California Capitol Airshow

I took a whirlwind trip down to the California Capitol Airshow last weekend to see the "Lightning Strike", all 6 remaining flying P-38's were invited to attend and fly together, 4 of them were able to make it.  This was the largest gathering of P-38's since probably the 1950's.

As my favorite warbird of all time, I've been trying to catch a P-38 in the air for well over 15 years, so I was SUPER excited to have this chance to see 4 together.  I was also nervous that they might not live up to my expectations after nearly 2 decades of anticipation.  When they finally took to the air, there was no doubt... they are the most beautiful, graceful, best sounding warbirds I've ever seen :D

I'm downloading my photos from the trip now, and will be posting them to my Flickr as I finish processing them, but I wanted to throw up a couple of quick videos first, for those of you who couldn't make it to the show.  The first video is of 3 of the P-38's in a "rat race", doing circuits of the airshow box.  The sound of them going by is fantastic, but since this video came right off my (hand held) camera (with a 400mm lens), there is a good bit of shake.  I will clean them up and edit all my best footage together later.  The second video is the Missing Man fly-by on Saturday, with all 4 P-38's.  I hope you enjoy the videos!

P-38 Fly-bys (ROUGH) from Liz Matzelle on Vimeo.

P-38 Missing Man Fly-by (ROUGH) from Liz Matzelle on Vimeo.