In addition to their responsibilities as the official US Air Force aerial demonstration team, the Thunderbirds are part of the combat force. If required, the team’s personnel and aircraft can be rapidly integrated into a fighter unit at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Since the aircraft are only slightly modified, they can be made combat-ready in less than 72 hours. In 1988, the Thunderbirds were asked to demonstrate this capability with one of their aircraft. Maintenance crews rose to the challenge and transformed aircraft #10 in the allotted time. The finished result was quite unique. The aircraft retained its colorful red, white and blue paint scheme but was fully combat ready with 20mm cannon, bombs, missiles and ECM pod. Major BJ Java test flew the jet, fired the cannon and dropped bombs before returning to the base with a huge smile. After its historic flight, somebody wrote the word’Warbird’ with their finger in the soot that clung to the fuselage in front of the gun barrel. The name caught on and was later painted on the side of the engine intake. Designed by General Dynamics as a lightweight, daytime USAF air-combat fighter, the F-16 was first flown on January 20th, 1974. This single-engine, supersonic aircraft has, over the years, evolved into a multirole aircraft. It has a frameless bubble canopy-giving its pilot superior visibility-and it uses advanced aerodynamics. The F-16 was one of the first designs to use a relaxed static stability/fly-by-wire system, which helps it pull 9-g maneuvers and achieve speeds of more than Mach 2. Called’Viper’ by its pilots, the F-16 is considered one of the most successful aircraft designs of the Cold War, with 4,400+ aircraft built since 1976.
