Air Show at Sea

One of the nicer gigs at sea was an "airpower demonstration". These was usually put on for VIs, often foreign muckety-mucks. These are photos from more than one of those.

These seemed to always kick off with a F-14, flying supersonic at masthead height, over the ships astern of the carrier. When the F-14 came abeam of the carrier, the pilot would pull vertical, and, under full afterburner, go straight up to over 20,000', corkscrewing the entire way up.

USS Kitty Hawk (CV-68)

This was a mass flyover, led by F-14s.
Of all of the airplanes seen in these photos, only the E-2Cs are still in the Fleet.

An F-14,with wings extended

A KA-6 with an A-6 on the drogue.

An A-7

The opening act flew directly over the ship that these photos were taken from. The sonic boom concussion broke a fresh water pipe in officer country, soaking a no-load 'JG who was snoozing in his rack during working hours. It was funny enough that even the Chief Engineer wasn't upset at losing the fresh water.

To get an idea of the altitude of the airshow, these photos were taken with a 35mm Nikon with a 50mm lens. Keeping clearances from obstacles was not a big thing at sea.