Saturday was finally the day when the Malta International Air Show would start.
The show was impressive of course, but the real attraction were the two legendary aircraft that had flown there from England.
The Hurricane and the Spitfire were displayed first on the ground, among much old equipment from WWII and plenty of reenactors, recreating the atmosphere of an era more than sixty years ago.
The roaring thunder of jet engines were impressive, but when the Merlin engines finally flew again over Malta this was noticeably a very special sound to many of the audience.
All the special guests, the veterans, and the very much younger enthusiast spending almost all their spare time to re-create the past, and the older Maltese who possibly remembered the time when the arrival of these aircraft sixty years ago relieved them of some of the most intense bombing in WWII, all clearly regarded the short flight of these two aircraft as the zenith of the show.
A man standing next to me got a call to his mobile. He was one of the ’old boys’, as far as I could judge. The mobile played the theme from the film ’The Dam Busters’. That was the sentiment!
When the American B1-B bomber took off just after the Merlin planes had landed, it seemed almost inappropriate. The largest roar from engines I have ever heard (and yes, there were Tornadoes there too) seemed a little too much just at that moment. Otherwise, the display of the B1-B was of course impressive, but maybe the Sea Harrier was the one that stole the rest of the show. Maybe the Red Arrows (I think it was them) did something more impressive, but I missed that.
