Tonight, I heard the news of a tragic air show crash in Dayton, Ohio involving Jane Wicker and her pilot, Charlie Schwenker. They were performing an exhilarating show of wing walking involving rolls, loops, inverted flight and all kinds of crazy feats of athleticism and aerobatics.
The crash video can be found on YouTube, but I will not list it here. It is a sickening sight of something going terribly wrong. The experts can decide if it was mechanical malfunction, pilot error or freak accident, but that is not what this blog is about.
I was lucky enough to see Jane Wicker perform at the 2013 Sun & Fun Fly-In at Lakeland, Florida, and wanted to pay tribute to her in the photos I took that day. I think she was incredibly daring. She will be missed by those who knew her and the spectators who got to witness her amazing acts of bravery.
Almost 100 years ago, the first aerial battles were fought during World War I. It was a different era where new fangled flying machines represented the state-of-the-art in speed and technology. Horse calvary was still relevant and tanks were just appearing in the muddy trenches.
Last year I attended avery unique air show in Pungo, Virginia at the Military Aviation Museum. The featured planes were all World War I vintage, more than likely scaled replicas.
Seeing these wood and cloth planes is kind of like looking a kite with a machine gun attached.
Today we have stealth bombers, remote controlled drones and satellites, but all our current technology owes a great deal to these earlier pioneers and soldiers of the air.
In the photo below, the World War 2 era P-51 snuck into the background and illustrates the difference that 30 years can make on the battlefield, even ones in the air.
Instead of sitting in a dusty museum, bi-planes and tri-planes zoomed past the crowds in glorious flight.
The first airplanes had less horsepower than most cars on the road today. They employed different shapes and multiple wings for improved lift… two or three wings were better than one, right?
These types of events attract enthusiasts and enactors who are interested in the time period.
Evidently long sleeves were the norm back then, even when it was hot.
I met one gentleman who had an authentic Harley Davidson motorcycle that had seen actual war duty over in France where he found it. It was a joy to see and hear the old hog run. It was a noisy clattertrap.
There were a lot of Germans in uniform.
WW1 machines are not often seen at air shows. In fact, I would say that this was a very rare showing.
The planes had markings that identified the pilot or the air group (or what ever they were called back then).
As the sun went down, hot air balloons were launched over the field.
The fellow below had a solo hot air balloon just like the urban legend about the guy that tied a bunch of helium balloons to his lawn chair.
This show gets top rank, and should not be missed if you are in the Virginia Beach area.
While visiting my family in Virginia Beach, my brother and I took time out from family events to go to an air show in a place called Pungo… home of the Military Aviation Museum and the Fighter Factory.
Pungo is infamous for the witch trial of Grace Sherwood in the year of 1705. Legend has it that she was given an impossible task to prove that she was not a witch. The accusers would dunk her local river, and if she sank then she was innocent. If she swam or floated, then “obviously” she was a witch. Talk about a no-win situation. Not sure if I would fake drowning in that situation and hope that somebody would pull me out. Full details are here if you want to read the witch story.
The Military Aviation Museum is a world class facility and houses one of the largest collections of working war planes in the world. The majority of the planes in the air show were actually part of the museum. These birds do not just sit around looking pretty… they treat us to the sights and sounds of the 1940s during World War II… transporting us back to the time of our parent’s earliest memories and our grandparent’s finest hours when America worked together towards a common desperate victory. Could such a time ever exist in this country again? It is doubtful and I believe that the ones that won that war were possibly “our greatest generation”.
Every now and then, you will see heroes from this time at the shows, and I always try to thank them. If I had ever met my own grandfather, I would thank him too for his navy service that spanned the war and beyond.
I have been to many air shows and honestly, I have started to see the same planes repeatedly, like the AT-6 Texan above. It’s not that I do not appreciate all war birds, but variety is the spice of life. I would call this air show extra spicy.
This show had planes that I had never seen before in real life as working flyers like the incredible German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 seen above and below. This particular war bird was painted in Nazi Germany’s battle markings. In the world of over-sensitive political correctness, I was surprised to see this. It was an amazing to see this plane diving past the crowd, and I could easily imagine American GIs hating the sight and sound of it coming in for a strafing run.
