Festival of Flight takes a trip back in time
Planes from different eras featured, including a World War II B-17 Flying Fortress
History took flight at Long Beach Airport on Saturday.
The annual Festival of Flight, a free celebration of aeronautics, took place on the west end of the airfield, featuring myriad planes from different eras.
This year's iteration of the event was particularly poignant. Long Beach Airport, after all, will celebrate its 100th anniversary next month.
The airport lined up a special show to display several historical aircraft built in the city, among them one of only four in the world still active that was manufactured for combat during World War II: a B-17 bomber nicknamed Sentimental Journey.
Built in Long Beach by Boeing, the Sentimental Journey was one of about 12,000 B-17s produced from 1936 to 1945 to fight in World War II, according to the plane's description compiled by the Commemorative Airforce on its website.
The B-17 Flying Fortress was a heavy bomber used by the United States Army Air Forces to bombard Germany's industrial and military targets to help secure air superiority over Western European cities, factories and battlefields before the invasion of France in 1944. It also flew missions in the Pacific Theater, which is where the Sentimental Journey flew.
“It's challenging to get these military aircrafts to our event,” airport spokesperson Kate Kuykendall said in a previous interview. “It was really special we were able to get it this year.”
It is “extremely rare,” she said, to have the B-17 bomber on display and available for flyovers.
Other airplanes on display as part of the centennial celebration were a C-17, a KC-10 and a P-51, the latter flown by a group of African American military pilots known as the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.
The C-17 Globemaster III, meanwhile, is also a large military plane manufactured by McDonnell Douglas/ Boeing at a Long Beach plant. The U.S. Air Force used the C-17 in famous operations, such as in the evacuations of personnel and civilians from Afghanistan
in August 2021, and during the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011.
More than 250 C-17s were assembled in Long Beach over the course of two decades. But with a lack of foreign orders, Boeing announced in 2013 that it would close the plant. The final C-17 Globemaster III built in Long Beach flew away in November 2015.
There are 200 C-17 active planes in the world, Kuykendall said.
“We are also very excited by the C-17,” she said previously. “It is a huge massive aircraft for people to check its belly.”
Saturday's festival drew thousands of visitors, with airport officials saying before the event that they expected around 15,000.
Besides static airplane displays and flyovers, the festival, which launched in 2013 to celebrate the airport's 90th anniversary, also featured games for children, live music, food and beer trucks and helicopter flyovers for purchase.
The musical acts included the Satin Dollz, Brazilian funk singer and producer DJ Dennis, and blues, jazz and ragtime band the California Feet Warmers.
“Festival of Flight is the perfect way to showcase our historic airport,” Fifth District Councilmember Megan Kerr said previously, “by allowing the public to walk directly onto the airfield to see and interact with aircraft up close.
“It's a truly special community event,” she added, “that has become an annual tradition for many families in Long Beach.”