Weekend "Air Show" at local Air Force base.....

[Postman]

Having served in the military myself, I can tell you that these "Air Shows" that your local military base hosts are nothing more than recruiting drives to boost enlistment in the military....

What prospective recruits witness at these air shows are the "gee whiz"! "Neato"! "look at that"! aspect of the various military hardware put on display to woo young people into service.

The part about killing is conveniently put on the back burner for a time.

[arachide]

1. OOoh, I hate those things...

especially when they have them really close to major cities (like the air and water show in Chicago). What a gargantuan self-congratulatory wallowing in the technology of mass killing. I guess I must hate America.

[CatWoman]

2. I remember a huge crash at Ramstein AF Base

a few years ago.

Seems like there were always crashes during those shows.......

[RiDuvessa]

10. Actually,

Crashes at airshows are pretty rare. Especially when you consider how many there are every year.

[Drifter]

3. But that doesn't make them less cool

My folks owned a farm near the Syracuse Airport. In the summer when the air show came to town, we would get up on the barn and watch.

We could not see the "show", but we were on a major "highway" for the setup. Planes flying fast, and planes flying low.

Cheers
Drifter

[Balbus]

9. It is quite a rush of adrenaline to see all that power and speed up close!

I love air shows! Although the parking and traffic around the base to get to see an air show when it's in town is quite the adrenaline killer.

[jim3775]

4. A simpsons quote for everything:

"Air show? Buzz-cut Alabamians spewing colored smoke from their whiz jets to the strains of "Rock You Like A Hurricane?" What kind of countrified rube is still impressed by that?"

-Sideshow Bob

[Mr_Spock]

5. I love those airshows - it is cool to see the planes dive in formation

and skim the ground with a sonic BOOM! I don't even think military when I see those shows (I don't have to go on the base to see it - my mother-in-law lives close enough so we can watch from her porch. It's really cool!

[Postman]

6. "I don't even think military".....my point is made.

n/t

[tnlefty]

7. But, it's those sonic booms and the ones from the test flights that

are breaking the seals in my freakin' windows!!! Broken wine glasses, items falling out of the bookcase, and the real pisser is having the ceiling fans shaking and all of a sudden it becomes apparent that I didn't do such a good job cleaning them off.

[Bridget Burke]

8. About half the Acts at Wings over Houston are NOT current military planes.

Aerobatic teams & historic planes are heavily featured.

www.wingsoverhouston.com/woh_features.htm

The event is at Ellington Field--it hasn't been an AFB for some time, now. I've always been interested in planes but never considered joining up. (Of course, in those days women didn't fly in the military. I'd probably have ended up piloting a typewriter in beautiful downtown Saigon.)

A few years ago, a rumble in the sky made me run outside & look up. Some planes from the show made a fly-by around downtown Houston: A B-17 accompanied by a few WWII fighters.

It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world's values.

What but the wolf's tooth chiseled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds and hunger
Gemmed with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world's values.

Who would remember Helen's face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence has been the sire of all the world's values.

Never weep, let them play,
Old violence is not too old to beget new values.

--Robinson Jeffers, "The Bloody Sire"

[RiDuvessa]

11. There are many airshows that don't feature the Blue Angels

or the Thunderbirds. They aren't always about military jets.