Working out in the warehouse with the doors open and hear a throaty roar. I go out and look up and a pair of B-52s is headed west. The big airshow at Hill AFB is this weekend. I'm betting there will be a lot of interesting airtraffic for the next couple of days. I sort of wish I could go to the show, but I really don't want to deal with the crowds and traffic either.

Hill AFB is one of the nations premiere airshows, we went to one about 4 years ago and glad we did. Well worth any hassle involved.

I thought this was gonna be about the Barksdale AFB Buffs hitting ISIS,

Yes, indeed. I'll avoid the crowds and watch from my deck. But I am half tempted to go and see some of the display aircraft. Nostalgia, ya know.

I thought it would be about shooting buffalo/bison!!

Very cool video. If not an exercise and you saw it you knew that the commie portable suns were inbound.

Each B52 gets its own tanker?

I bet the wingtip vortices off a B52 would be fairly exciting for a smaller plane

I'm surprised they have never replaced the engines with 4 new turbofans. Seems like the fuel savings & range increase would be worthwhile

Yes, each buff gets its own tanker.

If you noticed during the launch each airplane moved into its own airspace after lift-off. #1 goes high, #2 goes right, #3 goes left, #4 stays low. Repeat for each cell. It gets a little bumpy...

Those were "G" model buffs equipped with J-57 TJ engines. They've all been chopped up. The "H" models are still flying with TF-33 engines. They've tested the CFM engines (KC-135s run them now) on buffs but haven't changed over to them.

Mom & Dad used to park at the gate by the end of the runway to watch B58 MITO's. No wonder they can't hear one and another anymore.

They said it would nearly shake the car off the ground.

FC

At about 8:00PM this evening I was out checking the horse's water when I hear a very distinct roar of a jet coming from the west. Two "Buffs" flew over, separated by about five miles, headed east. Nothing sounds like a B-52.

Ed

very neat

Hunting in far West Texas, it's not uncommon to see B1's training. A few years ago we were in camp at dusk and one flew over, then turned toward the border and lit all four afterburners. A minute or so later he banked east, to avoid an international incident. Pity he didn't keep going and give the cartels a gift.

I saw a guy sporting a hat that read "Buff Gunner" once. I should have struck up a conversation with him.

Back when Loring AFB was open, they would fly at nearly tree top level along the Allagash River. I also think they used to "target" cars along Route 11 at night. Very very impressive airplane.

Around 1969 or so AF was asking for volunteers to train as B-52 gunners. It was a dead in job but I almost took it.

I was reading the paper on my deck this morning when I heard a strange jet noise. Strange it was, too! Right overhead went a privately owned British Vampire. A local guy owns two of them. I wonder if he was moving it from the local airport to Hill AFB for the airshow. This isn't it, but one like it...

That reminds me of a DeHavilland Venom, which I saw at an airshow in North Texas about 20 years ago. Similar layout, single engine behind the pilot, and twin tail.

Yup. The Venom was a followup design to the Vampire. They're actually twin-seaters, side by side. Hence the fat fuselage.

Here's the front office...

From what I recall of it, they didn't seem big enough to carry much ordinance

So the Brits made a jet powered P38

When I was in college I lived about a mile south of the runway at Plattsburgh AFB, There was a road that ran by the edge of the base and I would do my runs down that road and back Watching the BUFFs take off and land was very cool especially with a crosswind.

Every now and then they would take off a lot of the 52's and tankers in a short time, I always wondered if I should get in my car and drive south as fast as I could.

No, no sense running. Just say a little prayer, then bend over and kiss your azz goodbye.

The Vampire was a very cool jet. I had the opportunity many years ago to have a pint with Royal Navy pilot who had some time in them. He managed to shoot himself down over Cyprus as the first guy to try out a new air to ground gunnery range. Turns out it was laid over solid rock and the ricochets plugged enough holes in him the motor quite. He managed to glide to the airfield that was very close and deadstick it in.

