What is your most memorable airshow and why
 

Well from someone who loves airshows, I was wondering what has been you guys most enjoyable or memorable one?

Emerald

For me it has to be Biggin Hill in 1969 just because it was the first one I went to under my own steam. In those days the Red Arrows were flying Folland Gnats....great!

Gotta be the "Last Lightning Show" at RAF Binbrook in (1987 I think). ****ty day weatherwise but standing out in the rain watching the mass takeoff and vertical climbs into the cloud was absolutely unforgettable - put shivers down my spine.


Ahhh those WERE the days my friend !!

JD

:)

Farnborough, when I was quite young - end of the 50s/early 60s.

Solo Lightning takeoff - held level to 250kts or so, then up to 18000 ft in what seemed like no time.

Also the Black Arrows (Hawker Hunters), predecessors to the Red Arrows, I being most impressed by a solo "falling leaf" manoeuvre from altitude.

Then later they started getting F-14s and things in, which were just noisy :( .

Terribly crowded things, air shows today.

Jet Dragon,

I agree with you, the Lightnings were unforgettable.

I'll bet you never even noticed my Puma display though!:D

Finningley 1977 - Queen's last jubilee! The whole year was pretty good, a different show to go to every weekend (almost got in trouble at work as I was supposed to be working!) But the mass flypasts, the Aussie F-111 lighting up his dumped fuel, and the Labour defence secretary falling asleep next to her maj.....it's got to be Finningley '77! Wasn't it free admission too? My memory fails me now, but a lot of shows were free in them days...ahhh, the nostalgia!!

:D Farnboro '94: 4 pints of ale, 2 G&T's, and a big breasted blonde Norwegian leggy girlie! Oh! and some planes....

Was that XW200 Shy T??

:D

The one where I almost wrote myself off. We were supposed to go there, land, and spend our time answering questions as a static display. While in the hold for our landing they asked us to do a ten minute show as a fill in for an unserviceable A/C.
Not ever having done any low level practice I did not really appreciate how much altitude you could lose doing a roll. I started to get some idea when we were upside down in front of the crowd. We got away with it (someone looks after young pilots) but it scared the wits out of my nav and myself. Got a good lesson without paying too high a price. It impressed the h**l out of one of the pilots from the real aerobatic team who were watching from the ground. They thought it looked quite impressive, little did they know.

Farnborough many years ago.
Roly Falk rolling a Vulcan prototype along the display line at about 200 ft

Barton Airshow NW UK circa 1992

I was on a press pass collecting TV pictures for whoever wanted to buy them.
I stood airside within tens of metres from a low level Harrier hover/look how many ways I can pitch the aircraft from a hover position.
Next I was sprayed with dry grass as Gary Numan taxied past in whichever WWII Japanese single prop he was using that day (he intentionally sprayed into us, I swear)
The day was completed by being given access to the tower terrace and filming the Vulcan droning and banking past at something near to our level.

Magic

Leeming, maybe 92 but i cant be sure.

Nothing special, my first ever air display, but the one thing that stands out is watching the Vulcan take off....and feeling the earth shake.....i remember feeling very impressed, and absolutely gutted when they grounded it. Also remember being frightened by the f-4 phantom, the screeech of its jets scared me.

Folkstone sea front a couple of years back.

A team of five Tornado's did a fly past at fairly low level (useless at calculating height but it was fairly low!!), turned left and flew out to sea in formation. The weather was overcast, and so viz out at sea was appalling but I fortunately managed to catch a glimpse of the T's flying, still in formation, through a break in the cloud. The formation however didn't look quite right, one aircraft missing. Well my buddies didn't believe me when I informed them they'd lost a Tornado (bloody hard to lose etc :rolleyes: ), until the fifth Tornado that had broken free from the formation ripped (and that is the only way I could ever describe it) straight up the front of the cliffs right in front of us :eek: . Very, very impressive (not so for the little boy - no more than five years old if he was a day - who fell of his perch halfway down the cliff :D)

That was the same show where they had the single Tornado flying wingman to a Spitfire. Poor Spit was going flat out whilst the Tornado had every flap down - again, something I will never forget.

