EAA AirVenture Day 2 and Night Airshow!
My second (and final) day at Oshkosh’s EAA AirVenture 2024 was Saturday, which is the final full day of the event. It also features one of two night airshows (the other being on Wednesday). Let me tell you - the night airshow is absolutely insane.
When we entered, we encountered this incredible man - Col. James Harvey (age 101!), a former Tuskegee Airman! He released a book on July 4th, and we bought a copy, met him, and had it signed. If you’re not familiar with WWII history, here’s a little crash course on the Tuskegee Airmen. During WWII, Black people could not serve in the war (because of the insanely racist belief that Black people couldn’t fly planes…). The Air Force was soon running out of pilots, and decided to hire a group of Black men, based out of Tuskegee, Alabama. They trained them, and they became known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Altogether, 992 pilots graduated from the Tuskegee Air Field courses, and they flew 1,578 missions and 15,533 sorties, destroyed 261 enemy aircraft, and won more than 850 medals. They were the first Black pilots to serve in the Air Force, and, despite much adversity from their white counterparts, they were extremely successful in what they did.
We got some lunch, and as we were eating, entertained by these pilots doing a game of tic tac toe in the sky (X one, by the way). The skill is quite impressive. It requires a lot of spacial awareness.
We spent the day milling about, going to different exhibits, etc, etc, etc. The GE exhibit is really cool - we talked to one of the engine designers for about a half an hour. The real draw of today is the night airshow. It kicked off with this incredible display of stunt flying by a trio of warbirds (extremely loud ones, at that). They were soon joined by a fighter jet (pretty sure it was an F16), which did some solo stunts as well. We learned that the aircraft burns 3.5 gallons of fuel a second. That’s one hell of an expensive gas bill. The thundering of that aircraft as it breaks the sound barrier is felt deep inside you and shakes the ground. So intense. You can watch a video of a flypast on my YouTube channel HERE.
The night progressed with this Foxjet stunt show, featuring fireworks and these spark - shooter things. It’s quite a feat of physics that the aircraft can take such a beating by doing loops and inverted flying over and over again.
Before the finale, 3 warbirds did an incredible stunt show for us, looping around the sky and coming mere feet from each other during daring stunts and tricks. One aircraft dived insanely close to the ground before pulling up and climbing at nearly 90* before moving into an inverted stunt.
I’d heard insane things about this finale, but it far exceded my expectations. When were were dropping my dog off at our neighbor’s house before we left, my neighbor told us about what he knew about the finale through work. And no, he doesn’t work at a pyrotechnics company, a drone company - anything like that. He works for the FBI. Yeah, that FBI. He couldn’t give us details (he wasn’t working this job anyways) for security reasons, but since the explosives used were so big and being transported across state lines to the airshow, the FBI had to be in charge of security during their movement. If these were to fall into the wrong hands, they could be problematic.
The show began as a massive fireworks display, before no fewer than 250 drones lifted off the ground in perfect rows and began to create stunning shapes in the sky. You can see the drones off behind the fireworks (all those multicolored dots in the sky).
One of the drone displays was a hand throwing a paper airplane (and the paper airplane actually moved away from the hand and did a spin). The smoke on the ground is from the explosives they set off - and they’re huge. Massive fireballs, a loud blast, and black smoke. During a couple of the bigger detonations you could feel the heat wash over you from this distance. Truly a sight to behold.
This is from last night, but not my photo (credit goes to the EAA FaceBook page). This gives you a sense of just how massive this show was. Everything was very well syncronized to the music, which makes it all the more impressive. They had a few more stunt pilots zipping in and out of the display. One of the most impressive drone stunts was a simulated helicopter rescue (I urge you to watch it HERE). So insane what we can do with technology.
They ended off the night with a big, big bang and Rosie the Riveter.
I would totally come back to EAA AirVenture, and I’d highly suggest you do the same, if you get the chance!