A very good read I did recently was Eric Brown's (RN) biography, Wings on my Sleeve. Arguably the greatest test pilot of them all and the holder of the most carrier landings in history. In there he covers using the Vampire to test rubber carrier decks and landing them without landing gear.

Back in the old SAC days we had annual Operational Readiness Inspections (ORI). All airplanes on base are generated for EWO (inert bomb and missle loads) and then fly a refueling/bombing mission. You saw the launch portion. Recovery was worse...

And yes if it had been an actual launch you'd have had enough time to stick your head between your legs and kiss your a$$ good bye. You'd have been vaporized right quick.

My Dad took me to the flight line and out along the active runway many times at Minot and Malmstrom. Nothing like watching the wings on a Superfortress begin flying before the rest of it.
And the THUNDER. Oh my.
Dad and I always played a little game where when we were out and about. Hear it, spot it, call it. Or better, spot it and call it. Of course, being in fighter, Dad could kick my @$$ doing that, but he let me win enough that I stayed interested.
Even now, if I hear military jets of any sort, my reaction is automatic -- locate and identify.
A couple of years ago, Dad and I were standing in the shop yard shooting the breeze with some others when "that sound" hit our ears. Both of us latched on, spotted, and said simultaneously: "Aggressor." It was one of the F-20 Super Tigers in blue camo with a red star, what it was doing way up in Kalispell, we have no clue. But Aggressor it was.

Buff strikes were earth quakes dropped from the heavens..I remember watching glasses in our chow hall vibrate in their racks as those Mk-84's rained down from many miles away..Can't imagine being in the nose bleed zone much less ground zero!

Wooda been cool if those videos had been taken face on the planes so you could see they were coming down the runway sideways. Did that so if they lost power they'd go off the runway and not block it.

Used to go "parking" with my girlfriend at Observation Point at Griffis AFB in the 60s.

When a B-52 would land during a good game of "slap& tickle" it all seemed so much better.

Dave Skinner,
Are you sure that 'aggressor" wasn't that guy who owns a MIG over in Driggs ID?

That's a nice thought, webster, but not true. The B-52 has steerable landing gear. They can dial in several degrees of offset to overcome crosswinds. Back when the Buff was introduced, that fact was considered highly classified because it meant they could take off or land in conditions the enemy would normally think unusable.

Not disagreeing with you. My father-in-law told my they did that to avoid crashes on the runway. He flew KC135s. Maybe I misunderstood .

Rocky is right, buffs have crosswind crab built into their steering system. Last thing you'd want is an aircraft to run off the side of a runway. Done a few MITO launches, have never seen what you're saying.

I love air shows. I've been to them at Vanderhoof,BC. Abbotsford,BC. And all over the States.

I've been to the Air Races in Reno. I was lucky enough to have met Chuck Yeager there in 2001.

But, having a father that worked at Hill AFB for 34 years was the best.

I remember during Viet Nam, and all of the air traffic at the base. The jets, the bombers, the helicopters.

I remember all of the air shows. My favorites were the F4E Phantoms, and the T-38's.

I remember my Dad going TDY at Nellis. He would take the family in-tow. We would get to watch T-Birds practice there.

That was the best...

BUT THE VERY COOLEST THING TO SEE? THE SR71's.

If you want to see the very last SR71C built, it's on Display in Ogden at the HAFB Air Museum.

Snake,
I've heard about the Driggs plane, but no.
This was definitely one of the Northrops, some F-5s went to air combat adversary roles.
By the way, I was wrong, not an F-20, as only a handful were built by Northrop, two of three crashing and one preserved. Really a shameful story there, starting with Jimmah Caddah.
The F-20 was a single engine version of the Talon/Tiger, lots more power and updated everything.
After seeing all those pictures of Chuck Yeager with the Tigershark in the early 1980s and thinking it was a follow on for the F-5 export fighter role (and a good one), I was sure (yah sure) the F-20 had been sold overseas at least someplace and then brought back to replace aging first-run F 5 USAF originals.
The Air Force and Navy even leased some Kfir fighters from Israel for a time as adversary/aggressors.
Silly me for thinking it had to be an F20 and not a really old F-5. It was nearly two miles away.
But heck no, it warn't no MIG. Otherwise, Dad and I would have yelled "MIG" at each other....