The Fighter Meets at North Weald - without doubt - particularly the early ones. The NorthWest Orient brand new 747 doing a very low silent fly-by will for ever stick in my mind........ Its with some sadness though that I remember many of the original organisers have moved on to another world.............

Another was arriving at an Angelsey coastal campsite by night and realising by morning we were right next to RAF Valley - a formation of Hawks beats an alarm clock any day of the week :D
We got an airshow every day of our stay - thanks chaps.

Would that have been at Rhosneigr Hagbard?

Camped there on many occasions - earliest memories being Hunters and Gnats.

Also many a happy hour spent in the sandhills across the road - remember particularly watching an F15 one night after the Valley Airshow doing a spectacular routine in the evening sunshine culminating in a vertical climb until he was out of sight.

Happy Days

JD

:)

Cranfield 1988.


Memorable if only for the fact that it must have been one of the very few occasions when the Red Arrows stuffed up.

They went into cloud at the top of a loop and when they emerged there were aircraft going in all directions.

Jet Dragon

Yes indeed - Rhosneigr. Beautiful beach and village. Good campsite too - I've been there twice.

I think it was the first IATA show at Boscombe Down. The Russian contingent arrived in the middle of the show, a Su29 in formation with a small airliner (can't remember what). As the airliner passed me on final approach, the Su29 was still formating on his right wing, flying between the runway and the crowd line, gear down. As the runway goes down hill I lost sight of the Su29 behind the crowd but heard the commentator wondering out loud what he was going to do.

As the airliner touched down, the Su29 went vertical from about 20' and went straight into a spectacular, short display. It was claimed that this set a world record for the longest distance flown directly into an air display - about 3000 miles if I remember correctly.

Every display I've been to where the Russians have been displaying have been memorable, including the infamous Mig collision at Fairford.

Another memorable Russian display was at Yeovilton when, after a typically robust Su29 display, we watched the pilot take out of the nosewheel bay a large tarpaulin which he tidied up, and then restuffed into the bay. He also opened a hatch in the top of the wing and took out various plastic bags and a long plastic pipe
which was used as an adaptor to replenish one of the systems.

After he left, I heard London Mil. pleading with him to descend back to FL290 to which he had been cleared.

Well its got to be the local flying school.

Bloomin' amateurs :D :D :D

Jet Dragon,

Yes it was XW200! Your memory is actually better than mine - I had to dig out my old logbook.:cool:

Picture the scene.... Florida, USA.

12000ft over NAS Jacksonville, the tailgate of the C130 opens with the moonlight flooding in, 8 skydivers standing there ready to jump into the darkness of the night, with the expectant crowd waiting in anticipation.

The Jumpmaster gives the order to GO..... The skydivers leap into the 130Kt slipstream, illuminated by glow sticks so that the crowd can see them plummeting to earth at 120mph.

They deploy their parachutes at 2000ft and steer their way to the DZ. They can hear the crowd going wild, they are cheering, whistling and still not believing what they are seeing as the 8 skydivers come into land.

Anyway, that is part of the story, the wine, women and song come later!! Apart from all that, Jacksonville, Florida is the best airshow that i have been to. They have everything from F18's to Nimrods, Harriers to R22's. A jet propelled truck that does about 350mph and a Jet Assisted (JATO) C130 that gets to 2000ft in about 2 seconds from take off.

By the way, the skydivers are from the Red Devils Freefall Team of which i used to be a member for 5 years :cool:

Best show in the sky.
 

