In 1966, seven-year-old Bill Whittle saw the USAF Thunderbirds at Kindley AFB in Bermuda. On March 18th, he saw them again at Pt. Mugu, California. He was sad to say he was underwhelmed. But by some miracle, the 1966 airshow popped up on YouTube, and comparing the two shows just how much fin and excitement has been bled out of life in the 57 years between the two events. Steve and Scott join in for a discussion of how much safety is too much safety?
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38 replies on “The Safety Cult”
Blue Angles are better than Thuderbirds. 🙂
Good meeting you in person (w/ Natasha) at the airshow Bill!
I have nothing to say about the safety aspect, but having worked at a base where jets daily flew overhead (and at Maverick low pass levels, to boot), I enjoyed this show. It brought back work memories (I’m now retired).
As Steve said, and I’ve heard many a time, it’s the sound of Freedom. (Although my friend said the big Fat Albert was listening to the sound of War).
We used to have rock fights. There was an apartment complex about half a mile away that had like ten times our numbers, and they used to like to come to the neighborhood and look for trouble. So, they challenged us to a rock fight, our four guys against their seven. I took them up on it, and picked the ground: in front of a friend’s house, Which was the closest to the apartment complex, and where we were at the top of a bank. Further, the friend’s dad had put marble chips around his shrubbery so we had lots of ammo. But, most importantly, the house had aluminum siding. So, the battle breaks out, and we were pelting them from the high ground. I broke one kid’s glasses. It was glorious. Why? Because every miss they threw hit the aluminum siding, and the friend’s dad worked night shift in the coal mines near Hazleton PA. Which means that within a minute of the battle breaking out, her dad, a very large polish man, came charging out, ending the fight before their superior numbers could tell.
I blame the hyper-safety cult in America on feminism and weak fathers.
When my boys were young, between the ages of 8-12, I recall watching them climb trees. My wife was having fits. They were 20-30 feet above the ground without safety equipment of any kind.
But unless they fell on their head(s) they weren’t high enough to do anything worse than break a leg or an arm. My wife was arguing …
“They could fall and break an arm or a leg.”
I said “Yes dear, they could. If one of them falls they’ll learn not to do whatever led to the fall again. Then they’ll go right back up that tree once the cast comes off. It is the nature of boys to do these things. Let them do them.”
My wife was right, it was a risky amusement.
I was more right, boys need to be boys or they grow up to be beta males existing at the whim of every feminist they think is attractive.
Rock fights on the other hand are a whole different critter. In Israel if you stoop to pick up a rock they will shoot you dead. Because a rock can kill someone the same as a bullet so if you throw rocks, you get shot. No warning, no explanation, no apologies.
I knew this about rocks long before I had kids to raise, I had been to Israel and learned the lesson there. No rock fighting at my house but you can chuck dirt clods at each other to your heart’s content. A well chucked dirt clod leaves a bruise (and nothing else) so it behooves a person not to get hit by one.
When I was a kid I did what Steve did and made guns out of pipes and pipe fittings too. We made bazookas for bottle rockets, simple pipes open at both ends. But we also made real projectile firing guns out of pipes and fittings. My grandpa had a shop on the farm where you could find components to construct any diabolical device you could imagine …
You take a pipe, put a “T” fitting on the end, and put pipe caps on the bottom and short back end leaving the longer tube open. Then you stuff whatever is handy down that now smooth bore barrel; rivets, rocks, ball bearings etc. You drill a hole in the pipe cap at the base of the ‘handle” and thread a firecracker fuse through it. Then put the pipe cap back on. Light the fuse and voila, instant handgun suitable for killing pigeons, rats, rabbits, lizards and any other small vermin unfortunate enough to get itself in your sights.
Everyone knew us grandkids were doing this sort of thing. There were things off limits and to get caught playing with them meant the end of an afternoon’s adventure. You’d better not touch Grandpa’s dynamite (real dynamite made from nitro and sawdust), blasting caps, det cord or fuse. That stuff was for blowing up stumps and rocks and you’d get your butt blistered for messing with it. Lesser things were OK.
