All military forces go full tilt at air show

Youngstown Air Show

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Air Show Sunday

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The Youngstown Air Station Open House and Air Show, Thunder Over the Valley, Sunday, August 9, 2009.

By Peter H. Milliken

910th Airlift officials estimate 65,000 visitors attended the weekend show.

VIENNA — One of the first things a visitor to the Thunder Over the Valley air show this weekend would have noticed was the diversity of exhibits representing all branches of military service.

“We’re hosting the show as the Air Force Reserve, but we welcome our brethren from the other branches of service to come out and display what they do,” said Master Sgt. Bob Barko Jr., public affairs superintendent for the 910th Airlift Wing.

The 910th hosted the free show, which was attended by some 30,000 people Saturday and 35,000 people Sunday, at the 910th home base — the Youngstown Air Reserve Station.

“The military is joint. Everything that we do today is a Department of Defense effort. It’s not just one branch of service working out there,” Barko said.

“We’re one entity. We work together. We play together,” said Col. Karl McGregor, commander of the 910th.

YARS is home not only to the Air Force Reserve, but also to Navy and Marine reserve units. “They need to be included in everything we do,” McGregor said.

The jointnature of the show was shown by jumps by members of the Army’s Golden Knights parachute jump demo team and by the presence of a Marine Sea Knight helicopter, a Navy A2C Hawkeye airborne early warning and control plane and a Coast Guard patrol boat.

Besides the Golden Knights, air show demonstrations included a C-130 air drop by the 910th, flights by various historic aircraft, performances by several aerobatics teams, the Air Force Reserve jet car show and a performance by the famous Air Force Thunderbirds aerial demonstration team.

The Thunderbirds were able to perform maneuvers on Sunday that Saturday’s rainy weather didn’t allow, Barko said.

Visitors lined up early Sunday to board a C-130 cargo plane belonging to the 910th, which bears the likeness of world middleweight boxing champion Kelly Pavlik of Youngstown.

However, show-goers walked with ease through a C5A cargo plane from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, which offered them shade. The C5A is the largest plane in the U.S. Air Force.

The air show, the first here since 1986, attracted visitors from all over northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania.

Breezy conditions made Sunday’s 91-degree heat more bearable than it would otherwise have been, but reservists at the base’s main gate warned visitors to drink plenty of water.

Despite that warning, some people were treated by medical personnel at the show for heat-related ailments, Barko said.

Sunday’s crowd swelled after base officials decided to let people with Saturday tickets and even those without tickets attend on Sunday.

Traffic flowed freely on roads surrounding the base as yellow school buses brought show-goers from several designated remote parking areas. Within 60 to 90 minutes after the show ended at 5 p.m. Sunday, all parking lots were almost completely cleared of cars, Barko said.

“It was very, very smooth,” on both Saturday and Sunday, Barko said of the show.

“We owe the public some payback for all of the support that they’ve given us over many, many years here at Youngstown, and the local community needs this kind of activity,” Col. McGregor said when asked why air base officials decided to conduct the event after such a long absence of such shows.

“We need to bring the folks in. They need to see what we’re doing. They need to see what they’re getting for their tax dollar,” Col. McGregor said of the air show, for which planning took almost a year.

When the crowds leave, cleanup is a major undertaking at the air base, the colonel said. The base’s 1,400 reservists, who cleaned up after Saturday’s crowd left, began the final cleanup at 6 p.m. Sunday and expected to finish about noon today.