Also on the list of planes I had never seen in the flesh was the Junkers Ju 52. The design of this transport plane lasted long after the war transporting countless travelers in its civilian life.
The equivalent American C-47 troop transport was based on the design of the civilian DC-3. The air show began with paratroopers jumping in vintage parachutes which are not as controllable as modern chutes. Supposedly, one of the jumpers broke his hip the previous day. They were dropping pretty fast.
There are a lot of holes in the chute and few control surfaces to guide it. One of the jumpers had to twist madly to get the guidelines untangled. Yikes. I would not want his job.
For maximum realism, a dreaded 88mm anti-aircraft cannon simulated a flak attack. The concussion was spectacular and it probably rattled a few fillings. The scene below could have been right outside of Berlin.
There were whole units of World War II re-enactors. These guys were dedicated, even wearing woolen pants and hats in the hot sun. All uniforms seemed to be authentic down to the smallest detail like the fellow below in desert attire and a Mauser pistol that turned into a rifle.
The Allied forces were represented too with these paratroopers. Check out the grease gun.
There were plenty of weapons to look at up close like these British Enfield rifles and a German half-track machine gun tank/car. They told us that this could fire simulated and real ammunition.
This armor-plated monster made a terrifying racket as it drove around the campsite.
Probably the rarest plane there was a British Lancaster Bomber. There are only 2 of these left flying in the world today. These were the bombers that pounded German cities at night while the American B-17s and B-24s tried for precision daytime attacks.
A P-40 Flying Tiger represented early aviation technology from the start of the war. In fact, these were used in China before the U.S.A. officially entered the war.
Overhead, the long-legged German Fieseler Fi 156 Storch (Stork) plane took reconnaissance of the area.
I used a slow shutter speed of around 1/200th of a second or slower for many of the photos taken here. The main thing that people look for in aviation photography seems to be the blur on the moving propeller. Getting a complete prop revolution to make a complete circle is the holy grail of airshow photography.
It can also lead to some interesting action photos like the panned shot above. The biggest problem with photographing fast objects with slow shutter speeds is that you will end up throwing away many blurry photos. This is a new style for me which will take more practice to perfect.
Getting a full prop rotation in your photo depends on the speed of your shutter and the speed of the propeller which changes on how much power the pilot needs. It is a good idea to try different settings to find the best combination. The P-51 Mustang below was photographed with a faster shutter or the RPMs were up.
The museum had just acquired a B-17 bomber named Chuckie for over $4,000,000.
The P-51 Mustang escorted the B-17… just like they did on the long distance bomb runs into Germany.
The British Lancaster bomber and Hawker Hurricane fighter almost repeated the exact scene.
An American AT-6 Texan salutes as British Hawker Hurricane lands.
The Russians fighters were in attendance too like this Yak-9 below… like a Soviet P-51.
And this Russian mystery airplane with an open cockpit. Looks an old race plane from the 1930s.
Local firefighters watched as this Japanese plane rolled to a smokey landing. It had been “shot down” for the crowds by a Corsair… payback for Pearl Harbor.
It has been said that George Lucas got much of his inspiration for Star Wars from World War 2 fighting equipment. The turret below looks like an R2-D2 unit on this Grumman Avenger.
I had a model of this sea plane when I was a child. The Calypso Society used one like it in their research.
People were wearing vintage costumes too. This hot dish below may have been one of the singers who sang like the Andrews Sisters. Unfortunately, I missed the dance/concert after the air show.
It’s a good thing that we won that war otherwise, we might live in a country that speaks German and paints their planes like this one. I am pretty sure the world would be a different place.
Okay, they Blue Angels did not really strafe Atlanta, but they were flying so low that I could see the pilots in detail. I was doing an outdoor photo shoot at a tennis court when a formation of low-flying f-18 fighters came zooming overhead.
It was an awesome site to behold. I snapped a few pot shots as they went in an out of my field of view in seconds.
I am in the process of sorting thousands of photos to update my photography portfolio, and I realized that some photos (for one reason or another) were never really attended to at the time I took them. Time is always in short supply and new projects mean that I have to constantly move onward.
