Wings Over Camarillo 2015 (Day One)

It was a great day at the airshow – a long, long, long day, but a great day nonetheless. The weather was really good, a bit hazy and muggy but only in the low 80s with a nice breeze. (Since last week it was in the mid 90s, this wasn’t bad.) The crowds were good, no one got hurt, no metal got bent, and a good time was had by all.

There were lots of planes, both on the ground and in the sky, but for tonight I’m just going to share the ones the CAF had flying and the star of the show, the Marine Osprey. As you might expect, despite working my little buns off all day, I still managed to take over 900 DSLR pictures, plus video, plus cellphone pictures… You might be seeing airshow pictures for a few days.

Our PT-19. “PT” stands for “Primary Trainer,” which is what this aircraft was used for at the beginning of World War II.

Our Spitfire, “chasing off” a “German attacker”. The attacker is actually a US “Texan” or “SNJ” trainer painted as a German Messerschmidt, and in this case the Spitfire was going a lot faster and actually passed his target, which would have made it the target instead. But let’s assume that before passing the target the Spitfire would have shot it down first.

“Man O’ War,” our P-51 Mustang. Yes, it is going that fast and, YES!!, it is that cool to fly in her. (I can arrange that for a very reasonable fee, actually.)

The belly of our Zero, turning away because someone was “chasing” her.

Our F6F Hellcat. Might have been “chasing” a Zero.

Our F8F Bearcat.

Yeah, they’re still at it. That is the Hellcat chasing the Zero.

The Marine V-22 “Osprey”. Those are freakishly huge propellers and this is a fantastic all-purpose aircraft, although that may not be obvious from this photo. Here it’s passing by at about 180 knots.

Same aircraft, with a slight change in its configuration. Here it’s hovering at about 0 knots. Now we know why it’s got those honkin huge propellers.

Is it a slightly smaller-and-slower-than-average airplane or a monstrously huge helicopter? Yes, yes it is.

It also occurred to me late this afternoon that this, with the exception of the Osprey,  was just about the same lineup we had last year, so the pictures are very similar to the pictures I posted last year. I’m sure I’ll take more pictures tomorrow, but maybe I’ll look for a different “angle.”