It was around 1961 at Vandenberg Air Force base in California. A Thor missile had just lifted off to head down range. The pitch program failed to execute and the missile went straight up. The launch control officer did not destruct the missile because the higher it went and was then destructed the debris would fall into the ocean instead of falling on the base property. At about 20 miles or so the missile passed through an ionized layer and the exhaust triggered the formation of what looked like a snowflake but ten miles or so in diameter. The exhaust illuminated this gigantic snowflake and you could see it against the night sky. As the missile flew higher it passed through two more ionized layers and the same snowflake appeared each separated by ten miles or so all illuminated by the rocket exhaust. For whatever reasons the snowflakes started to rotate in opposite directions with two going clockwise and the other counter clockwise and all illuminated by the exhaust. When the missile was blown up the light became even brighter and the rotating snowflakes formed a Moiré pattern, which made the Aurora Borealis look pale by comparison.

Watching missiles being blown up by human hands or because of a mechanical malfunction is both thrilling and painful especially if you were associated with the program.

Blimey, were you on drugs at the time????????:D

I have to say that the displays at Humberside were good, had a sort of informal feel about them, especially the Vulcan in a steep turn which went a bit wide, ended up over the crowd at a few hundred feet with plenty of power on.

Hagbard, I was there too at Barton, when a Harrier was responsible for a danage claim by the local farmer - I believe its jet blast succeeded in blowing out most of his carrot crop.

Other memorable Barton airshow moments were the Junkers Trimotor operating from the very short 06/24 RW, the DC-3 doing a touch n go & the sights and sound of Concorde, Lightnings & Vulcans over the this little airfield on the edge of the Mcr conurbation. Probably never to be repeated.

On a sadder memorable note, the last airshow I ever went to was the one I co-organised at Barton in 96, when we lost the Mosquito & two fine souls on board. As the Mossie had been my favourite a/c since younger days, it hit me very hard & its fair to say that I'm still not over the loss.

Flying Legends at Duxford - nothing raises goosebumps like the sound of all those Merlins, Griffons, Allisons, R-2800s, etc, etc, etc...

Best bits: Spitfire tail chase and Mustang tail chase!

Looking forward to this year's, hope the weather will smile!

Farnborough August 1950.

RAF air display (not SBAC that was the following month)

Standard combined ops type airfield assault. Waco Hadrian glider lands, troops take up positions. Finger four of Vampires fly very low up R/W 07, pull up and wingover left back down parallel with R/W 25 in long line astern. All four fire a full load of 3inch RP’s into the objective near the copse on the N side of 25. I can see the smoke and flames and hear the roar from them even now. They must have done some good though because the troops ran to the target and then returned, got back in their glider, which was then snatched back into the air by a passing DC3.

Five years earlier of course people only worried about whose side any aeroplanes belonged to, not what they were doing. I suppose that effect has worn off a bit now.

1: Filton Airshow(mid 70's), but god knows when it was. The first time I saw, heard and FELT a Vulcan flypast AWESOME!
2: Weston-Super-Mare RAF Locking( late 70's). Sitting on the roof of my parents house (they wouldn't let me go) waving to a lightning pilot who I'm sure waved back as he thundered past, pure beauty
3: I've no idea where it was but it was a village fete somewhere in the south (mid 70's), the Reds were on the program (Gnats!) and turned up exactly to the second, that impressed the hell out of me and the display was it's usual magic
4: Soest Salamanca( Germany), the airfield open day where I was stationed with 653/662 Sqn AAC. Two F-16's in clean configuration. The first one flew past so low and so SLOW with full re-heat on it burned the grass strip a little, I thought he was going to fall out of the sky but he just powered up and went almost vertical accelerating away. The second one came in from the west at a rapid rate of knots and shot past at an incredible speed, I turned to a collegue of mine and said " J***s that was...." and then BOOM-BOOM.... he cracked the sound barrier.
we were gobsmacked!
5: My first Spitfire, a sound and sight I will NEVER forget. There is nothing on earth like the music of a Merlin I know it sounds a bit silly but it made me cry with emotion and I'm a helicopter pilot!
I think the next stage is to touch one then sit in it, dream on boy.... and FLY in one

Any Battle of Britain Open Day, particularly at Cottesmore in 1962!
Anything involving a Lightning. Watching a scramble of four Victors 2's. Hearing my first ever Lancaster arrive at night and wondering what the hell it was [an RCAF SAR aircraft].

