Seafair aerobatics a “sweet deal” for military pilots
The smoke-trailed spins that Air National Guard Maj. John Klatt performs in his aerobatic airplane may elicit oohs and aahs from spectators, but frequent of the stunts are part of standard militia training.
“Those were a couple of beautiful basic maneuvers,” Klatt said Wednesday, after hanging upside down 1,300 feet above the ground, rolling his Extra 300 midair and pulling seven Gs in series of face-melting loops.
Klatt has served pair tours in Iraq since 2005 and is slated for any other possible deployment this winter. But for the time of his summerlong air-show tour
“It’s been a lifelong passion,” he related.
Klatt’s is a sentiment shared by several other pilots scheduled to play in this weekend’s air show, set to contain 11 performers, the Blue Angels amid them.
“It’s a fragrance deal,” said Air Force Capt. Paul Brown, an A-10 Thunderbolt II demo pilot who flies in 30 air shows a year. “It’s altogether normal, day-to-day stuff that we prepare out there in training, and we’re showing really what the airplane is capable of.”
The most difficult air maneuver Brown performs involves nose-diving and recovering just 200 feet before hitting the ground. The stunt is a counterfeiting of a weapons drop near friendly forces
“The most obscure thing is making sure you know who are the serviceable guys and who are the bad guys before you pull the trigger, because you can’t ever convey the bullets back,” he said.
The A-10 Brown flies is considered the “500-pound gorilla” of combat planes, carrying massive amounts of bombs and rockets and capable of flying out of rougher airfields.
“If you’re going off-road in the dirt, you wouldn’t want to take the Corvette, you’d take the truck,” Brown said. “We may not be the fastest, and we’re certainly not the best-looking, nevertheless we’re the pickup truck of fighters.”
The mammoth of this weekend’s air show is an Air Force C-17 Globemaster III cargo plane, flown by Air Force Capt. Philip Poeppelman.
Poeppelman has flown the cargo smooth all over the world, including Iraq and a mission in Antarctica for the National Science Foundation, he uttered.
