US Naval Aviation Centennial

johnsonx42 · 2011-02-02, 06:53 AM

So, this is pretty off-topic, but that's what this forum is for...

Anyone else around here all geeked up for the Centennial of US Naval Aviation? 100 years ago the first naval aircraft landed on the water, was hoisted aboard a US Navy cruiser off the coast of San Diego, then returned to the water and took off again. Thus began the combination of air and sea power.

I'll be down in San Diego on Naval Air Station - North Island in two weeks to see the big kick-off event of the year. The big highlight will be an aerial parade of 190 aircraft spanning the entire history of naval aviation, including a 30 plane flight from the John C Stennis carrier strike group.

Here's the navy's centennial site: http://www.public.navy.mil/airfor/centen...lcome.aspx

Anyone else geeked up about airplanes in general?

here's a couple of shots of Navy or Marine aircraft I've taken which don't completely suck and have already been cropped down to a more reasonable size for uploading

re-Barr · 2011-02-04, 02:06 AM

Sweet! Thanks for the heads up. I will have to look into that site. Love aircraft esp. military.

HarryH3 · 2011-02-04, 06:37 PM

I used to live about a mile from the stadium at the Air Force Academy. Each year at graduation time The Thunderbirds perform an airshow during the ceremony. They practice the show the day before, so I would get to watch TWO airshows that week. Some of the approaches came in low enough to rattle the dishes in the cupboards. It was awesome... They also brought out cool stuff for half-time shows at their football games. The best was always when they played against Army. The AF would do flyovers with all their cool toys (regular and stealth fighters and bombers, AWACS planes, etc.) and the Army would bring out their monster troop carrier planes with helicopter gunship escorts. My kids and I loved it! Smile

johnsonx42 · 2011-02-05, 04:52 AM

great, I just got done typing in a nice story about how I finally started going to airshows because of my son's interest in airplanes, talked about our first couple of airshows together, what he really likes, etc., it was quite touching, and when I finally got done and clicked "submit", I lost the whole thing to a database error on the site.

so fine...

My son likes airplanes. We go to airshows. The end.