2002 Wings Over Wine Country Airshow
August 24 & 25, 2002
Santa Rosa, CA

Bernardo Malfitano, PCAM fan and 
Aerodynamics Researcher at Stanford University, 
provides photos of the 2002 Airshow for all to enjoy. Check
out the static displays, flying performances, CDF, and military 
aircraft photographs as well as informative and entertaining commentary. 

Welcome to my pages on the Wings Over Wine Country Airshow! Let me say before anything else that I get more comments from people about my commentary on these pages than about my pictures, people seem to find the captions and information as worthwhile as the photography. So I’ll do some more of that (hey, if nothing else, you have something to do while the pictures load), feel free to skip it and just look at the pictures of pretty planes, or to read just about the planes you think they look cool, whatever. Naturally, feel free to read it all. (But if you do choose to skip the text and want to tell me what you thought of the site, don’t you dare say something like “Ooh, I liked that cool silver plane”…)

The Airshow took place at the Sonoma County airport in Santa Rosa, CA. It services, among other things, the Pacific Coast Air Museum, which organized this wonderful Airshow. So let’s start with the museum aircraft, which sit there year-round for the pleasure of air fanatics. Most of them are Korea and Vietnam’s finest fighters and fighter-bombers, the cutting edge of American military and aeronautical technology at their respective times. The rest are other exceptional aircraft.

Here we see (from left to right) a Lockheed T-33 (the trainer version of the P-80 / F-80 Shooting Star, the first US jet fighter), a couple North American F-86 Sabres, the shark-toothed white nose of a Vought F-8 Corsair 2, and the very tip of the black nose of an F-105 Thunderchief, chronologically arranged.

Walking past this row of warplanes lets one easily see the tremendous progress in aviation that went on during the 50s. (It is often said that there was more progress in aviation from 1945 to 1960 then there has been since. This is not to say that airplanes have not come a long way since the 60s. Better materials, much more efficient engines, higher safety aspects and computer control make today’s airplanes much easier to fly and cheaper to operate. But in terms of performance, navigation technologies, and weapons, Vietnam aircraft have essentially all the same systems carried by the most modern airplanes of today, if in a more crude form. And don’t forget that the Blackbird, which still holds a speed record of about 2000 miles per hour, is a 1959 design. Also from that time, the 707 defined the shape of airliners to come, is still flown, and does not look out of place in today’s airports sitting between brand-new Boeings and Airbuses). This was the period when supersonic aerodynamics was being understood and the potential of the jet engine was being realized.)

The T-33, with straight wings and tail planes, a stubby nose, and an unremarkable cylindrical fuselage, is really not significantly more advanced than any World War 2 fighter, except for its Allison jet engine (derivatives of which are still made today). But as the first very successful military jet (over 8000 built, many still flying, as aggressors, trainers, and test aircraft, or just as rich pilots’ toys) and as one of the most significant airplanes of the Korean War (a successful fighter and a stable, rugged ground support plane), the Shooting Star is very historically significant.

(Pointless Trivia: Brazil flew T-33s and F-80s as an interim jet to replace overly-fatigued Gloster Meteors before getting Mirage IIIs. The pilots, fresh from WW2 (from pulling g’s and going fast at low altitude in bombing runs in Italy using P-47s) over-stressed the then-new British jets, and they were grounded and irreparably cracked very early. The Lockheed jets – older, slower, inferior fighters but good bombers and superb trainers, and available for cheap in large numbers – were acquired in a hurry so we had something to protect out skies until we found a proper interceptor. In typically bureaucratic Brazilian Military fashion, it took 19 years for the pokey Shooting Stars to be replaces by the then-superb Mirages).

The F-86 Sabre was the first airplane to, in a steep and quite uncontrolled dive, nudge the sound barrier and live to tell the tale (about a week before the X-1 pierced it in controlled level flight). It has a sleek teardrop-shaped canopy and swept wings and tail planes (which create less drag at transsonic speeds – The F-86 was designed 5 years after the T-33 and thus incorporated these new discoveries), but the wings still have a high-ish aspect ratio and the fuselage is still cylindrical.

