I’ve been on an airplane kick recently due to my friend’s trip to the Oshkosh “AirVenture” Event, and a possible trip to H-Town for the “Wings Over Houston” Airshow in October.
This is a short clip of footage of a few of the Commemorative Air Force’s “Ghost Squadron” member aircraft set to Col Tennessee Ernie Ford singing the Ballad of Ghost Squadron.
I remember dragging my parents to the airport in Harlingen, Texas on a non-airshow day to sit in a dark officer’s club with folding chairs, eat some stale popcorn and watch a reel-to-reel filmstrip of how the organization came to be. This little bit of it was at the end of the film and you can see the entrance to the office just behind the “Old Red Nose” P-51 Mustang.
I remember Col. Ford’s voice booming over the loud-speakers during the reenactment of the bombing of Pearl Harbor during those CAF Airshows (then called the “Confederate Air Force”). He would begin by telling the audience to close their eyes and imagine yourself as a serviceman in Hawaii. As he explained what happened and why, I knew that those infamous radio calls of Tora! Tora! Tora! would soon come, and so would the heat of from explosions as the vintage Japanese aircraft roared by.