It’s a good thing we didn’t have the internet back then because if we had I’m sure my cousins and I would have found the videos on YouTube about homemade rocket fuel and built some serious rockets. The bigger the better.
There is no doubt in my mind at all we would have done that.
About half the time we were doing these things our Dads were outside doing them with us. They were having fun too and keeping an eye on things so they’d stay ‘safe enough’. Moms were inside and didn’t want to know what we were up to.
The whole situation reversed completely when feminism poisoned women’s minds. Honestly, feminists don’t want to be equal with men and do male stuff. They want to emasculate men, the younger the better, and make males like them. To be like them, males must sacrifice their own gonads.
The proof of this is all the testicular-ly deprived beta males chasing after feminists. Thankfully they don’t breed well but still, it’s a shame and a disgrace.
I was the one up the 70′ Monterey Pine tree, so high the trunk was about 5″ diameter. One day I yelled down to my mom who was hanging clothes out to dry (memories) in the back yard…”hey Mom! Look up!” I couldn’t discern exactly what she was saying, but I knew the tone. It was not going to end well when I got back on the ground. More than 50 years later, I remember the day, the view AND THE SCREAMING. I kept climbing trees and building tree forts for many years after.
You’re right on the rocks as well. I launched a granite rock at a kid who was tormenting me, he had to be a block away. My intention was simply to show him that I can throw a rock his direction , so ‘shut up!’. Dumb luck, he happened to be standing in a spot, 40 yards or so away from me, where that rock just happened to be decending and bam, right on the bridge of the nose between the eyes. Lots of blood, even more screaming by his parents. Never threw a rock at anyone ever again.
Climbing the tree might only hurt me, so I assessed the risk and kept climbing. Seeing the pain and damage I did to a fellow student, who also happened to be a friend (tormenting friend, but nevertheless) taught me that one time to throw baseballs, footballs and frisbees and not rocks.
Ok, who’s seen the Youtube series Smarter Every Day? Destin, the young, brilliant and mostly inquisitive engineer, does shows on everything from super slow motion video of breaking a Prince Rupert’s Drop, to the effect of 9g on the human body. I know Bill has commented on Smarter Every Day in past TSL’s.
Destin did take a ride with the Thunderbirds, and filmed it. And the results were informational, and visually stunning. I learned a lot from this. But most of all, at the 24.21 mark, he interviews the lead pilot on this team, Major Michelle Curren. This short 4 minute discussion with her and what she goes through in one of these shows is worth it. IMO, there is still an amazing amount of danger in what the Thunderbirds do.
As Destin would say, “Y’all should watch this one all the way through”. As I would say, “It’s totally worth it”.
Bill, if you haven’t seen this one, you should.
https://youtu.be/p1PgNbgWSyY
Oh, and Destin’s Smarter Every Day has 10.9 million subscribers, and this one episode has been viewed 19 million times.
Thanks for the link… awesome and amazing…
In the end, it’s fixed-wing. Boring.
Everyone knows rotary-wing is where it’s at.
When I was a kid my family went to a Thunderbirds show. Brother Brother Bob looked at his watch and said it was the time they were scheduled to arrive and was surprised that they weren’t. Father Bob was saying something like “That’s weird, they’re known for being on ti-” just as an upside down T-bird blew by just over our heads. Pretty damned cool
I’ll tell you what, if you’d want a career where there is danger that you wished could be avoided, it’s being a surgeon. When everything is going smooth, it seems sooooo easy. So rote. But there is often only a millimeter between no big deal and catastrophy.
Mike Rowe has commented on this with the half-joking, but really not — line: “Remember. Safety third!”
He did expound on this and confirmed … well basically what you’re saying. If safety were always first … many, many important things would never get done.