(Early versions of the F-86 had 6 machine guns firing small-caliber bullets. In many dogfights, it was reported that a MiG-15 could be hit by these bullets repeatedly, ending up with a lot of small holes but remaining in the air. So large-caliber cannons were experimented with, very successfully, and four of them fit into F-86s, the later versions. That’s why the left F-86, the one with the yellow bands, has three little holes on each side of the nose, and the other F-86, with the open canopy, has two)

(And by reading the little sign, I learn that the left F-86 is actually a rare RF-86, the recon/spyplane version of the Sabre. The bump right under the canopy (just aft of the 3 holes where the machine guns shoot out) is where the cameras go. There is another bump at the same place on the other side).



The F-8, 5 years younger a design than the F-86, has low-aspect-ratio swept wings and tail planes, and its fuselage is contoured in interesting ways to minimize supersonic shockwave drag. (Notice also a feature unique to the F-8: the wings, which are optimized for high-speed performance, can be tilted to a higher angle of attack relative to the fuselage, as you see here (normally, that part sticking out the top is retracted to be flush with the fuselage). This way the plane can land with the wings at a higher angle of attack, and the plane itself doesn’t have to tilt back too much – notice that the belly of the plane is almost touching the ground already, especially at the tail).

The F-105, 5 years younger still, has jet intakes that are not simply round like the older jets’ intakes, but which were carefully designed to take advantage of sonic shockwaves at high altitudes and speeds – again, knowledge too new to make it into the F-8 or the other guys. (But a new version of the F-8, built after the F-105 (in 1959) to compete with the F-4, has a forward-swept intake similar to the F-105’s. Similar intakes can be also be found in the brand spankin’ new Lockheed stealth, the Joint Strike Fighter. The designs from 1960 are not really inferior to today’s when it comes to supersonic aerodynamics). The F-105 is also noteworthy for being one of the largest and heaviest single-engine planes ever built – definitely the biggest of its time. It was built around a giant bomb bay that could carry a nuclear bomb (they were huge back then). Add two people, a lot of navigation equipment, a GIANT turbojet engine and a heck of a lot of fuel for it, and you’ve got over 30 tons of F-105. Fully loaded, it’s slightly heavier than some 737s.



Going over to the other side, we see, from left to right, an Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, a Grumman A-6 Intruder, the famous Grumman F-14 Tomcat, and the legendary McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom 2.





The A-4 (this particular one has me in it, I don’t know if you can tell); was designed in the early 50’s to be a cheap, small bomber and ground-support aircraft for the US Navy. It turned out extremely agile and with lots of room for expansion (despite the fact it’s one of the smallest jets ever flown by the US military, and the smallest manned jet flown by them today), so it has through the last decades been fitted with all kinds of equipment and weapons, and was flown by many countries with different roles (recon, damage assessment, bomber, trainer, aggressor, ground support, aerobatic demonstrations, and fighter). It was used by the Blue Angels until they got F/A-18s. Along with planes like the C-130, the A-4 is one of those remarkably timeless designs whose simplicity and robustness and versatility allowed it a service life of over 50 years (and counting). (Pointless Trivia: The Brazilian Navy is the Skyhawk’s newest operator, and the first country other than the US to deploy Skyhawks off of aircraft carriers). I’m a big fan of this little guy.



Here’s the A-6 Intruder (“But I hardly even…”), with one of its J52-P-8B engines next to it. (If you can tell me which version of the intruder had the ‘8B engines… Then you probably don’t have a life. Just kidding, it’s the E version, although this guy was built as an A-6A and later was retrofitted with the engines and equipment that make it an A-6E. At one point, the announcer, while talking about the fact we had with us one of the last two P-51Hs around, made a point that it’s not a big deal to know different versions, engines, etc, and that if you do know all that, some may say you don’t have much of a life… But he, and you, would say you just like airplanes a lot. With him at the announcer’s tower at the time was Steve Stavrikakis, who reminded him that indeed one could like airplanes that much and still have an exciting life). 

As far as ground support goes, the A-6 Intruder revolutionized that important aspect of warfare. Ground support used to mean stable, slow, simple, small airplanes like the A-4, but they were not sophisticated enough to navigate in bad weather for a long time, or to bomb at night or at low visibility (rain or fog). So during the Korean war, US ground troops were attacked at their camps often at night and in bad weather. This was because attackers knew they had impunity from bombers. The A-6 was developed in response to that. Its huge radar and then-revolutionary navigation system allowed it to take off, fly low into valleys (brushing the proverbial treetops), bomb a precise location, and return also snaking over rivers at low altitude, and land back on the carrier – without the pilot or weapons officer ever having to look out the window. It also was among the first airplanes to carry a FLIR (forward-looking infra-red, the type of camera that generates those green images at night for bombing, familiar from CNN during the Gulf War – where the A-6 also was very successful), and to drop smart bombs (towards the end of Vietnam). 

