Every now and then, events happen. Then later that day, week or even year, the event takes on a life of its own. I don’t mean the story changes, or that I can’t ever shake the thoughts, because frankly with these kinds of events, you don’t want to lose a single second of the memory. I could roll right into a story about a girl right now….but I won’t, Motorfanatics is not that kind of place.

What I can go off about is what happened out in Chino, California recently. Well first, let me back up a bit.

It’s no secret that Chris and I have lofty goals for Motorfanatics. What most don’t know is how lofty those goals are. I’m talking a racetrack compound, airfields, space vacations, a bombing range, remote controlled everything, and a warehouse that Chris can sleep in to make sure he’s never to far from the smell of petroleum. I’ll be honest, many of these hair-brained ideas come during our regular indulgences of beer in a can, fresh from the Rockies, but the point is, we want Motorfanatics to grow to something more than our original title for the blog “2 guys website”.

Ok, back to the “event”…one of my fascinations in life is the airplane, especially military aircraft. So this weekend, the Planes of Fame Museum is holding their yearly air-show. One of the guest performers will be “The Horsemen”, the worlds only P-51 Mustang flight demonstration group. They are sponsored by the U.S. Military, and they are basically the Blue Angels, in P-51s. I set my eyes on them, and had planned to produce a piece on them specifically. Unfortunately for me, they couldn’t make the press preview event, and weren’t going to have enough time during the weekend to accommodate us smaller outfits. At first, bummer. But, that quickly changed when I got to the Museum on the preview day, and walked out of the hanger and saw 2 perfect P-51 mustangs sitting side by side.

I spoke with my contact at the museum, and he asked if I was going flying today….uhhh yeah, I can’t pass that up. He handed me a form, basically signing away any responsibility, and then he handed me off to a nice old guy, who only had 3 teeth, and a name strait out of a Jeff Foxworthy joke: Jim Bob. Seriously. So as I started talking to this character, he told me about how he grew up in the area and how he, the father of the 2 mustang pilots and another 3 guys, grew up at the museum. They volunteered in Jr. High school, they all fly regularly, and got to do some crazy stuff. They fly the vintage war-birds to air-shows all over the world, and early on, they would fly to a town and sleep in the back of these old museum pieces. I quickly became very comfortable with Jim Bob, and found out that contrary to his presentation, he was quite intelligent.

So the mustang pilots climbed into their planes, and we watched them taxi and take-off. It is a spectacular thing to hear the Rolls-Royce PV-12 Merlin motors and to watch these priceless pieces of American History roar to life. It gave me shivers to think of how many pilots did that exact thing roughly 70 years ago in Europe and never came back. I thought of the Tuskegee Airmen and the vital roll they plaid in the allied success. And I thought of how many soldiers on the ground all over Europe felt like they had seen the second coming of God when the Mustangs would show up to give air support. As the 2 mustangs disappeared over the horizon, Jim Bob asked if I was ready, and along with 2 other journalists, we climbed into an old Cessna 195 painted-up with military camo.

I don’t have a lot of time in small planes, but I love it. It just feels so raw and adventurous. For photo opportunities we flew about 2 miles to the hills above Chino, and quickly I heard the Mustang pilots on the radio. I still couldn’t see them, but I heard the leader tell our pilot to start a bank when he was over the tallest peak. Seconds after, we turned to our left, I looked out the right window, and saw my first close – up Mustang. Again, the chills set in. I said out loud, “MY GOD!”

That first sight was something I will never forget. Both planes where painted beautifully, but the closer of the 2 was an earlier model that had a bit more obstructive canopy. It was still an absolutely spectacular looking airplane. The blue-accented plane was the first to appear about 50 feet away. From that distance you can see right into the cock pit. You can see the pilot working to keep the plane a constant distance from our plane, with his eyes locked on us. You can see the light sparkle off the edges and chrome, and you can hear the roar of those motors, even with headphones on, inside another plane.

As the photo shoot wound down, and as we flew back to the air field, I thought about the experience. I’ve never been to war, never was in the military. Hell, I was asked to not come back to the boy scouts after the first den meeting. The point is that I will probably never know the sense of camaraderie that those pilots felt when these planes where in action, but I got a sense of it that day. I was proud of those planes and the 2 pilots. At first I wasn’t sure why because I have nothing to do with them. But they represent American history, and I’m proud of the guys who flew them when it mattered. The guys that stepped up when they where needed, and got it done. I have great respect and admiration for that.

Maybe that is why I love the P-51 Mustang. It’s more than a big engined, flying hot-rod; it represents all that I love about this country.  It was simple, purposed, fierce, graceful, reasonably priced and hugely effective. Maybe we should think about that as a country, at a time when we seem to over think, over spend, over complicate and under deliver pretty much everything. As Americans, we need to be more like the P-51, and with good role models for kids  extremely hard to find, maybe more kids need to learn about the P-51 Mustangs, and the pilots that flew them.

Tags: Chino Air Museum, P-51 Mustang, P51, Planes of Fame, Warbirds, WW2