Point Mugu Air Show
The Point Mugu Naval Air Station held their first air show since the start of the pandemic this past weekend. I was fortunate to grab a prime spot for photographing the action. Both the Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy Blue Angels were performing. For those interested in technical stuff, I was using my Canon EOS R5 with an RF 100-500mm lens, and processed the photos with DXO Pure Raw, Adobe Camera Raw, and Topaz PhotoAI. I used the electronic shutter and was firing off at 20 frames per second. It rained off and on and the skies were dingy most of the day.
All three of these choppers were completely staffed by women in honor of National Womens Month.
This was a Navy PBJ. The Army Air Force version was known as the Mitchell Bomber. These were the aircraft used by Jimmy Doolittle for the surprise raid on Tokyo in 1942. There had never before been a launch of a bomber from an aircraft carrier. The pilots trained in secret at Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in Los Angeles. The carrier Hornet snuck up on Japan, and launched the bombers for a one way raid. The plan was for the pilots to crash or land in China to be recovered by Chinese forces. Some of them made it, others didn't.
This is my favorite shot of the day.
= new reply since forum marked as read
One small correction - the Navy version of the B-25 was not the PBY, it was the PBJ.
The PBY was a flying boat:
Last edited Thu Mar 23, 2023, 04:11 AM - Edit history (1)
The announcer referred to it as a PBY, but i knew that was incorrect. Maybe I just couldn't hear him well over the PA system. I'll go and fix it. The PBYs were also a big part of history.
I had to look up the actual Navy designation for the B-25; "PBY" would roll off the announcer's tongue as a more familiar letter combination than "PBJ" (which sounds like a sandwich 
).
It's fairly easy to know when an old Navy aircraft designation is incorrect because the designation contains a lot of information. They start with a general aircraft type (e.g. "F" for fighter, "PB" for patrol bomber, "TB" for torpedo bomber, and confusingly, "SB" for scout bomber, which is how they labeled what would otherwise be called dive bombers). Then it gets a bit intricate. If a given manufacturer has only contracted one aircraft of that type with the Navy, the next piece of the designation tells the manufacturer. There's consistency but no real pattern to those. So "Y" goes with Consolidated, "F" goes with Grumman, etc. Numbers are sandwiched between the general type and manufacturer codes, when a manufacturer produces a second model with that general type. So Grumman's first Navy fighter was the FF, its second was the F2F, and so on.
North American Aviation got the letter J, hence "PBJ." I suppose I could have figured that out, since I knew their version of the Sabre was the FJ Fury.
Subtypes were designated by adding a dash and a number - so F6F-3 and F6F-5 were different models of the Hellcat fighter. And sometimes those would be further modified - e.g. F6F-5N was the night fighter variant of the Hellcat.
The Navy used this system into the early '60s, when DOD decided to put the USAF and USN into a common designation system. So the Navy's F4H Phantom II became just the F-4.
Some of your finest! Bravo! "20 frames per second."
Have you ever been up in one of these rockets? Their precision flying is just amazing and you've done a great job capturing it.
I love air shows and living in Hampton Roads, I've had the pleasure of attending many of them.
(As you know, one of our closest friends commanded the Thunderbirds 35yrs ago. His wife threw a baby shower for me.
Btw, I'm sorry I can't hop on FB & give you a thumbs up there because I'm always inundated with messages. It's either DU or FB - I can't keep up with both. You're just amazing to keep up with ALL you do!)
Has been true since those days, plus we always lived near a military air base, I can tell you, from the sound, when a military aircraft is flying by. Hell, I even remember zeppelins!
And all those retardant spewing firefighting aircraft that were in use for decades, the same P2Vs that my dad used to fly. And I am not really and aviation enthusiast! But I used to be able to identify by sound and smell of exhaust which diesel engine, in a semi, was running nearby as well.
Thanks too for the captions.
You do amazing work!
And your weather will probably be better too.