(3) Mike Rowe – Safety Third – Whaaat?? – YouTube
FWIW, I did take my kids, 7 and 5, that same day, and they thought it was frickin awesome. And no, we didn’t have any ear protection. And it was loud and fun.
I’ve been to these air shows, but the loudest thing I’ve ever witnessed was a drag show in Las Vegas — by that I mean the long,fragile-looking, alcohol-fuel-burning race cars on asphalt.
Sigh … even that collection of adjectives and nouns can be twisted into something that one can only see in either Las Vegas or San Francisco.
Bill, what was the ceiling during the show? It looked a little hazy in your video. They fly different shows based on the ceiling and the low shows are never quite as impressive as the high shows.
That being said, yes, the flight demonstrations at air shows are a little more distant and higher than they were before the 80s. I don’t know if that makes them any less exciting for the kids who are seeing them for the first time, however, they are not quite as exciting for those of us who thrilled to F-4 glory years. It is still an impressive demonstration; arguably much more exciting than the dozens of air shows I went to in the late 70s-early 80s when the Thunderbirds were flying the anemic T-38s. Even then in the post-Vietnam, oil embargo, trainer jet era, lots of kids got started on the road to military aviation because of those shows. I’m an avid listener to military aviation podcasts and just about every aviator I’ve heard interviewed said that watching the Blue Angels or Thunderbirds perform was at least partially the reason they wanted to fly. This applies to guys who saw the airshows in the Phantom glory days as well those who experienced them in the post-Ramstein ‘safety culture’. I completely agree with your opinion that our current safety culture is hurting us in many ways, but I think there are far, far more egregious examples of its deleterious effects than air shows.
From what I’ve read and heard, the safety culture is not even close when it comes to the top issues affecting recruiting and retention. The administration’s imposition of woke culture on the services seems to be of far more concern for both potential officer accessions and enlisted recruits. There is also significant concern over the sacrifices made by service members during the GWOT and if those sacrifices were in vain when America abandons the causes when political will evaporates. The big retention issues are things like OPTEMPO, pay and command culture. Current service members are being told to do more with less support. In many cases pay is less than what is available in the civilian world, especially when considering the extreme demands of service life. The ugly side of the giant bureaucracy that is the US military also has a corrosive effect on retention. Administrative bureaucracy, careerist senior officers and the PC/woke culture that has been introduced to the military all take their toll. They want to be warriors flying fast jets, but much of their time is like working at Dunder Mifflin.
BTW: You might want to watch a recent interview on The Merge with both the CO of the Thunderbirds and XO of the the Blue Angels. I think it might allay your concerns that the two flight demonstration teams have become victims of safety culture. The interview was posted to both The Merge and The Afterburn Podcast YouTube channels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffGJkr6v7u0
A safe life – like Mexican food without any spice. Meh.
Well said!. Mexican food without spice is like … tofu covered with corn and flour.
Carrier take-offs and especially landings are far more dangerous that most show maneuvers. The personnel aboard that carrier number well over a thousand, and they are all put at risk with every operation!
Testing. Please ignore.
Having driven across Wyoming countless times, I feel compelled to point this out: If you eliminate all risk you don’t just take all the flavor out of life, you don’t eat period.
Minor correction, Bill. That catastrophic air show you mentioned wasn’t at Rhein Main — that occurred at the Ramstein AFB in 1988. Otherwise, yep. Somebody else mentioned it below. “Safety Third” is what it should be. Government and OSHA can’t safeguard you like you can. There are stupid people doing stupid things everywhere, but when you watch the videos of Pakistanis working with molten metal wearing flip flops and you know they’re mindful of their own safety — otherwise, they don’t get paid.
I remember another discussion the guys had about safety and risk assessment considering the difference between people who have real risk and real danger and those that imagine risk and overreact to minor danger. I don’t remember whether the topic was in response to some nanny statist trying to shut something down, a more general “where did the playgrounds go” or something else.
