A SHOW OF AERIAL MIGHT: CAPE GIRARDEAU AIR SHOW DRAWS LARGE CROWDS

Cpl. Angela Nichols of the U.S. Army Golden Knights parachute team carried the American Flag while the "Star Spangled Banner" played during the opening of the Cape Girardeau Regional Air Festival at Cape Girardeau Airport.

Planes and smoke and thunder filled the air, and people fell from the sky Saturday at the Cape Girardeau Regional Air Festival.

All eras of aviation were represented at the festival, from WWI replica planes and WWII planes on mock bombing runs with simulated explosions to the Darth Vaderish F-117A Stealth fighter looking like a black shadow in the sunshine.

Festival director Bruce Loy estimated 6,000 people attended the third annual air show Saturday in temperatures approaching 90 degrees. The festival, which has the theme "Heroes and Legends: A Century of U.S. Air Dominance," concludes today with gates opening at 10 a.m. and the four-hour show beginning at 2 p.m.

Another explosive demonstration of air warfare was provided by the 69th Battalion in a re-enactment of a Vietnam-era bombing run. Gasoline charges along the airstrip simulated how a napalm bombing of the Vietnamese jungle would have appeared. The battalion performed a dramatic rescue in the show's finale.

Capt. Mark Proulx piloted an Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon through a thrilling and sunglasses-rattling exhibition of aeronautical acrobatics, providing a spectacular contrast to the WWI replicas that were buzzing the airstrip only minutes earlier.

Proulx guided the craft at only about 700 mph over the airstrip, about half the F-16's capability, then climbed vertically for three miles. From there, he proclaimed the beauty of his view in a cockpit transmission broadcast to the crowd.

As a member of the U.S. Army Golden Knights Parachute Demonstration Team, Cpl. Angela Nichols was one of the people falling from the sky. Nichols, whose father was a jumper, made her first jump on her 18th birthday. She now has logged more than 1,000, the most difficult of which occurred when she was trying out for the team. Each of the candidates did 150 jumps in six weeks of training. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done," she said.

She enlisted in the Army in 1998 because she wanted medical training. She now has the equivalent training of an EMT.

Nichols is the only female member of the Ft. Bragg, N.C.,-based demonstration team, although another woman is on the Army's competition parachuting team.

After parachuting out of a plane at an air show, Nichols often is approached by admiring little girls. "That makes me smile," she says. "They say, Girls can do it.'"

Other attractions at the show included a Dodge Ram Jet truck that sped 298 mph down the airstrip, an air race around pylons, a Navy F-18 demonstration and an exhibition of stunt flying in a jet-powered biplane.

A number of antique, near-antique and experimental airplanes were on the tarmac for viewing before and during the show. The Vultee BT-13, nicknamed "The Vibrator" by pilots because of the shaking that occurred in a spin, was the basic trainer used during WWII by both fighter pilots and bomber pilots.

"They all had to funnel through this thing," said Glen Schley, a Harrisonville man who pilots the shiny plane to air shows. "They all remember this thing."