Veterans Honored With Air Show
At the Aviation Nation air show in Las Vegas over the weekend, Veterans Day was honored with a special tribute to those who served in Vietnam. Saturday’s show featured a Vietnam-era air power re-enactment with an AC-47 Spooky gunship and the simulated rescue of downed pilots by three UH-1 Huey helicopters. Shows by the F/A-22 Raptor fighter-attack jet and the red, white and blue F-16 Falcons of the Thunderbirds also were dedicated to the veterans. The show attracted crowds of over 125,000 over the weekend. On a much smaller scale, two pilots from the Missouri National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 135th Aviation, at Whiteman Air Force Base, flew an AH-64 Apache helicopter to the Mineral Area Elks Lodge, where the annual Veterans Day dinner was being held. And in California, a group of Vietnam vets near Fresno are working to create an aviation museum devoted to the era. They have obtained a surplus Huey helicopter and are working to build a hangar for it and create the Army Aviation Museum of the West.
