Fence Check Interview: Kevin Walsh by Mark Munzel

Since its inception in 1999, Thunder over Michigan has grown into one of the top warbird airshows in the US. Held at Detroit’s Willow Run airport, "Thunder" is the largest public event each year for the Yankee Air Museum.

Airshow co-directors Michael Luther and Kevin Walsh make an effort to keep each year's show fresh, inviting different aircraft in keeping with their chosen themes. In 2008, the themes included heavy bombers (with four B-17s and two B-24s in attendance) and the P-47 Thunderbolt (six were invited, although two failed to make it due to maintenance issues). Other uncommon aircraft present included two "razorback" P-51 Mustangs, the Russell Group’s Bf.109 and Hurricane, a MiG-21, and a pair of FM-2 Wildcats.

For the show's tenth year, the program recreated highlights from its first decade but improved on them. The centerpiece was the largest mock ground battle Thunder has yet held, with a paratroop drop by two C-47s and strafing runs by the Bf.109 and P-47s. The climax was a flypast by all six big bombers, reminiscent of the eight B-17s that flew in the 2005 show but featuring this time the two ultra-rare Liberators.

Thunder over Michigan is constantly changing, as Michael and Kevin look for ways to enhance the "Thunder experience." There were more jet performances in 2008 than in past years, including Will Ward's MiG-17, the Air Force’s Viper East Demo team, and the Navy F/A-18 demo team, plus an Ohio Air National Guard C-130 demonstration. The show’s layout changed, too: the crowdline was moved onto Willow Run's grass infield, giving a dramatic increase in the general admission area and permitting large sponsor displays by Chrysler and Jeep that didn't block the action.

But not everyone seems pleased with the show's development. Postings on internet forums suggest that many enthusiasts who attend the show faithfully are conflicted – they want Thunder to be successful and healthy, but they don't want the show to lose its warbird focus and intimate atmosphere.

Are these two goals mutually exclusive? Kevin Walsh doesn't think so. Along with Michael, he's trying his best to satisfy them both. Fence Check spoke to Kevin about the 2008 show and how Thunder will evolve in 2009.

To start, please explain for us how the airshow benefits the Yankee Air Museum and its rebuilding plan in the wake of the 2004 fire that destroyed the museum's main hangar.

The biggest benefit the show offers the museum is awareness – letting people know about the museum, what the museum is doing, and what the plans are. Visitors can feel good that the profit from Thunder is going into the museum. It's helping to keep the B-17, B-25, and C-47 flying, it's helping to build the new building, it's helping with general operations. There isn't a promoter walking out the gate Monday morning with a bag full of money. But in no way is the show building the new building by itself. We aren’t making millions, and we need millions for the new building.

Thunder over Michigan caters heavily to enthusiasts and photographers with features like the photo tour, the photo pit, and the website's list of attending aircraft. You also solicit input and feedback from enthusiasts on Fence Check, WIX, and other websites. Warbird fans obviously feel they have a stake in Thunder. But the majority of attendees aren't enthusiasts. How do you balance the interests of enthusiasts against the need to attract of the general public?

Great question! This is probably the biggest challenge Mike and I face when building the show each year. Luckily, although we come to the show as enthusiasts, we can also step outside and say, "Will the general public like this?" We know enthusiasts and photographers would love a 100% warbird show with flybys all day long. The general public enjoy the warbirds to a certain extent, but they want to see some variety. We try to focus on the themes, on airplanes that we haven't had in years or that we haven't had before, to please the enthusiasts. After that, we look at what else we can bring in that will entertain the public, such as an F-18 demo or an Air Combat Command demo.

Sometimes there's a crossover that's a hit with both groups. For example, in 2008 the paratroopers were loved by everybody. The enthusiasts loved them from the standpoint of what an excellent reenactment the paradrop was, while the general public loved seeing guys jump out of planes at a low altitude. The ground battle was another hit with both groups. We spent a lot of money bringing in vehicles, and in so doing we unknowingly drew a third group, that being military re-enactors and vehicle enthusiasts. We just wanted to make a really cool battle, and it blossomed into something else.

It needs to be stressed that we don't spend a dollar without analyzing everything that we do. There's no plane that we've ever just added. We get flooded with phone calls every year from guys wanting to come. Most of the time, we have to tell them, "You don’t fit our theme," or "That’s not the direction we're going this year." And these are good friends in the warbird business. It shocks people, but we sometimes turn down aircraft owners who want to come for free. We have to be very critical of what we bring because we try to make the show look different every year. We try to appease those different audiences.

