Warbird Information Exchange

My father use to tell me that having many aircraft in the air at the same time, same location was extremely stressful, your eyes were everywhere looking for aircraft not to run into. For those of you who fly or have flown formation, what are your thoughts? ... and have any of you flown in the large formations done by POF or TFC? ...

I flew lead on a flight of 4, behind another flight of 4. We were part of the mass flyover at OSH in 1995, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of WW2. I was told there were 100 aircraft in the formation flyover, crossing at show center at the same time from various directions and at various altitudes.
The only thing I saw out my window, other than the flight ahead & my wingmen, were 2 Spitfires below me and an 8 ship of T-28s above. Of the 100 airplanes in the air at the same time, I hardly saw anything.
Folks on the ground said that the whole show audience became quiet at the sound of aircraft engines from the approaching mass flyover..........I wish I coulda heard that; that woulda been cool.
VL

During one the Wings Over houston shows a few years back I was flying panel on FIFI and the highlight of the show was we had 102 aircraft over the airport at the same time, from an L-4 to us heavies. Everyone that had a window seat was on the lookout.

Must have been a little stressful, with 100 aircraft in the air?, just one guy screws up and .... don't even want to think about it.

My dad and I flew into OSH a couple of times when I was young, he always told me to be quiet when we were on final approach for OSH because of so many aircraft landing at the same time. Or should I say one right after the other. Very stressful for him.

Another stressful flight, we were flying 3 C-130s in formation, in the airport pattern, and in the weather using Station Keeping Equipment (SKE). We had no visual on the other aircraft (that's what the SKE is for), the pilot started to get vertigo real bad, shifting from the ADI to the SKE scope, me and the co-pilot realized this and told him to fly the airplane, while me and the co-pilot watched the scope. Everything worked out great, no harm, no foul. That's what team work (crew resource management) in an airplane is all about.

I have flown at Oshkosh in an eighteen plane group in the airshow, also smaller groups that were part of the bigger mass of perhaps 70 planes. From a pilot or technique standpoint it doesn't make a lot of difference how many other planes are there; you are just focusing on one and formating on that one. There are specific aim spots to line up on the common planes; such as the wing tip and tailwheel on a T-6 and the spinner and wing tip on a P-51, or cowl and alieron on a T-34. Of course the big formation is great to see as you look past the lead plane. I remember hoping nothing went wrong because there are a lot of planes in a small space if you have to avoid each other suddenly. Flying close escort with the big bombers is inspiring. As Vlado said that big celebration in 1995 was spectacular. Flying with the fighters is great, but being in a group of fighters in close to the Lanc and B-17s, etc, is tops.

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Bill Greenwood
Spitfire N308WK

14 B-25s at Fresno was pretty cool!

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Don't touch my junk!!

I've flown in a number of large warbird formations at air shows, including large "gaggles" at Houston (FM-2 and SB2C) and OKC (SNJ and FM-2). At one of the shows in the 1980s at Breckenridge, Tx, I was asked to give a ride in the back seat of my SNJ to an active AF pilot, Captain I think, who was a T-38 and formation instructor. We flew as Number 4 in the fourth flight of four in a diamond of diamonds - i.e. the tail end charlie in four flights of AT-6/SNJ/Harvards in a diamond formation. This can be a really fun but interesting position depending on the others in the flights and can require a good bit of careful throttle jockeying.

When we landed the Captain thanked me for the ride and said he really enjoyed it but had one question. As an experienced formation pilot he asked why the engine RPM had never wavered from 2000 r.p.m. despite my constant adjustments of throttle in formation. When I answered " The SNJ has a constant speed prop" he then asked "what's that?" It turned out that he had gone thru flight training starting in jets and had never before flown an aircraft with a prop. Of course, I've never commanded a jet powered aircraft in my life and that's fine with me!

Randy

Bill, did you ever worry about who was behind you and if someone may have been flying at a faster clip than you? ... this is probably not a good example, but I envision what happens on the freeway when a car far ahead slows down for some reason and all the rest behind start to clump up. Does anything like this happen? ....

