Big, noisy, shiny jets are a tough act to follow, but the firebombing demo that came after the Growlers was a great palate cleanser, and proved that aerial precision and teamwork are in no way the exclusive domain of the military!
The KC-135 tanker demo that followed left a bit to be desired, frankly, as we were under the impression there would be an air to air refueling demonstration with some kind of fighters trailing the big jet. Sadly, all we got were some passes with the fueling boom extended. Still cool to see after three years with no airshows though!
For military aviation buffs though, the big draw was the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack aircraft - more commonly known as "the Warthog."
A plane designed from the ground up around its principal armament - a 30mm, 7-barrel gatling gun capable of firing milk-bottle-sized rounds with shells made of depleted uranium. These super-bullets will penetrate most armoured vehicles like their protection is made out of chiffon, they deliver 7 times the energy of a comparable 20mm Vulcan round, and the 'Hog can fire 70 of them every second.
The one that flew our demo was painted up in legacy colours, with its livery matching those of their squadron's F-105 Thunderchiefs which flew ground support fire missions in Vietnam. The names below the cockpit are missing and killed aviators from that conflict.
Almost half the A-10's wing surface is aileron (the flippy turny bit), allowing the Warthog to make impossibly tight turns and get that GAU-8 cannon back on target as quickly as possible. Even though the engines are designed to be quieter than those on a fighter, this was probably the most impressive demo of the day.
Glory and I are both fans of radio chatter, so when the narrator described a mock fire mission at show center for the pilot to demonstrate his gun run, we were pretty intrigued (even if I can only make out every third word or so).
And these are just a handful of the 150 or so pictures Glory snapped of this amazing and intimidating machine.
While he was waiting to return to the hot pad, the A-10 pilot played a little rock-paper-scissors with kids in the crowd.
But as good as Glory's camera is, I got my favourite pic of the day with the one on my phone:
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