The best air show in the world of course is not in the UK! It's at Wanaka!

I thought that awesome display at Boscombe was an SU27, it's on my list anyway.

Also Biggin Hill in 1969, watching the Harrier hover, "That's impossible, someone ought to tell 'im".

The F15 at Farnborough in 1974.

Farnborough 1966. Large RN formation of Vixens and Buccaneers etc does an impressive mock attack at around 500+ knots - all in perfect synchronisation. Lots of bangs, flashes and smoke - then the whole lot go and do the same thing over HMS Hermes in Portsmouth Harbour. In one of the Vixens' coal-holes is a CCF cadet - me! Only Nigel Anderdon of the FAA could arrange for that sort of an Air Experience flight - the RAF wouldn't even give me a Chipmunk trip!

Battle of Britain day, Biggin Hill, early 60's. A formation Lightning display to the North, everyone watching.

Except two of them had sneaked round to the South, came up the valley & popped up over the crowd from behind at about 150 feet on afterburners. It was like being hit on the head with a sledgehammer! Very unforgettable.

Wouldn't be allowed today I suppose, even given enough flyable Lightnings.

Beagle has reminded us that the Navy were always good value when they had real carriers and aeroplanes. Afew years later than his experience, it took the same Vixens and F4's to raise our spirits after the tragic crash of the French Navy Atlantique.

At RNAS Yeovilton in 1974(ish), the display started with the Swordfish and, as it taxied in, the commentator had us all concentrating on it and, particularly, the gentle putter of it's engine.

"And now for something different"

It seemed like all of the available RN F4's came sneaking in from behind us at M.999 on reheat. Always an imaginative show designed to entertain the crowd.

1. Paris Air Show 1965. The Vulcan doing a half loop with half roll off the top - from take-off? Worth it just to see the reactions of the locals most of whom nearly swallowed their Gauloises!:D

2. Same show - Lightning desperately trying to take off with reheat malfunctioning and sparks coming off the back end.:eek:

3. Farnborough 1996(?) watching the Su-37 doing its qualifying flight for the display - lots of very well qualified aviation people standing around giggling and muttering "you can't do that!":confused:

4. Any Southport airshow - most of the participants fly more or less over my house on the way from Blackpool to the display area. So nice on a sunny afternoon, sitting in the garden with binoculars and a cold beer.:cool:

5. Anything involving Merlins - the more the better!:)

Witness to a disaster.
 

I was a member of the Ohio Air Guard during the 1947 Cleveland Air Races and our hangar had been taken over by the participants of the unlimited class, mostly WW II fighters.

We were getting ready to put on a low level bombing demonstration when the unlimited races were going on. There were two Goodyear F2-Gs in the race along with P-38s, P-63s and a smattering of P-51s and P-39s. One of the F2-G pilots was almost inverted while traversing the pylon just ahead of the grandstand. A P-38 cut a pylon and came dangerously close to the inverted F2-G. The F2-G pilot must have been shook up because he pulled the stick back instead of pushing it forward to gain altitude and he slid upside down on a concrete highway at over 428 MPH killing him instantly. In the same race a P-40 prototype that did not have the big under engine air scoop overheated and crashed in Lake Erie. The pilot jumped and when he landed his knee hit a train rail causing sever injury.

When the race was over there was a near battle between the pilots who believed the P-38 pilot was under the influence having been seen consuming pills just prior to the race. That pilot was and still is a very famous person.