I don't mean to sound boastful in any way, but stressful is not a term I would use inconnection with a large group formation operation. The normal stresses sure, but as Bill said, nothing above normal from small to large formations. If the view of the lead dog never changes........then all is OK.
VL

When you are in a large formation, or a small one, the only thing you see is the alighnment points you are using, ie, for Oshkosh, it is tailwheel wing tip. What makes formation flying hard is a bad lead. If lead is not steady on turns, keeps a constant altitude, heading and airspeed, it gets real ugly for those further back in the formation. At Oshkosh, I was the only non-pilot to be allowed to be in the air during the Warbird show. I was in Carl's backseat. My job was to help listen to the radio in flight, watch for traffic, moniter the formation, call lights on and off on the inbound and outbound legs. keep the checklist on check-in, to moniter the landings and keep track of those that went around. and the biggest job, to hound Carl about altitude and airspeed, and distance from show center.

Something Carl used to teach was if he ever looked over at his wingman, and he did not see his eyeballs looking back at him, then when the wingman looked up to see when lead was, he would be looking very hard, because he would be long gone.

I was helping instruct formation flying one time and the pilot I was with was flying #3 postition. Lead called for a frequency change. Instead of opening up the distance for the plane he was guiding on, he just looked down at his radio. I guarded the controls and was ready to take the plane if he got too close. Well, we drifted up toward the #2 plane and just as I was about the grab the control, he looked up and jerked the plane back where it was suposed to be, I told him I bet you will not do that again will you.

I heard two recent instances where a pilot in formation was not doing such a great job. The first was at the POF airshow last year. The P-38 in invasion stripes was not keeping up with the other two P-38's. The second was at the gathering of Mustangs were one P-51 was not keeping up with the rest to create the large "51" in the air. You see this in the photos of the "51" .... This was information passed on to me, probably was wrong info, but what do you guys think? ...



Don't worry, you're not .... , maybe what I'm getting at is when you have several aircraft flying in a large oval in the same direction, I can see not really worrying with who are behind you, but there are times when you have aircraft at different airspeeds, different altitudes and different directions. Some landing, some taking off, etc. I've seen this many times and I've always been amazed as to how everything is so under control. I commend the folks who give you guys your pre-flight breefings. Must be a lot of prep work.

One way the T-6s were able to put together a large formation that looked good was a good brief, good lead, and a plane flying top cover and spotting the ones out of place. Bud Cashion was our top cover, he would then call them and say how to move to get back in place.

You never saw top cover from the ground as when we were in bound, he would break off and rejoin the formation after the pass over the field.

I was towing at a national glider competition here in PA in 2006. 66 gliders were entered in the contest and we were running 7 towplanes. When they started launching, procedure was to take off, get 200-300 feet agl then make a 45 degree left turn to the 1500 foot-ish ridge 2 miles away. Once "on the ridge" the gliders released and broke right as the towplanes broke left. At a rate of 3 or 4 gliders launched a minute, the release point got very crowded. I was amazed to watch 10-20, sometimes more gliders circle in the same thermal, and very happy I wasn't in one! Towards the end of launching all the gliders, you'd have two or three "thermal furballs" in a tight area and trying to mantain seperation with 70 other aircraft was very challenging at the least.
In addition to the glider traffic, I also had to deal with the other towplanes. I was flying a jump/tow 182 amongst a 260 pawnee, a bunch of tired 235 pawnees, and a scout. I could out tow the scout, and keep up with the 235s for the most part, but the 260 pawnee was way faster on the way up. I made up for it in the descent.
Once your glider was off tow, wingover to the left and head for a grain silo, the IP. All passes had to be completed by the IP. I was always concerned on the race back of overtaking the slower pawnees. While not the only method I used, I found at the low altitude, looking for shadows near my own would show aircraft in blindspots I could not see. This only worked because of the low altitude and same relative flight path. This was not the way I spent the majority of time scanning, but I did learn it was worth the occasional glance...
On the fasted day, we launched 66 gliders and 12 or so relights in 47 minutes. Talk about traffic!

I'd have to think that the stressful spot would be that of the CO organizing such a group. 1000 aircraft of mixed bombers from various airfields, on time to fly into Germany...

From inside, I'd agree with Vlado, "plane of reference", you versus the immediate aircraft around you is all you can worry about.

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"There are old pilots and bold pilots but few old, bold pilots."