How do you choose which aircraft to present each year? The theme obviously plays a part, but are there other factors like an aircraft's rarity, or whether it’s appeared in the area before?

We look first and foremost for aircraft that people in this region don't usually get to see. We were really excited about bringing up Tarheel Hal from Texas in 2008, because it’s a P-47 that we rarely get to see in this region. Mike and I wanted to see some P-47s together that usually aren't together. So there’s one factor: "What can we bring that’s different?"

The other factor is cost. We've looked a number of times at stuff that's way out in California. We’d love to have it, but it's cost-prohibitive to bring, for example, the Commemorative Air Force’s Mitsubishi Zero out here for $20 or $30,000. There is a threshold where Mike and I say, "Uh-oh, that’s too much money." Occasionally we dispute what that threshold is, based on how popular each of us thinks the airplane might be.

Coming up with cost-effective airplanes is definitely important, but we will break the bank for a few airplanes that really are special. For example, the Me-109 from the Russell Group is not cheap, but it’s well worth it. We pay the freight to bring it because it’s a very popular airplane.

Speaking of costs, one of the cards you and Mike were dealt before 2008's show was the skyrocketing price of fuel. How did you cope with that?

Because we book airplanes so far in advance, we were at the mercy of the fuel gods going into the 2008 show. We were scared – we had four B-17s, two B-24s, a couple of B-25s, and two C-47s, and they would all be taking on fuel that we had budgeted for when we'd made the agreements back in December or January. The more the price of fuel went up, the more we though, "Boy, this is going to be a rough year!" Luckily, fuel droped down a little before the show, and we have a great fuel sponsor who stepped up to the plate also. We wound up being fine.

Sometimes there are challenges that you can't work around, but we're not the type of show that would say, "Fuel's gone up, so we’re going to cancel two B-17s and one of the 24s." We honor contracts. Once they’re made, they're made and we live with them.

What aspects of the 2008 show gave you the most satisfaction?

That question puts me on the spot. There were a lot of things I really enjoyed about last year's show. I felt the battle reenactment turned out to be one of our best investments. I really don't get to see much of the show except for glimpses – even when it's running well, managing the show takes so much time – but I made a point of seeing how the battle looked. I stood on the back of my truck for about five minutes watching on Sunday, part of the crowd. I really enjoyed it. The paratroopers were another really unique thing, and I enjoyed watching the crowd watch them and get excited about the paratroop drop. But everything was good. Overall, in 2008 I loved the variety.

The most disappointing thing was that the Great War Flying Museum guys couldn't make it on account of the weather. I think the World War One warbirds would have rounded the show out, making it even more eclectic.

And it sure would have been cool to have six Thunderbolts! We really thought Tarheel Hal was going to be the one that had the most difficulty, with the distance it came. To a certain extent, Jeff Clyman's P-47, "Jacky’s Revenge," also had a long way to come, and its pilot had to fly around a lot of weather. The ones that were a little iffy, made it. The ones that were closer turned out to have mechanical issues. It would have been neat to see six of them on the ramp, but I'll take four!

Tell us about what's in store for 2009, now that your plans are firming up. What themes and participants are you most excited about?

We've been tweaking the lineup, starting with the Vietnam theme and bringing in some of the heavy hitters from World War Two in the Victory Flight. That will include several Allied warbirds from the Russell Group, the Canadian Warplane Heritage, and Vintage Wings of Canada.

We're really exited to have the Blue Angels back. We hosted them, of course, in 2007, and had a very successful outing with the Blues/warbird mix. It was a very positive outcome for the museum.

One of the more integral themes is the C-130 gathering, for the Herk’s 55th anniversary. That has me pretty geeked, to be honest. It's something that has not been done officially, on an anniversary, here in North America in many, many years. We’re really excited about trying this new theme out, in seeing the reaction it draws. It also may bring us a new dimension of supporters. We’ve always had a great following from warbird enthusiasts, and with the general public. Now we’re reaching out to the modern military enthusiast through a very unique salute.

But your objective is to welcome more enthusiasts to the show, not to replace warbird enthusiasts with modern military ones?

Right. One of the reasons we chose C-130s first, in a series of modern-military salutes that we're planning, is because the C-130 melded into this year's Vietnam theme. We don’t just say, "Let’s do this," or "Let's do that" when planning the show. It’s all got to work together in our eyes. When Mike and I first started to talk about the Vietnam theme, we thought about what aircraft had served there, and the C-130 popped up. For a couple of years we had been thinking about doing a gathering with modern military airplanes, and this fit the theme.

