Air Show Takes Off After Early Delays

Up, up they went, into the wild gray yonder. But they almost didn't.

For a few hours, it looked as though yesterday's Joint Service Open House air show at Andrews Air Force Base would be a bust. Weather conditions were ominous. The air was misty, and leaden clouds dropped to 600 feet, blending with the steely bodies of the jets and helicopters parked below. A planned jump by parachutists to celebrate the 65th anniversary of D-Day was canceled.

The planes, helicopters and armored vehicles sat idly on display at the annual carnival of military might, which is something like an old May Day parade in Moscow's Red Square, minus the communism and plus hot dogs and hip-hop.

Then a tiny hole opened in the clouds. The crowd cheered. Although the schedule was a little jumbled, the air show was back on.

It began with propeller planes and helicopters, which pirouetted through the sky in ways that seemed to defy physics. They hovered nearly motionless, the strength of their engines perfectly balanced with gravity. They tumbled nose over tail, seemingly out of control, only to snap back into a correct attitude in an instant.

The aircraft that flew ranged from a P-51 Mustang from World War II to an F-16 Falcon and an F-22 Raptor. Before the weather broke, much of the fascination was with planes on display, including a replica of the famed Memphis Belle, a historic B-17 Flying Fortress used in bombing raids over Germany during World War II.

"It just amazes me that something that big can fly," Ken Caufman of Chambersburg, Pa., said of a venerable B-52 bomber, that was parked on a tarmac, its nose decorated with a Neanderthal carrying a bomb on his shoulder like a club.

"The Wright brothers would be impressed, I think," Caufman said.

Some came less for the technological wonders than for a sense of kinship with the past. John and Sherry O'Pray of Burke visited the show to pay tribute to those who had come before. Both of their fathers fought in World War II.

A handful of D-Day veterans watched from a box for distinguished visitors. Among them was Jack Strauch, 86, who was an engineering officer aboard a Navy destroyer during the invasion of Normandy.

"When I come here, I go back," Strauch mused. "My whole life was transformed because of World War II. . . . It revolutionized everything about me."

Gary Holmes and Odessa Holliman of Clinton took their foster children, Dominique and Perry, to see the show.

Dominique, 9, made it known he liked the helicopter the best, "because it's just like Blackout," one of the Transformers.

"I like jets," he added. "They're fast."

The show is scheduled to continue today. Organizers said about 150,000 people are expected to attend.