Since a pilot friend of mine flies the only F-100 still operating, the noise of that is enough to get your adrenaline running. Four or five together would have been insane. The F-16s and F-18s of the Thunderbirds and Blues are quiet by comparison.
As soon as we let the lawyers dictate that everyone else is responsible for our safety, we were doomed to no more free-range kids and dull airshows. The airshow rules don’t dictate that all passes are parallel to the crowdline, but no energy from passes are directed toward the crowd. The T-birds have been notorious for having one bird come from behind the crowd at high speed at a critical moment when everyone is watching the 4-ship, and scares the beejeezus out of everyone. Both the T-birds and Blues have revamped their shows in the last year or two and both are more benign, IMHO. I enjoy them more for the airmanship of 4 or 6 planes all within 3 feet of each other doing loops and rolls. Remember way back when they were allowed to break the speed of sound? Yeah, didn’t think so.
A few years ago (just prior to covid, not all the way back to my childhood) the F-22 did that at EAA – come from behind the crowd and then pull straight up over the runway we were facing. It was a bit above us and under Mach of course, but we had little warning as the Airman doing the PA announced the beginning of the show and hit little bit, then whoosh!
That was a solo show though, not a formation flight, so it was more about what the craft could do and less about the training and skill of several pilots. Noise wise though, when they stood that thing near vertical and had it almost float the length of the runway just on the power of the engines, was louder than anything else I’ve heard.
Both the Harrier doing its demo and the Concorde are louder than an F-22 doing it’s Harrier pass. Unfortunately, you can’t see a Concorde fly any more.
My wife and I were talking to the pastor after church this morning, and the topic of various parenting types came up including helicopter parenting.
There is a new one which he called Lawn Mower parenting but I think is more like Bulldozer parenting. These are people who try to make the path forward for their kids as non-challenging as possible. Nicely cut grass in his analogy. No hills or dips in mine. Just level easy ground.
It also allows for minimal growth if any.
Maybe it was being raised by parents who were kids during the depression. Or by a dad who stood watch at Checkpoint Charlie in the late 40s and early 50s but my parents were definitely part of the walk-it-off generation.
One of our favorite stories from growing up.
Saturday morning and my older brother is out riding his bike with friends. He came down the driveway (decent hill) way too hot. Had to lay it down to avoid a crash into a car but he slid foot first into the tire. He couldn’t get up and we were all inside. So he dragged himself across the rest of the driveway to the garage and banged on the door to inside. My mother looks at him lying there, crying and filthy and asks what did you do? Not are you hurt? He says my ankle hurts I can’t get up.
My dad says is the car ok?
My mom’s next sentence, I swear to my heavenly father. Don’t be a ^*ssy, get up and walk it off. (These type of stories go a long way to explaining how Ron became Ron).
He starts limping around and she is really riding him to toughen up. By dinner it is pretty swollen and my dad says we need to get an x-ray. Sure enough he broke his ankle and the doctor says, whatever you do, don’t walk on it.
We left for Disneyworld a week later with my brother on crutches. He was 11.
Excellent show, guys. Brings back memories of working at Moffatt Field, and weekends at Reno air races years ago, and I know exactly what you are saying. The American teams were all speed, power and noise, hip-hop, but my fave was the Snowbirds. The were more like a waltz, especially their “Maple Leaf” break – 5 of them coming head-on to the audience, then breaking off. They had to alter that, and it’s just not the same when they fly parallel to the audience. The break either comes too soon or too late to be appreciated. Miss the head-on break and you miss the whole Snowbirds show.
Jet jocks may have reached out to ‘touch the face of God’, but I got to reach out and touch a tree.
Poem for you: The Mission of USMC Aviation.
Marine fighter pilots hurtle through
Their assigned airspace seeking out
the enemy to destroy in aerial combat
Marine attack pilots hurtle through
their assigned airspace seeking out
the enemy to destroy in air to ground attack.
