BRUNSWICK

Thunderbirds lead solo pilot Maj. J.R. Williams was 16 years old when he first sat in the cockpit of a plane. That’s when he knew that he wanted to spend his life in the air.

But it wasn’t much of a stretch. Growing up in Marfa, Texas, a fiveand a-half hour drive from his grandparents’ house, his dad — a licensed pilot and flight instructor — found it easier to fly. In a Beechcraft Bonanza, it took only an hour and 10 minutes.

“As a kid, I never saw an air show, never saw the Thunderbirds,” Williams said. “I used to get air sick every time we flew. But the day I sat behind the controls, I just knew I wanted to fly.”

It’s that kind of yearning that Williams and his seven U.S. Air Force colleagues, as well as numerous other performers, hope to instill as the boom and thrust of jets and propellers wash over spectators at this weekend’s Great State of Maine Air Show.

This year’s show, the second without the organizational and financial benefits of the recently departed U.S. Navy, will again feature numerous jets and “prop job” aircraft of varying sizes, purposes and vintages. Some already have arrived, others will touch down throughout today and Friday morning.

Trim and wiry in his regulation blue jumpsuit, Williams stood on the runway at Brunswick Landing on Wednesday, a few minutes after the Thunderbirds and their support teams arrived. While he spoke, a cavernous Douglas C-117 cargo jet taxied past, lumbering toward Hangar 6.

These are the events he and the other Thunderbirds train for and look forward to from March until November. It’s a grueling schedule, and flying with scant atmosphere between them — the team’s goal is no more than 18 inches between planes in formation — sometimes can seem the easiest part.

They fly demonstrations and shows almost every Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Mondays are travel days, when they return to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nev. Tuesday is for briefing, rehearsal and planning. Wednesday is a one-day weekend, followed by another rehearsal and travel day on Thursday, when they leave for their next show.

“We rehearse or train a minimum of four days a week,” Williams said. In between are scheduled visits to hospitals, schools, and any venue where they can spread the gift of wings.

The Thunderbirds last performed in Maine in 1995. The formation planes will average 400 miles per hour during the 75-minute show. But soloists, like Williams, will scrape 700 mph; the speed of sound, or Mach 1, through air and at sea level, is approximately 768 miles per hour.

Put another way, a jet flying at Mach 1 will cover about a mile in five seconds.

Or, stated even more simply: Boom.

However, like most novice pilots, Williams’s first hop was in a Cessna 172, one of the most commonly flown aircraft in the world: four seats, barely 100 horsepower and a slow, stable and forgiving airframe.

These days Williams wedges himself into an F-16CJ Falcon that produces

30,000 pounds of thrust, can fly at Mach 2, and carries the most advanced avionics and weapons systems in the world.

But it’s hardly all show-and-go. Rather, the Thunderbirds squadron consists of more than 120 members who do much more than keep the planes tuned, fueled and shiny. Each of the eight demonstration pilots readily admits that the plane belongs to the ground crew; they just let the pilots ride in them every day.

A sense of service

Williams’s particular plane, in fact, is a 1991 airframe that just received a new engine two days before the team left Nellis AFB, bound for Brunswick Landing.

All of the demonstration team’s planes are identical to the F-16s being flown in combat missions all over the world. The only difference, Williams says, is that the guns in his plane have been removed and a smoke generator installed in their place. Seven of them are single-seat fighters. Only Plane No. 7, flown by Lt. Col. Jason Koltes, has a rear seat for thrill-seeking journalists, dignitaries or altruistic “Hometown Heroes.”

Otherwise, any of them could be armed with ordnance, repainted and deployed into combat service.

But Williams hopes they never have to be.

At 33, he now has 14 years of qualifying service as a commercial pilot and 11 years with the U.S. Air Force. He flew jet trainers for two years, then F-15 Strike Eagles for the next seven, only climbing into an F-16 Falcon when he joined the Thunderbirds.

Although he planned to fly, joined Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps in high school and majored in computer sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Williams said he wasn’t aiming for “Top Gun.”“It wasn’t my plan to be a fighter pilot when I started out,” he said.

“But I just kept thinking that one day I’d be old and gray and would regret never trying to be a fighter pilot. The thought of never trying at all was worse than if I tried and failed,” he said.

The tenure for Thunderbirds demonstration team pilots is two years for officers and three years for enlisted. Then, pilots cyle back into a regular career path, often with more supervisory responsibilities.

Williams now is half-way through his term with the team.

“I found something bigger than myself with the Thunderbirds. I don’t get out of bed every day for a check or to please anyone. It’s out of a sense of service. Whether these events recruit anybody or not, people get to see what we do. They get a sense of the presence of the military, that when they are asleep at night, someone is protecting them. We do these shows in places where there is no exposure to the military at all and I love representing the 700,000 airmen serving our country today,” Williams said.

“It’s something I didn’t really understand when I was 16 years old.”

• The Great State of Maine Air Show starts Friday at Brunswick Landing and continues through the weekend.

— FRIDAY TIMES
4 p.m. Parking
5 p.m. Gate
6 p.m. Flying
TICKETS
$10 adult, seniors and youth
ages 7-12
Active duty military, retirees
and veterans free with proof of
service. Children 6 and under
are free.
PERFORMERS
Misty Blues All Women Skydiving Team
Mike Goulian
Dan Marcotte
Flash Fire Jet Truck
Oregon Aero SkyDancer
Atlas Fireworks

— SATURDAY & SUNDAY
TIMES
8 a.m. Parking
9 a.m. Gate
9:30 a.m. Flying
TICKETS
$20 adults
$15 senior, youth and military
PERFORMERS
Thunderbirds
Navy F/A-18
Misty Blues All Women Skydiving Team
Mike Goulian
Rob Holland
Texas Flying Legends
Red Tail Mustang
Ace Maker Air Shows
Greg Koontz and the Alabama
Boys
Oregon Aero SkyDancer
Dan Marcotte
Northeast Raiders
Team Chaos
Jacquie Warda
Randy Harris
Flash Fire Jet Truck
Collings Foundation Corsair

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