There was one humorous incident. Just prior to our take off our crews were sitting and kneeling in front of the grandstand area. The Cleveland mounted police were putting on a precision riding demo on the hardstand. Naturally the horses did their business on the hardstand and it was all over the place. The next act up was a group of P-80s and as they taxied out to the active runway the jet blast stirred up the road apples on the hardstand and from our vantage point we could see the stuff heading our way. To a man, we jumped over the wooden guardrail and hid behind the bunting. The people had never seen jets before and they were all standing up. When the jets increased their engine speed the dung became airborne and most of it hit the people in the first rows of the grandstand. When it was over we jumped to the other side of the guardrail.


:D

West Malling, in the cockpit of the Sally B B-17 watching the Vulcan lead the Reds at low level down the centreline. Marvellous. My girlfriend who was standing in the bombbay thought the B-17 was starting engines she was vibrating so much :D

Mildenhall mid nineties when the B1B took off and scooted off into the distance. When everybody was watching something else I could see the smoke from his engines and the wings sweeping back. The other display moved off the display area and the B1 came down the centreline at about 250' doing Mach .999. Car alarms were going off, kids were screaming it was great. One of my mates who had his back to the runway nearly choked on his burger :D

St. Athan yonks ago. Amazed at how quiet the Sea Fury was. Also amazed at the F4 pilot racking his beast around within the confines of the base whilst going at quite a rate of knots.

B1 at RIAT
 

Been lucky enough to see lots of great stuff over the last 20 Yrs,
but the B1 rolls at RIAT (Cottesmore) last Year had the crowds
(and watching crews) gasping a bit.

For big aircraft, those A330/340 displays at Farnborough take some beating (likewise the Beluga at Paris and the looping AN72 at Fairford!)

As somebody already mentioned, the validation flights of the somersaulting Sukhoi at Farnborough (96 I think) were also pretty special - lots of people rubbing their eyes and making
"did it really do that" comments!!

most memorable: watching 90 people go up in smoke at rammstein. last airshow i went to.

most enjoyable: 88 reno air races. everything from stearman to u2 all the way to sr71.

regards.

:D Most memorable? Christ - I'll never forget it.

Battle of Britain display 1959 at Townsville, North Queensland in Australia.
Lincoln Mk 31 bomber roaring over the crowd with four Rolls Royce Merlins at full bore - lots of noise, but very little skill by the pilot (self).

The piece de resistance - the Grande Finale (whatever) was a short field landing by the Lincoln between two flags placed strategically either side of the runway about 100 metres from the threshold. The announcer in the tower announced to the hushed crowd that the squadron QFI (self) would demonstrate a spot landing.

I had practiced this the day before in calm winds aiming for 100 knots at the flare, but decided on the day to knock that back by another 5-8 knots to make sure no float.

Came in nice and slow with full flap - saw the CO and his entourage watching and praying his QFI would not stuff this up in front of the Movietone News.

I cut the power just before the threshold and lost the bastard!.. The Lincoln bashed into the under-run in a cloud of red dust and proceeded to bounce thirty feet high over the flags. Had no choice but to firewall the throttles and stagger away with everything hanging out praying that a Merlin would not choose that moment to blow back (an instant engine failure which was not uncommon for the RR Merlin 102's in the tropics.

The announcer, who was one of our Sergeant Pilots - albeit with a BBC accent, had been in the process of saying that the Lincoln was in the capable hands of the squadron QFI. At that point he saw the Lincoln fall out of the sky and involunterily exclaimed over the loudspeaker system - OH Christ Almighty! - he bit the dust that time, Ladies and gentlemen"....

The crowd cheered and the band played on...

Forty three years later I hang my head in shame at the memory...

At Humberside, can't remember the date, (maybe Sliding Member can help:D ):
The Vulcans very last day of display flying, as expected, the earth moved, he departed, to formate with the Lancaster, a Wellington (the one and only time I've ever seen it flying), and a Spitfire, followed by a low level flypast by all 4 of them.
It's a sight that reduced many of the crowd to tears, and one I'll never forget.