Airshow!

Family fun at America's answer to the military parade

We were living in Beijing in 2009 when the Party celebrated the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic. The main event was a giant military parade that would roll down Chang’an Avenue and past the Party dignitaries assembled on top of the Gate of Heavenly Peace, which definitely sounds like a place to review a bunch of weapons.¹

Our apartment was east of downtown, along the same boulevard that becomes Chang’an Ave. A rail spur that normally delivered trainloads of coal to the huge power station next door made it a good place to stage the armored vehicles participating in the parade. It was also a good place to breathe a lot of coal soot and heavy metals, but that was Beijing in those days.

The day of the parade dress rehearsal, I put my toddler son on my shoulders and we stood with our neighbors and watched hundreds of tanks roll down the street² in front of our compound. Tanks on Chang’an Ave is a historically complicated image, but it was also undeniably cool. My son was raptured on a cloud of diesel fumes.

After the rehearsal, I was excited to watch the actual parade in person. We would all line the streets and cheer for the might of China!

We would do no such thing. In the best authoritarian tradition, there would be no disorderly public crowds along the route. Only carefully selected groups in carefully selected areas. I, a politically unreliable foreign dork, would have to watch on TV with the masses. Like everyone else who lived along the parade route, we were restricted to our compound during the day of the main event.

The parade was a spectacle of brutal precision and Party homily. You have not lived until you’ve watched a parade with both a lock-step battalion of gun-toting female military reservists in red skirts and white go-go boots and a “Mao Zedong Thought Formation” float. That is a vibe! I recommend videographer Dan Chung’s timelapse, which condenses the three-hour parade into three glorious minutes.

Here in the U.S., we don’t often do grand military parades. Since the 1946 WWII victory parade, there have been three: Eisenhower’s inauguration, Kennedy’s inauguration, and the 1991 Gulf War Victory Parade. At the latter, a shirt-sleeved George H.W. Bush, liberator of Kuwait, mugged and waved in exactly the way that a buttoned-down and solemn Hu Jintao did not.

Like all such events, both the Gulf War Victory Parade and the Chinese National Day parade served a few communication purposes:

• Nationalist pep rally

• Ostentatious display of military technology and capabilities

• Demonstration of military subservience to the leadership

• Transmission of the message, “we can kick your ass”

Given the post-9/11 valorization of The Troops, why hasn’t the U.S. hasn’t gone in harder on military parades in the 34 years since Bush’s Gulf War pageant?

A few possible reasons. They’re expensive. They chew up streets. Slinking out of Afghanistan after twenty years of grinding, inconclusive low-intensity warfare didn’t seem like something to celebrate. They creep some people out. If the tanks can roll down Constitution Avenue for a parade, they could roll down Constitution Avenue for, you know, other reasons.

There is also an anachronistic, Cold War, dick-swinging vibe to military parades. It’s very Kim Jong-un. Look at my giant missiles! Given America’s abundant actual use of its missiles over the past three decades, ceremonial display seems a tad (or a THAAD³) redundant.

Finally, in keeping with American tradition, we’ve privatized some of the functions of military parades. NFL football games are nationalist pep rallies and displays of troop worship. A few tanks on the sidelines wouldn’t feel out of place at your average Eagles-Cowboys Monday Night game, and might be useful for crowd control and streakers.

Joe Buck: Jalen Hurts slow to get up from that last play.

Troy Aikman: He’s taking a real beating today. The Birds offensive line still struggling to contain the rush.

Joe Buck: They’re going to have to find an answer if…oh my. We’ve got a fan on the field with too much enthusiasm and too little clothing.

Troy Aikman: You hate to see that at a family event. Fortunately, we’ve got the First Armored Division on the sidelines today.

Joe Buck: Yes indeed, and it looks like they’re just about to…

BLAM!!!!

Troy Aikman: Ouch. Should have read the fine print on the back of the ticket.

Joe Buck: They’re going to be mopping up for a few minutes. We’ll step away.

