A-10 "Warthog"

The date: August 7, 1996, the place, Kamloops, British Columbia. It was the Kamloops Airshow and we were there to make sure that everything was five by five (the Kamloops Airshow was easier and cheaper to get into than the Abbotsford Airshow.) It was all good and as usual, even though I had had my war-like stuff surgically removed yonks back, it was the warplanes that were the coolest. There was a World War II vintage Spitfire-trainer there, which was cool, but it was the A-10 “Warthogs” in the static display that really got the crowds attention. We weren’t allowed to get close but the view was still excellent (unlike a few years before when the static display was up close and personal. You could talk to the pilots, one of whom had the call-sign “Joker”. His plane had a cartoon of the Batman’s arch-enemy, “Joker” on the hatch.)


The planes did a couple of fly-bys and then, in conjunction with the Kamloops Pyrotechnics Club (the Kamloops Pyrotechnics Club? Who knew?) they did a strafing. Barrels had been set up along the runway and as the A-10s flew by firing their cannons the barrels blew up.

This is the beginning of the strafing run, just before he began firing,

and this is just after. The barrel you see flying into the air wound up flying higher than the plane had been flying. It might have been just an optical illusion, but it sure looked good.

Anyway… Humouroceros

PS: I included this one just because the blast was so big. We could feel the heart from where we were sitting some distance away.