Thunderbird Tour

While reviewing an Air Force Art Show in 1962 with an Air Force Officer, Keith was asked to comment on a very nice landscape painting with the Tbirds in the foreground.  My dad’s response was complimentary to the landscape, but he pointed out the way to paint the Thunderbirds, in his opinion, would be from within the demonstration team rather than from some distant mountain.

You’d do that, the officer asked, you bet I would my dad replied.

A few weeks later he received orders and found himself strapped into the back seat of an F-100F as the team returned from their East Coast tour to home base at Nellis.  These paintings Honor the Thunderbirds as Keith documents his deployments with the team, many have been life long friends, from the early 1960s through today's team.

In honor of those crew chief's who kept the Thunderbird F-100s flying.

Keith learned from his early days of aircraft walk arounds that he needed to know the aircraft maintenance teams and crew chiefs if he wanted to learn everything about the aircraft he was going to paint and fly.  These three images below show a sculpture of the Pratt & Whitney J-57-P-21 Turbojet engine created for Keith by the 1963 Thunderbird Maintenance team from spare parts durning his visit to Nellis Air Force Base.