Kern County Airshow 2004 Highlights

The Kern County airshow was supposed to start at 1 o'clock, so I took my own sweet time to get my equipment ready when I arrived in the parking lot at 11:30.   I had just started to walk toward the entrance when a very unusual looking jet zoomed past.   With a delta wing and canards just behind the engine intakes I thought it might be a Swedish Saab, perhaps a Viggen or a Gripen.   I moved closer as quickly as I could and managed to get this shot on its third pass.
    This is an Israeli Kfir "lion cub", a significantly modified version of the French Mirage 5, a plane which was built in Israel even though the French had an arms embargo against Israel and therefore wouldn't give them a manufacturing license.   This required a certain amount of behind the scenes effort by the Israelis in order to obtain blueprints and other technical information.   The US Navy and the US Marines leased 25 Kfirs for three or four years and operated them as F-21s to simulate enemy aircraft during "Red Flag" combat training.   This particular aircraft is operated by the American civilian company ATAC (Airborne Tactical Advantage Company), and is used for training of American military personnel.
    Kfirs have also been sold to Colombia and Ecuador.  It's capable of Mach 2.3, largely because of the more powerful American engine which replaced the original French design.   The new engine required modifications to the air intakes and fuselage, and you can also see the air scoops just in front of the tail which were added to provide cooling for the afterburner.
 

Another aircraft which wasn't on the list of performers turned up less than 5 minutes after the Kfir, a T-33 Shooting Star jet.   This aircraft was the trainer version of America's first jet fighter, the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, which later became the F-80.   The F-80, with its unsophisticated straight wings and tail surfaces, was soon outclassed by swept-wing jets like the American F-86 Sabre and the Russian MiG 15 but the T-33, which was affectionately called the T-bird, continued in service for many years, both with the United States Air Force and with foreign military forces.   Over 7000 T-33s were eventually built, compared to just over 1700 P-80s.   This T-33 was flying in so it could go on static display, and in fact I had to temporarily move my chair and myself out of the way so it could be parked.

The Kern County airshow is not in the major leagues, so the only reason that I made the 380 mile (610 kilometer) round trip was to see an aircraft which is very rarely displayed, an EA-6B Prowler, the electronic warfare version of the now retired A-6 Intruder attack plane.   I was destined to be disappointed, just as I had been four days earlier at the Prescott Air Show, but just as at Prescott, other aircraft made up for the absence of the plane I'd come to see.   The Kfir was an extraordinary bonus, as was the T-33, and here's another - a B-52 Stratofortress, which first flew in 1952 and is currently scheduled to remain in service until 2040, even though the last one was built in 1962!   The Stratofortress is quite a common sight on static display at American airshows, but after attending well over 20 airshows in the United States, this is the first time I've ever seen it flying here (though I did see one do a display in England at the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2002, with the added bonus that it took off in front of the crowd, did its display and then landed, complete with parachute-assisted braking.   Of course, since this was England, all of this was done under an unattractive thick grey overcast).
 

This AV-8B Harrier vertical takeoff and landing attack plane is a much more intriguing and innovative piece of technology than the Stratofortress, but I've seen it hover and roar at so many shows that I've almost entirely lost interest in it!   If you're still fascinated by it then you might want to check out these photos of it at Oshkosh in 2002 and Prescott in 2004 (both these pages will open in a new window).