It can fly at .95 the speed of sound, has an un-refueled range of about 1000 miles fully loaded with bombs, or about 2500 miles with extra fuel tanks – and much more than that if refueled in mid air (compare that with the F/A-18’s range of about 400 miles, and the Intruder’s payload being double that of the Hornet!) Truly an exceptional airplane. Later versions of it were used for radar-jamming (and radar/SAM raids, with HARM missiles) and electronic warfare.



The classic, legendary F-4 Phantom. A 1959 design, it was the first to include practically all the systems present in a modern jet fighter, and is about as fast as any jet flying today. It was ordered by the US Navy as an interceptor (beating out a new-and-improved Super F-8), but in joint war games, the US Air Force found it was faster, more agile and had better weapons than their fighters. So they ordered F-4s for themselves (the F-4 in the museum was an Air Force bird). The Phantom soon became the main high-performance military jet in both Air Force and Navy, and just in time for the Vietnam war. It excelled in bombing, ground support, and of course air-to-air combat. It has been flown by many air forces and navies worldwide, and until the F-14 and F-15 came along, there was nothing quite like it.

(Pointless Trivia: The Royal Navy flew F-4s off their carriers. They were modified to house the lower-thrust, more efficient Spey engine, made by the British, instead of the General Electric J79 engine used in other F-4s. This meant British Phantoms were not as fast, but could travel further and stay in the air for much longer, patrolling the sky over the carrier battle group. Spey engines were the ones used in the Thrust SuperSonic Car).




The Grumman F-14 Tomcat, of Top Gun fame, needs no introduction. The fastest jet in the US Navy inventory, it’s sleek, massive, quite agile, and has a weapons system like no other. Its variable-geometry “swing wings” allow for both slow, gentle, controlled landings AND low supersonic drag. Its massive radar can track over a dozen targets over a hundred miles away, and engage up to six of them simultaneously with the unique Phoenix missile (well, with 6 of them), a million-dollar missile with its own high-tech radar for guidance and a range of over 60 miles, originally developed for the (failed) interceptor version of the Blackbird. The Tomcat is also not a bad bomber, a role only recently (and successfully) experimented with. At 30 years of age, they are now starting to be replaced by the stealthier and more efficient F/A-18E and F SuperHornets, but are still more advanced and definitely deadlier than most combat jets in the world. 

The museum also has this rare Ilyushin-14, a Russian transport (analogous in its role, performance, age and size to the Douglas DC-4 series of transports), with one massive and insanely complex radial engine removed, its insides exposed. 






Then there’s this Gyrocopter by Sportscopter:


 
(very “Pilotwings”, huh?)

This lovely, sleek, elegant-looking T-38:


 

 
(I like T-38s, even if mostly for aesthetic reasons, and because I grew up in Brazil watching F-5s fly overhead, in awe of their sound, speed, and looks)





The Bell UH-1 Huey is synonymous with Vietnam combat, especially to those who fought there. It was made in huge numbers, and used for delivery of ground troops (who, as you probably know, were very numerous). It is used by air forces, armies, and navies all over the world as a troop transport, cargo transport, VIP transport, airborne control-and-command, gunship, observation, ambulance, training, etc, and as transport by private individuals and companies. Many, many Hueys still fly today.

The museum also has a GORGEOUS Grumman SA/U-16 Albatross (I love big old seaplanes) and a C-118.



And I saved the best for last:



A gorgeous F-16N, known to the Navy as a “Viper”. When the Air Force evaluated the Lockheed F-16 Fighting Falcon for purchase in 1973 and ‘74, it was easily seen that this was the most agile and maneuverable jet then in existence. Small, light, powerful, and originally quite cheap, it was an ideal Aggressor (i.e., playing “enemy” in war games, teaching dog fighting and other air-to-air combat skills – this one here was used to train Top Gun pilots, flown by instructors against the students’ F-14s and F/A-18s). Only a few were made for this specialized role, the small bunch of F-16s operated by the US Navy.

The museum also has a Strikemaster – read on to see it and many other cool planes in ground displays and air displays.