[ESPN bumper]

Angry Male Voice: BUY THIS GIANT PICKUP TRUCK OR YOUR BALLS WILL FALL OFF AND YOUR WIFE WILL SCREW A DENTIST!!!

The toddler who bounced on my shoulders in 2009 is now seventeen, which is wild, but also how time works. He outgrew tanks, and is now hardcore into aviation. I recently accompanied him to an airline memorabilia show at the San Francisco Airport Best Western Plus because he had to acquire a model Lockheed L1011, a defunct passenger trijet from the seventies.⁴

At the show, I had an intense flashback to the local Dungeons and Dragons conventions of my own teenage years. Low ceilings, poor fashion choices, displays of random wares on folding tables, incredibly intricate models. There is an ambient “pack of nerds in a two-star hotel ballroom” vibe that transcends whatever niche subculture brought them together. These are my people!

If you wanted to pick up airline blankets, airline safety instruction cards, or a brick of twenty-one little American Airlines bathroom soaps for $10, this was the place! I asked an older gentleman who was selling various paraphernalia how he got into the business. I expected to hear about a lifetime as a passionate aviation hobbyist. “Eh,” he sighed, “I worked for an airline for thirty years and I gotta bunch of junk.”

American Airlines. 21 soaps. $10.

My son has also developed a passion for aviation photography, which is another nerdy, niche subculture. On weekends he often takes the train up to San Francisco International Airport to meet up with the lads for a day of photography. They know all the spots where you can get good angles and not be promptly arrested. They follow each other on Instagram. It’s a whole thing.

But the real action is at airshows. You can get close, and there is usually a mix of historical, civil and military aircraft in action. Our biggest local one is the California Capital Airshow (CCA), in Sacramento, which we’ve been to twice, but there are others in the area, including one in Salinas. My son is planning a pilgrimage⁵ to Oshkosh, the biggest airshow in the U.S., this July for five days of photography.

In three years of going to airshow with my son, I’ve learned a few things.

• Airshows are recruiting exercises. They have booths for all of the armed services, and each airshow opens with an induction ceremony at which a bunch of kids take their enlistment oaths.

• They are showcases of American military might. There are often military cargo planes and fighters parked on the apron, and flight demonstrations of modern military aircraft designed to wow you with their capabilities. You want to see a C17 Globemaster⁶ backing up under its own power after a short runway touchdown? This is the place!

• There is constant patter, with an announcer narrating all the action through giant PA speakers. The announcer spends a lot of time telling you to, “take a moment and listen to the music of that engine!” The commentary is interspersed with clips of guitar-heavy dad rock and anthemic movie scores. Guns’n’Roses and John Williams are both in heavy rotation.

• The demonstrations are formulaic. For fighter planes, it’s always the same set of scripted maneuvers. Low speed pass. High speed pass. “Minimum radius” (tight) turn. Full afterburner vertical climb. The crowd pleasers.

• There are “heritage flights,” which are displays of historical aircraft associated with legendary U.S. and Allied victories, generally WWII. They’ll pair up a historic fighter with a modern jet for a formation flyby. This is the airshow equivalent of the “wave your lighter⁷” power ballad moment at a concert. Cue John Williams.

• The headliner is usually a big time military aerobatic squadron. Either the Blue Angels (Navy) or the Thunderbirds (Air Force). These two teams have different personalities. The Blue Angels are all about uniformity, discipline and precision. The Thunderbirds demos are a proxy for violence that can be done to people who Hate Our Freedoms™. But the actual maneuvers are similar.

• You can pay $6 for a bottle of water, which, in the Central Valley in July, is exactly the ruthless capitalism that the Thunderbirds stand ready to defend with their lives.

A photograph of a B-25 “Mitchell” bomber taken by my son at CCA last month. I am told that catching prop blur is an art as it requires slow shutter speeds and steady panning.

