Biplanes over Manassas
Originally published in the May 15, 1997 edition of The Potomac News.
The propeller didn’t need anyone to give it a spin. It sputtered to life on its own as the engine roared with a sound like that of a 450 horsepower lawn mower.
The three other planes, buzzing in unison, taxied along behind the first Stearman A-75 biplane down the Manassas Regional Airport runway. Models once used for World War II training flights, then for crop-dusting, the Stearmans were promoting Red Baron frozen pizza.
Monday was a day for promotional flights: The Brut blimp bobbed in a nearby field, its nose winched to a mooring post.
The planes taxied to the end of the runway, bright sunlight making pilots and passengers in the two-man planes slip on sunglasses or aviator goggles. The pilots paused a moment, waiting near the intersection of the busy runway. Then, with permission from the tower, they were off.
The planes rode down the runway in “V” formation, closer together than most pilots would ever dream. But the Red Baron Stearman Squadron does this sort of rule-breaking for a living at air shows around the country.
Pilots must have several thousand hours of air-time logged before they are hired by Red Baron and begin doing these sort of dangerous maneuvers.
“A lot of it is discipline. You have to get the kid out first,” pilot Sonny Lovelace said. “You’re going against eveyrthing you’ve learned. … I fly every day for four hours in a close call.”
The pilots are on the road about 200 days a year, flying in air shows or in promotional events like the one in Manassas 160 of those days. For six weeks a year, they train in Arizona, practicing new maneuvers and sharpening skills dulled by a winter away from the promotional circuit.
“Rest assured it’s a job,” Lovelace said. He’s been flying light aircraft for 28 years. “The worst part is being away from your family.”
On a recent phone call home to Nebraska, he and his wife figured he’d been on the road 2,300 days in the 10 years he’s worked for Red Baron.
The planes seemed uncertain in the first moment they took off, wobbling, then buzzing angrily into the skies, tucking in close to one another with less than a wingspan seperating them.
Flight inside the open cockpit is relatively calm. The passenger compartment is forward, near the engine, and is quite warm, although cool air whistles around the small windshield.
The squadron was in town for one day, bringing frozen pizza to the airport and free flights to contest winters from as far away as Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Before loading passengers into the cockpits, strapping them into the parachutes, then buckling the seat belts around the chest and thighs, the pilots had asked “You don’t get airsick, do you?”
Pilot Bryan Regan, in the lead plane, spoke into his microphone.
“Let’s do it.”
He pulled the stick back, the plane going into a steep climb. The Nokesville farmlands fell away in a hurry, as Regan took the plane into a loop and a barrel roll. Then, he pointed the plane straight up.
“Look over your left shoulder,” he said. The plane fell back and to the left, rolling in a controlled tumble back toward Manassas in a “hammerhead” maneuver.
At this point, one of the passengers discovered she wasn’t as brave as she thought. One biplane broke away from the pack, which had reformed into another tight “V,” arrowing back toward the Manassas airport.
For Regan, the desire to become one of those magnificent men in a flying machine goes back a long way.
“I dreamed about this kind of stuff when I was a kid,” he said. Visions of Snoopy and the Red Baron dogfighting stayed with him until he finally acted on them while he was a pre-veterinary major in college in Louisiana. He ran into an old friend who was now a flight instructor. “I had a couple thousand left in the bank of my college money,” he said.
And the rest is history.
“Opportunity just kept falling into my lap,” Regan said. One such opportunity was to fly the Red Baron planes from site to site, where stunt pilots would fly them in the actual shows. After three years of that, he got his shot at the big time.
And he doesn’t regret the path not taken.
“It’s become a way of life,” Regan said. “It’s what comes natural to me. I think being a vet might be a lot more work.”
As with flying all light aircraft, landing is the trickiest and most frightening part. The planes dropped toward the runway, then hovered a second as the pilots all but killed the power to the engines, dropping wheels to the tarmac.
The planes hummed along toward the hangar, parking in formation as neatly as they flew. Passengers unbuckled and climbed out.
Two small boys ran up to one Andrews Air Force Base woman.
“Hey, Mom, did you like it?”
She grinned, clearly a little unnerved.
“Yeah, I did. I really did.”
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