Here is a perfect example. I took a photo of this little gem at the Fantasy of Flight aviation museum in Polk City, Florida. I was in town for the Sun & Fun Airshow and the warbird community was having a steak cook out in the hangar of the museum. The food was great, but the scenery was unmatchable… better than any restaurant I could imagine.
The airplane in the photo is a Consolidated B-24 Liberator Bomber which has to be one of the most ungainly but successful bomber designs of World War 2. It doesn’t look like it should fly, but it did, and with devastaing effect. They made over 18,000 of them for the war.
This year I was invited by one of my friends and oldest clients to fly down the the annual air show in Lakeland, Florida known as Sun ‘N Fun. The weather was a mixed bag eventually ending in rain, but some of the time it was beautiful.
I work with Dan Ritter on the popular BugBand insect repellent products that can be found in many stores across the US and in select countries across the world. The stuff really works to protect you against mosquitoes and other pesky insects. Find out more at www.BugBand.net.
Even though this is the 2nd largest air show in the US, the crowds have been noticeably dwindling from the first time I went 5 years ago. The amount of unique airplanes showing up has dropped too. The downturn in the economy has really made it hard for some people to make the trip.
There were lots of of things on the ground to photograph and many nice people all shared the same language… “airplane.”
Imagine the damage the guns below could do…
If there’s time to lean, then there’s time to clean.
This photo shows the scale of these amazing machines.
Because of this, they had the same air show program running many days in a row. I got fewer unique photos because I was shooting the same thing each day.
The Air Force Thunderbirds were quite good and the snuck up on me a few times almost making me jump during one of their low-altitude high-speed passes. Awesome!
VVVRROOOOOM!!!!
Anyway, this was the first year I took my new Canon 5D Mark 2 with me and that was probably a mistake. While the 5D is a great camera for just about any other situation, I prefer my crop body camera such as the Canon 40D or the Canon 7D because they have higher frame per second rates, better focusing and a 1.6X zoom factor.
Without getting too technical, that makes my 400mm zoom lens act like a 640mm zoom. If I use a 2X multiplier, I can get even closer to the action. That would have been useful for the scene above.
I love the explosions they set off for the crowd!
The Russian Yaks above were out in force… The photos below shows what happens right on the edge of the sound barrier.
My thought was I could use the Canon 5D’s massive file size to grab the photo and them crop into the part of the photo that I wanted in the final crop. The crop below is about 1/4 of the full photo. Not great for enlargements.
The weather was getting downright gloomy by Saturday afternoon robbing me of valuable light for the photos.
The weather was getting downright gloomy by Saturday afternoon robbing me of valuable light for the photos.The weather was getting downright gloomy by Saturday afternoon robbing me of valuable light for the photos. To see the full 2010 Sun N Fun photo gallery click here…
I have been going to this air show with the same people for many years and I value their friendship and camaraderie even more than the airplanes… and that is high praise.
This year I even treated myself to a biplane ride around the airport. It so much fun and I wanted to keep going… That’s me hoping my glasses don’t fly off in the wind stream…
One of my photos was used on a WXIA 11Alive news story featuring Roy Reid, a 90 year old World War 2 veteran. I was surprised to see it because I did not know it was going to be used. I had given photos to the family and the reporter ended up using one of them for the very last shot of the story. I was pleased that my work was used to help tell Roy’s story.
The story was an interest piece on how Roy spent his 90th birthday by flying a vintage airplane. You can see the video by clicking here or the picture below.
Roy Reid flying an AT-6, seventy years after flight school where he flew the same type of plane.
This year I was able to attend Sun N Fun Fly-In and Air Show in Lakeland Florida. My client and friend, Dan Ritter, flew us down in his Barron twin engine airplane. That turned a 7 hour drive into a 2 hour flight. I could get used to this.
I was there to take as many photos as possible of airplanes, especially war birds. I met up with an ace aviation photographer, Jo Hunter, who was kind enough to share some of her vast knowledge of aviation photography with me. She is definitely worth checking out at www.futurshox.net.
Tonight, I heard the news of a tragic air show crash in Dayton, Ohio involving Jane Wicker and her pilot, Charlie Schwenker. They were performing an exhilarating show of wing walking involving rolls, loops, inverted flight and all kinds of crazy feats of athleticism and aerobatics.
