Warbirds

Copyright © 2017

by Ralph F. Couey

I've always had a thing for airplanes, going back to my youth.  I suppose that this is part of that peculiar male tendency to anthropomorphize technology.  My Dad would sometimes on Sunday afternoons take us to old Kansas City Municipal Airport, just across the Missouri River from downtown.  There, we would drive to a parking lot on the opposite side of the airport where we could sit and watch the airliners take off and land.  The tall towers of downtown necessitated an abrupt descent to catch the runway.  It took skill to land there, and it was a dramatic process to watch.  

I loved watching the planes, and I took pictures which I added to the scrapbook that Dad had started for me with pictures of the planes he had ridden on.  My favorites were the graceful cetacean curves of the Lockheed Constellation, and the power and grace of the Boeing 707, the undisputed Queen of the Skies.  I don't know how my mom and sister saw these outings, but as a young boy, it was a fine way to spend an afternoon.

I started buying and building plastic scale models, mostly from Revell, and of World War II vintage.  That war was less than two decades past, and I know now how swiftly those years pass for those of adult age and older.  The war was still being fought on prime-time television, with shows like Combat! and 10 o'Clock High.  Movies were shown on Saturday afternoons and evenings, mostly forgettable films like Battle of Blood Island, The Gallant Hours, Wackiest Ship in the Army, as well as undeniable classics like Sink the Bismarck, The Battle of Britain, and In Harm's Way.  Through older movies, I was introduced to the jet age by semi-propaganda movies like Bombers B-52, Strategic Air Command, and the one that introduced me to my favorite jet plane, The Hunters, about a USAF squadron of F-86 Sabres.

The Sabre, has always looked...well...beautiful to me.  There have been a lot of beautiful aircraft over the years -- the B-58 Hustler, the Russian Backfire, the Tomcat -- but in my eyes, nothing more beautiful or graceful than that big-mouthed silver bird.

Part of the attraction deals with the history of the aircraft itself.  At the beginning of the Korean War, the US was stuck with a lot of World War II inventory -- Mustangs, Corsairs, and the like -- along with a few jets like the straight-winged P-80 Shooting Star.  But in the skies over that embattled peninsula, there suddenly appeared a new aircraft, the Soviet-built MIG-15.  Swept winged and powerful, it swept NATO aircraft from the skies with impunity.  Oddly enough, nobody in the American aircraft industry had ever considered adding swept wings to a jet aircraft.  North American, they of the inestimable P-51 Mustang, had begun developing a swept wing jet fighter near the end of World War II.  Executing the design took time, so the plane didn't start flying until 1947.  It was in squadron service by 1949, while stateside pilots strove to master it's characteristics, not the least of which was the tendency to "over rotate" on takeoff, which led to stalls and crashes.

When the MIGs began clearing Allied aircraft out of the skies, two squadrons were rushed to Korea, breaking the need to base them in Europe to face a possible Soviet threat.  The Sabres were operational by December 1950, and the following May, a Sabre scored the first air-to-air victory over the vaunted MIG-15.  By the end of the war, the F-86 had achieved a 10:1 kill ratio, the highest of any aircraft in history up to that point.  

Aircraft development exploded soon after, and the need for supersonic aircraft led to an early retirement from front-line service within a few years.  But the graceful jet continued to fight for decades, the last of them finally retired from the Bolivian Air Force in 1994.

Despite my ongoing affection for the Sabre, it wasn't until 1996 that I actually got to see one fly in person.  It was at an air show at the airport in Columbia, Missouri.  It had already been a landmark event for me, having watched Corsairs, Mustangs, and even a B-17 as the pilots put them through their paces.  But it was the Sabre that I had gone to see, and it was the Sabre that held me transfixed.  For several minutes, the shiny silver bird flashed across the sky at medium altitudes.  Then one unforgettable pass when the pilot pushed the throttles to the stops and roared across the runway at about 100 feet off the ground.  I'll never forget that moment.

I've gone to air museums, mainly the Udvar-Hazy wing of the Smithsonian located near Dulles Airport.  But always they were static displays.  Their flying days were done.  But recently, I went to Chino Airport and visited the Planes of Fame museum.  I saw a lot of historic aircraft of a wide vintage, but the thing that was pressed home to me was that these birds were still flying.  

As I walked through the hangers, I was again impressed at how big these planes actually were.  It's easy to think of a fighter as being small.  But standing next to birds like the F6F, F7F, P-47, FW-190, and yes, the F-86, I could appreciate just how big they actually were.  I was again awed at being in the presence of history.

Technology continues to advance at an almost logarithmic pace.  The F-14 with it's AN/AWG-9 radar and fire control system, paired with the powerful Phoenix missiles was unassailable in its day.  Now it is hopelessly outclassed by newer jets like the F-35.  Speed and maneuverability will, I think, increase to the point where a human will be unable to withstand the terrific g-forces induced by what we might consider now to be impossible maneuvers.  The current use of remotely-piloted drones gives us a glimpse of what a modern air force will look like in the near future.

But that will never take away from people like me that deep appreciation for the beauty, grace, and power of such aircraft.

Nor will I ever forget that these planes, and the pilots who flew them, kept our people safe, and our country free.