B-52 flyover set for Sunday airshow
A rare sight will be visible in the sky above the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport near Latrobe on Sunday afternoon — a flyover by a 159-feet-long B-52 Stratofortress.
The flyover, as part of the aerial performances at the Shop ‘N Save Westmoreland County Airshow, is scheduled for 12:55 p.m., according to Dwayne Pickels, grants director for the Westmoreland County Airport Authority, which organizes the air show. The B-52 Stratofortess is set to make three passes over the airport.
The bomber will be impossible to miss in the sky because it has wingspan of 185 feet and weighs 185,000 pounds — 94 tons — without a payload of bombs. It is flying out of Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
The B-52 fleet, which first took to the air 67 years ago, is the world’s oldest heavy strategic bomber force, with planes being flown by crews that are grandchildren of the original pilots, according to the online publication, New Atlas.
There are 58 still in active service and 18 in reserve out of 744 that were built, but the current shrunken fleet isn’t due to attrition so much as to a series of strategic arms treaties with the Soviet Union and Russia that restrict the total number of bombers.
With about four hours of performances on Saturday and several planes on display along the tarmac, the airshow attracted about 30,000 fans inside the gates, Pickels said. A countless number watched from fields and parking lots in the area surrounding the airport.
Joe Napsha is a TribLive reporter covering Irwin, North Huntingdon and the Norwin School District. He also writes about business issues. He grew up on Neville Island and has worked at the Trib since the early 1980s. He can be reached at jnapsha@triblive.com.
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