THUNDER OVER MICHIGAN 2021

[Xray]

Wow, Blues were off the hook today.
4 ships took off at 11am and practiced, landed and the solos went up and tore around for half an hour.
They landed, and an hour later all 6 went up and did a show practice.

Was expecting the Tbirds to show up for practice but they never did, apparently they will have the skies on FRI for their practice.

F-35's flew in and did a weak couple of passes and flew to Selfridge, outside of that 1 red tailed Mustang did a couple passes and landed.

[Sir11]

Can’t wait for the practice session today. Heard it’s usually around 11am, so in about an hour is when I expect to hear music in my ears!
Looks like the Blue Angles did their practice earlier than expected. Thunderbirds 1-4 did a brief practice as well. Just around 2:30pm, the F35 and the A-10 did a heritage side-by-side flight. The F35 sure is loud!

[Xray]

Yeah the Blues started around 10 am, followed by a 4 ship TB practice.
F-35 & A-10 did their routines [F-18 Growler as well], then the TB's came back again with all 6 ships.

Was surprised there were not many fly ins at all. A400 was there and saw 1 B-25 come in. Looks to be around 8 on the ramp so they must have arrived late yesterday or early today.

[kennsmithf2g]

A few from today from the photo pit

[Xray]

Superb shots Ken from a great location

[hurricane_yank]

How many B-25's ended up making it?

[kalamazookid]

How many B-25's ended up making it?

Fourteen:

Rosie's Reply
Semper Fi
Devil Dog
Take-Off Time
Killer B
Lady Luck
Georgie's Gal
Yankee Doodle
Georgia Mae
Show Me
Wild Cargo
Miss Mitchell
Maid in the Shade
Champaign Gal

It was a fun morning. It felt a little rushed at times and there are some definite drawbacks to a drive-in format that I don't personally care for, but I thought Thunder did an excellent job pulling this off. They put together a great lineup of aircraft and everything that was advertised flew. I did not expect the A-10 to take part in the Heritage Flight this morning alongside the F-35 and P-51 so that ended up being a nice bonus. Thanks to the Thunder crew for putting in the work and being creative enough to make this happen.

[kennsmithf2g]

[Noha307]

Two interesting facts I learned:

• Wild Cargo was the only aircraft in attendance with metal (as opposed to fiberglass) blister gun fairings.
• Yankee Doodle was the only aircraft in attendance without exhaust collector rings.

I think this might be my favorite picture:

[ErrolC]

Thanks for the photos everyone. Show report from The Aviationist.
https://theaviationist.com/2021/08/10/t ... -air-show/