratofortress, the American flag F-117 Nighthawk, F-16 Fighting
Falcon, T-38 Talon, the F-16 Fighting Falcon in the white and orange color
scheme which you saw earlier on this page, and the F-22 Raptor.
It's a really spectacular display.
The
mass flyby is an awesome sight, but it's very difficult to take a photograph
which does it justice - you just have to be there to experience it!
