Sunday, we went to Aviation Nation, the big air show at Nellis AFB.
It was a beautiful day for air superiority. The sky was clear and blue. There was a bit of wind, but nothing unmanageable. And, oh! the planes.
When we arrived, the shuttle let us off and we walked the Air Force Red Carpet, right through the belly of a C-5 to be welcomed by the screaming jets of an F/A-18 Hornet.
We happily walked the flightline, eyeing the pins and patches and souvenirs. I let my jaw drop to the ridiculously clean tarmac when the F-117 Knighthawk flew overhead, eerily silent and slick. One of my favorite patches is one I collected from last year's show: "Stealth. When it absolutely, positively has to be taken out overnight."
We were in one the hangars, checking out the NASA display (I was trying to shove my hand into the glove of a flight suit) when an ear-splitting afterburner hit us. We hurried out to watch an F-14 Tomcat being gleefully put through its paces.
The F-35 was there, in all its prototypical glory. The Joint Strike Fighter is a smashing piece of engineering. In fact, the guys from the Skunk Works, rather than the test pilots, were there to talk to the interested masses about it. I hung around and got a great poster and a cool photo op.
Until this point, we were experiencing the standard shock and awe over all the great stuff. Then we crawled through a restored B-17. This is the same type plane as the "Memphis Belle." Tight doesn't begin to describe it. Neither does motherfucking flying deathtrap. A ladder brought us up to a low overhang. To the left at eye level, the nose gun was shoved right up against the front glass. Closer and above was the cockpit.
On hands and knees, we scraped to the right until we could stand. My head just barely edged into the top turret gun position. We crossed a narrow narrow catwalk above the bomb bay. The doors were open to the ground below, and I imagined being thousands of feet up. "Hello, Berlin," I whispered. More gun positions lined the sides of the cabin (13 total on the plane), and I tripped over the ball turret gun. It was tiny, and suddenly unimaginable that a person had been stuffed into this spot to hang and shoot the whole terrifying way to Germany and back.
We never did spot exactly how they got a man into the tail gun. I figured they slid the seat out like a drawer, jammed him in and slammed it shut. We stumbled out the rear, and back to the front. There, surrounded by a small crowd, was a grandad in full uniform. He was sharp and decorated to the hilt. This man had been a ball turret gunner in WWII. I didn't know whether to salute him, hug him, or shake his hand. I couldn't really get close enough to do any of that. Just the same, I said out loud, "thank you."
After that, I felt a little sad but I was soon very cheery again, thanks to the acrobatics of the F-15 Strike Eagle, my all-time favorite fighter. The A-10 Thunderbolt, a scrappy tank with wings, dropped bombs and made satisfying kabooms.
And then, another unexpected treat: the flight of the F/A-22 Raptor. I'd never seen it in the air before, and it was a thing of beauty: quiet, sleek and graceful.
We wandered some more, drank a beer (or three), had bratwurst cooked on the world's largest grill, and sat to wait for the Thunderbirds' finale.
But first, there was the 60th Anniversary of D-Day Aerial Reenactment. I can't begin to describe how it felt to sit there and watch B-25s fly overhead, pursued by a BF-109 with a swastika painted on its tail. Speeches from Roosevelt, Churchill and Eisenhower played over the loudspeakers, along with archival news reports on the invasion. P-51 Mustangs buzzed low and a circling C-47 dropped paratroopers (the Army's Golden Knights). When it was over, we stood as two bugles played "Taps." I began to cry, and cried right through as the speakers choked out "I'll Be Seeing You."
I cry a lot, I admit it. I'm a rank sentamentalist. In this case, though, I cried for a reason: all those boys and the people that loved them. My grandpa and grandma were in this group. My grandpa was a bugler at the Presidio in San Francisco who blew "Taps" over many graves. Twelve years ago, "Taps" was played as we buried him. And in January, I compiled a music CD to be played during my grandma's viewing. The same version of "I'll Be Seeing You" was on it.
Miles kept his arm around me until I stopped. I made sure I hadn't cried rivers down my face, and then it was time for the Thunderbirds.
Their precision was astounding. Their music was stirring. They were the perfect capper to a day of wonderful things. And I really had to hand it to them on this most important point: not once during the entire performance did they play that flaccid bit of cheese, Lee Greenwood's "Proud To Be An American."
In all, it was a fabulous day and the best Air Show I've ever been to.
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