Marine transport pilots flog around through
their assigned airspace dragging their hoses,
drinking whiskey, and playing pianos
in houses of ill repute.
Marine helicopter pilots rotate through
EVERYONE’S airspace delivering troops to engage
the enemy and rescuing those fighter
and attack pilots who sought out the enemy…
and found them.
“Even old deaf veterans can still hear a Huey a mile away.”
After almost 60 years, this year will be the last for the Reno Air Races. The area has grown so much, and I think the cost of insurance after that wreck in 2011 has contributed to the Reno Tahoe Airport Authority ending the event.
The National Championship Air Races organization will be looking for a new venue so, hopefully, the races will live on. I certainly hope so as I loved attending.
Said it for years: “Life is not safe. Being dead is though .”
Read “Yeager” to learn more about what it was like to be first a pilot and then eventually to become a test pilot. He goes into the kind of detail only an ace like Yeager could know.
The safety culture has evolved to the point where I think The Babylon Bee nailed this topic a couple of days ago with the following headline:
Chinese Military To Just Shout Wrong Pronouns At American Soldiers
One’s shadow is scary, don’t ya know?
Bill, I had a similar experience in the early ’60s at an airshow at March AFB when I was roughly the same age. I liked your comment about re-wiring the brain, because I felt it, too (The fact that my father had been an Army Air Corps pilot during “The War”, and ditto for many of his friends, may have played a part).
I did end up as an USAF pilot, BTW…
Actually, studies have shown that when we started requiring or strongly asking for them, bike helmets have increased the injury rate. Human nature is to think they are not going to get hurt and take more risks.
Mike Rowe says, “Safety Third.” Check out his videos on it. Things come before safety, like survival. When we let others set safety standards we assume it is safe for us to do something, when safety is really our own personal responsibility.
When my son Richard was a boy, some his friends and he were out front setting up ramps and jumping there bikes off of them. I watched intently from inside the house, but let them do it, as I had done the same when I was a kid. After they had been jumping for a while, my son ran into the house and said, dad we are jumping our
bikes and asked if I wanted to watch? I said that isn’t safe, so if I come out there I will have to stop you. Then I asked him, do you still want me to come out? He looked at me and said, nope. Then he ran back out quickly and they kept jumping.
Michael (and everyone else) I don’t know if you listen to Mike Rowe’s podcast at all. Bill has been a guest twice, the most recent about 9 months ago. During that hour + they do get into Safety Third among a bunch of other topics.
It is titled: “They Shoot Nazis; that’s fun!”
The one he was on before that was called “Han Shot First”. I will let everyone figure out what that discussion entailed!
Thanks, I will have to look for them. The first time I heard it was on one of his podcasts years ago. He listed the two things that came before it then, but I was unable to find that video today. I believe #1 was simply HAVING to get whatever was being done done. Like hunting for food.
In some of his explanations I’ve heard/read the safety third concept came about from his shows on businesses where “safety first” was a mantra that he found incorrect. In business at least, making a product or providing the service came first, for without that you failed as a business. Second was making a profit, for if you didn’t you would not be long as a business. That left safety at third, which was where the slogan came from.
I suppose generally the “doing what you have to do” being first makes more sense, as in “going shopping” is more important than “staying home safe” or “shopping for others” and “delivery” are more important community wide than a 100 percent lockdown.
I was tumbled onto the fact Bill was on one, now I will have to figure out which it was and listen to the other one… or just relisten to them both. Thanks for the reminder.
I had mostly ignored Mike’s podcasts though I follow his facebook channel and other postings, even bought a mask from him.
We had an ice storm here in Austin, and some rather large tree limbs had come to rest on a steeply angled outbuilding roof. My daughter-in-law eagerly climbed 25 feet off the ground with a running chainsaw and cut those limbs. She poo- pooed the idea of a safety harness. She was glowing and proud as a peacock. Me too. Oh, BTW, I got stiches in my head from a rock fight. Proud of that, too.