But mostly, air shows are fun! Fighter planes are loud, and they go fast, and fire shoots of out the back! You feel afterburner flybys in your chest like the bass at a concert. Wear your hearing protection at all times! When a Thunderbirds F-16 on afterburner flew over the crowd from behind at low altitude, I learned that ducking is a completely involuntary movement.

The first time we went to CCA was shortly after last fourth of July.⁸ That day featured demos from both the Thunderbirds and the Italian Frecce Tricolori (Tricolor Arrows). The Frecce were touring the U.S. for the first time in nearly thirty years, which excited my son in the same way that a Taylor Swift tour excites other teenagers. The PA patter for the two teams was a reflection of national character.

Frecce Tricolori commentator [soft Italian accent]: “You can appreciate here the beauty and the grace of flight as the team shows their delicate control of the aircraft.”

Thunderbirds commentator [monster truck show voice]: “Within seventy two hours, the squad can be deployed anywhere on earth to strike at America’s enemies.” [Bowel-loosening ambush flyby.]

After their demonstration, the Frecce Tricolori pilots drove along the flight line waving and grinning, and looking exactly like you’d expect a van load of Italian aerobatic pilots to look. A big hit with the moms in the crowd.

After sunset there was a fireworks show and an aerobatic propellor plane did insane stunts in the midst of the fireworks, while shooting off its own fireworks from its wings. That’s entertainment! America! Fuck yeah!

Airshows bring the nationalist elements of a military parade together with the family fun atmosphere of a state fair. CCA draws from the Central Valley and it’s a working class day-out scene. Kids under 15 get in for free and there were lots families dragging wagons of supplies to the grassy area along the flight line and setting up picnics. There was junk food, souvenirs and an admirably tight rock band composed of young Naval enlisted personnel in service dress uniforms. There were lots of weird t-shirts.

Average CCA attendees.

Airshows and military parades are both nationalist propaganda and they overlap in intent. But a grand military parade, like China’s, is a made-for-the-media extravaganza. A national, and even international, signaling exercise that centers political leadership and marginalizes everyday people in the interest of an overwhelming spectacle of command and obedience.

An airshow is participatory. Sloppy, grease-stained and fun. There is no television, just a live audience soaking up the action, putting kids in cockpits for photo opps, and chowing down churros. At CCA last month, the Blue Angels were the headliner. Their performance was delayed for ten minutes when a porta-potty on the far side of runway caught fire and burned down spectacularly. A flaming plastic shithouse is something you will absolutely not see at a Chinese National Day parade, which is, when you think about it, their loss.

In 2018, during his first term, President Trump flirted with the idea of a grand military parade in Washington, DC. In the end, it didn’t happen, and there was a more modest “Salute to America” event on the National Mall in 2019. Recently, there are reports that Trump is once again considering a parade that would fall on his birthday, June 14th. One can assume that such an event would indeed center the political leadership, though the White House has since denied any such plans.

As much as I enjoyed the spectacle in China in 2009, I am not a fan of the idea of an American military parade. I don’t think we need to show off our missiles any more than they have already been shown off, thanks. But if Trump wants to have a national airshow, there would be at least one attendee from my house, camera in hand. And if it features a shithouse fire, well, that will be good fun, too.

1. Xuanwumen, the “Gate of Martial Proclamation,” is more aptly named, but is a) not on Chang’an Ave and facing Tian’anmen Square and was b) torn down in the sixties and is now a subway station.

2. To this day, this video of the rehearsal is the second most watched video I have ever put on YouTube. The most watched is of a hilarious bird.

3. Dad THAAD joke. Sorry.

4. The last time I flew in an L1011 was the domestic leg of my first trip to Singapore, from Knoxville to San Francisco, in 1995. It was TWA (RIP).

5. This is really the best word for it.

6. I originally wrote this as a C5 Galaxy, but my son, the plane nerd, instantly corrected me.

7. Yes, I know that these days you wave a smartphone with the flashlight on, but my formative concert years were a long time ago.

8. It was on the day of the assassination attempt on then candidate Donald Trump. This incident was never mentioned over the PA, though everyone was following the news on their phones.