It is entirely possible that somebody at some times said, "Hey, if they lose power, they can steer off the runway." I'm not convinced how good an idea that might have been, but somebody may have proposed it.

The T-38 was the hottest jet I flew, I can only imagine what an F-20 might have been like. The air-to-air guys I have spoken with say that the F-5 Aggressor may not be the hottest thing in the air, but the dang thing is almost impossible to spot. That alone makes it a deadly fighter. I was only taught air-to-mud so I can't vouch either way. Pugs and Jorge certainly can.

The Arc Light strike was the most jaw-dropping sight I believe I ever saw over there. We got a little too close one day with our little Caribou and had a ringside seat, Arc Light went in near the road up from Dong Ha to Khe Sanh, we were at maybe 6000 feet or so and could see the whole thing in great detail, huge explosion after huge explosion, on and on, just kept on going for 2 or 3 miles it seemed like, raised dust and smoke way over our altitude, shock waves very visible in the humid air. What a terrifying thing it must have been for the poor bastards on the ground, those that survived at least.

General Westmoreland credited the fire of the B-52's for breaking the back of the NVA siege at Khe Sanh, I don't doubt it a bit.

I recall being airborne over Cambodia in my mighty 135-knot Cessna O-2 hearing one of the last-minute ArcLight warnings - and [bleep] a brick while trying to find the broadcast location on my decrepit old map. Because all I knew was that the coordinates they were giving were roughly where I was at that moment. Mk-82s and Mk-84s are supersonic or nearly so when dropped from 40,000 feet, so I literally would never have known what hit me.

Of course, I wasn't there and my existence would have been disavowed, so no fault. Yeah.

Arc Light missions had about run their course in my time line 69-70 but we did get to see what the moon might look like up close and personal on occasional fly overs.Too bad the powers that be didn't have the balz to continue prosecuting the air war the way it should have been done but that's another story.

About ten years after I left the AF the last tanker that had my name painted on the side of it porpoised on landing. Pilot lost control, ran off the side of the runway. It didn't end well. PAX escaped out the aft hatch, flightcrew perrished in the fire. Fuselage and wings were destroyed.

The timing thing with a MITO takeoff was so that if an airplane aborted they'd run down to the departure end quickly and turn off onto a taxiway. That way they wouldn't get overrun by the trailing aircraft. Guaranteed hot brakes...

Alas, the allies that would have done well by the F-20 mostly didn't buy them because the USAF didn't. Kind of a "So it's not good enough for you but it's good enough for us? Pass" situation.

It's competition at the time was the F-16A and the USAF was all in on it so the countries that needed a fighter mostly bought that. The exceptions being those that wanted twin engines and they bought the Hornet.

While the F-20 was an amazing little fighter the mission growth potential wasn't there. The F-20 and F-16A were both point defense fighters with a gun and sidewinder. Look at what the F-16 has become in the years since, a significant platform for air to ground and air superiority. The F-20 could have never expanded to fill that. Both were supposed to be cheap fighters to replace the expensive Eagle but I'm not sure how cheap an F-16 is anymore. I think it might be the most produced fighter in history though.

The USN has run some interesting adversary platforms over the years. The Kfir's worked OK but were leased essentially for free IIRC. Now with the service a fraction of it's size a lot of those services are contracted out. Not unusual to see Drakens and Hunters on the line anymore and they Adversary squadrons are getting F-16's again. Those first generation F-16N's ended up with cracked wings pretty quickly because all they did was pull g's so they had a pretty short life in the Navy.