Warbird Roundup 2025: Old, new, and evergreen

A crowd favorite at Warbird Roundup is the Warhawk Air Museum’s scarce P-51C Mustang called “Boise Bee.” John Maloney from California’s Planes of Fame Museum frequently comes to Nampa to fly Boise Bee in events sponsored by the museum.

Like a popular band who know their audience’s demand for evergreen hits, the folks at Warhawk Air Museum repeat much of their successful formula each summer for Warbird Roundup at Nampa Municipal Airport (KMAN) in Idaho.

But, creatively, there’s also always something new for the crowd, and this year the museum’s recently acquired static-display A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack jet was parked to the side of the air show flightline, highlighting the soon-to-be opened gallery dedicated to the Global War On Terrorism (GWOT) during the show, which was held Aug. 23-24, 2025.

Warhawk Air Museum’s recently acquired A-10 Thunderbolt II faced off with the museum’s P-51C Mustang on the ramp at Nampa. The A-10 is undergoing the process of demilitarization, with a save-list of components that must be removed by the Air National Guard. Plans are underway to recreate visible components like engine fan sections and the barrels of the 30-mm cannon to enhance the A-10 as the centerpiece of the museum’s Global War On Terrorism gallery.

The flying portion of the show is growing, with the museum’s flyable warbirds surrounded by visiting Mustangs, Texans, a Bearcat, and a P-38 Lightning brought out by friends of the museum.

Stacked up over Nampa, Warhawk Air Museum’s P-51C, nicknamed “Boise Bee,” rides next to an F8F Bearcat, with Warhawk Air Museum’s P-40 nicknamed “Sneak Attack” and the twin-engine Lockheed P-38 Lightning known as “Honey Bunny.”

We counted at least five flying P-51 Mustangs, seven AT-6, SNJ, or Harvard trainers, a pair of O-1 Vietnam-era Bird Dog spotter planes, the museum’s two P-40 Warhawks, and out-of-town specialties including a P-38 Lightning, F8F Bearcat, P-47 Thunderbolt, and a B-25J Mitchell bomber.

Beautifully understated restoration, paint, and markings make this North American SNJ-4 Texan stand out as a window to the past. John Muszala flew it during Warbird Roundup.

Famed for their risky service over Vietnam as aerial spotters for ground attack aircraft, Cessna O-1s like this example in Air Force markings piloted by John Walborn flew the pattern at Nampa during Warbird Roundup.

An artistic twin-boomed airframe encasing two Allison engines, the P-38 Lightning was appreciated at Warbird Roundup for its whispering-quiet sounds. The exhaust from its two V-12s exits melodiously from turbosuperchargers in the booms. Kevin Eldridge flew the Lightning.

A popular speedster at Warbird Roundup was the Planes of Fame Grumman F8F Bearcat.

With its characteristically staccato exhaust reports, this B-25J flew during Warbird Roundup, representing the 345th Bomb Group that served in the Pacific in World War II.

Nested in the P-51 Mustang flight was the world’s only currently flying P-51H, a fast and significantly different model of Mustang.

The world’s only flying P-51H, based in California, was shown at Warbird Roundup by Steve Coutches. The redesigned and lightened H-model Mustang was clocked by the Army Air Forces as being 50 miles per hour faster than the P-51D at top speed.

That’s 20 flying warbirds on the Nampa ramp, positioned behind a courtesy barrier that still allowed the air show crowd to see pilots and crew preparing the machines and starting their powerful engines before taxiing out to the runway for fly-overs throughout the day.

The highly polished aluminum of Dane Jasper’s P-51D Mustang called “Kimberly Kaye” takes an iridescent sheen from the exhaust pattern along the fuselage.

Brand Lindsey eases Warhawk Air Museum’s Curtiss P-40N called “Parrot Head” aloft.

Jim Thomas makes a fast, low pass along the Nampa runway in Warhawk Air Museum’s P-40 nicknamed “Sneak Attack.”

Support for Warbird Roundup from the Planes of Fame museum included the P-51D called “Wee Willy II.”

A highlight each day was the arrival overhead of an Air Force F-35 Lightning II jet fighter from Hill Air Force Base in Utah. The modern F-35 formed up with the World War II P-47 Thunderbolt fighter flown by Unlimited Class air racing champion Steven Hinton in a series of tight heritage formation passes.

A highlight of both days was the heritage formation flown by Steven Hinton in the World War II P-47D Thunderbolt called “Dottie Mae,” accompanied by an Air Force F-35 piloted by Capt. Melanie “Mach” Kluesner.

When the two-ship formation split up, F-35 pilot Capt. Melanie “Mach” Kluesner showed what her fifth-generation jet fighter could do in afterburner over the Nampa airport. Captain Kluesner comes from an Air Force family: Her father flew F-16s and her mother was a KC-135 pilot.

If evolving cloud cover made photographs less than picture-postcard perfect over some of the weekend, the partial overcast also kept temperatures more moderate, barely cresting 90° on Saturday and remaining in the lower 80s on Sunday.

Keep ‘er clean: Before the day’s flying, Brant Seghetti carefully dusts the sparkling canopy of his P-51D Mustang alternately nicknamed “Sparky” and “Blondie” on opposite sides of the fuselage. He flew the P-51 up from California for Warbird Roundup.

Affable emcee for the show was Sue Paul, who co-founded Warhawk Air Museum with her husband John. Sue and John could be seen on the field attending to the needs of spectators and aircrews throughout the weekend.

For more information: WarhawkAirMuseum.org

About Frederick Johnsen

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