For the warbird enthusiast, the C-130 is not much of a departure from the other Vietnam-era aircraft we're planning. The warbird people should appreciate it as much as the modern military people should appreciate it.

The other motivator for us, and this may be the most important part, is that we won't ever see a civilian C-130 gathering. The only opportunity we have to gather 14 or 15 C-130s in an airshow setting is by doing it now, while they’re in active service. We’re at the point now with modern military aircraft where they aren't going to become warbirds. Everything that's going out of service now is out of the public’s hands. We want to do gatherings for these aircraft before they’re extinct. We'll continue to do warbird gatherings at Thunder, but we hope to mix it up with modern aircraft, and really set history before history is made, so to speak.

Although Thunder hosted the Blue Angels in 2007, many people didn't expect them to return so soon – and I think that includes you and Mike! What compelled you to book the team, especially considering that you had to change the show's dates to do so?

Mike and I had zero intention of hosting a jet team when we left the International Council of Air Shows (ICAS) convention in Las Vegas last December. We left with Thunder on its traditional dates in early August, and a jet team was not an option.

Two weeks after ICAS, the American Powerboat Association's Gold Cup in Detroit declined to host the Blues. The Blues, from a recruiting standpoint, wanted to make sure Michigan was still on their schedule – if we didn’t take them, they wouldn't have hit the state at all in 2009. And, having had a very positive experience here in 2007, the Blues were very interested in partnering again with our organization. We were a very pro-recruitment show for the Blue Angels in 2007. We didn’t just say, "Come fly your show and wow the crowd." We made their mission our mission.

When the opportunity came up, we evaluated it and said, "Yes, we should do it." We put in our application, and the Blues didn't take long to put us on their schedule.

Even though the 2007 show was successful for the museum, it drew criticism from enthusiasts who felt that Thunder's atmosphere was lost with the Blue Angels and the larger crowds. There was also a lot of unhappiness with the show layout, which put the crowd on the south side of Willow Run. How are you addressing those issues in 2009?

The jet team show in 2007 was an incredible learning experience and a very positive thing for the museum. The museum did well financially, and our sponsors and vendors had a heyday.

One of the things the jet team did was permit us to bring 15 B-25s to the show. 2007 was kind of like "Thunder on steroids," but it provided us with revenue to do something special from a warbird standpoint. Fifteen B-25 cost a lot of money, so we needed good attendance to pull it off.

There were a lot of pluses to what we did in 2007, and a lot of benefits that were reaped other than just financially. The jet team show brought an incredible number of new people in 2007 who came back in 2008 to experience our show again. It made people fans of the event, and they stayed fans of the event even without a jet team in 2008. The jet team show also brought new members to the museum and new awareness of the museum and our mission.

We understand that the show had a totally different feel in 2007, but we think we can combine the scale of 2007 with the feel of 2008 – a more concise feel than being spread out over half of Willow Run airport. The layout of the 2008 show worked exceptionally well: it provided the intimacy that Thunder always had, but it also provided the space and safety and logistical convenience that we require. We like being on the east side because of the availability of running water, hangar space, et cetera. Can we host a jet team on the east side of the airfield? We’re looking at it; right now, we're finalizing some parking layouts. If everything gets approval, we should be good to go. We think we will fit the Blues in and keep that Thunder flavor.

Your announcements of, first, the Vietnam theme, then the C-130 gathering, then the Blue Angels, sparked some negative reaction, including on Fence Check, from those who wish that Thunder would remain focused on WWII-era warbirds. What's your response to those sentiments?

When we announced Vietnam, we sat back and said "Here come the stones." We had some tentative plans with the WWII contingent, but we threw out the Vietnam theme first just to see what the reaction would be. It was exactly what we expected, even though the Vietnam aircraft we’re planning to have are as much warbirds as anything from WWII is. The reaction confirmed for us that we had to keep the WWII component very strong. So some of the reaction on the Web has shaped the way we think as we plan the show, the same as it does every year.

Mike and I believe, though, that if we don't change the lineup, if we don't continually push in different directions, we're going to wind up putting out the same product again and again. And that will hurt our survivability. You can have B-17s and a myriad of fighters year after year, but eventually it's going to get stale. We have to do things that are going to be exciting and new and different. We've got to keep changing and we’ve got to keep developing.

Some people are excited by this year's themes, some people have said, "I'm not going this year." When we create a bit of a stir, when people say, "That’s not typical Thunder," it says to us that we are changing things, and that's our goal.

I think the people who love our event trust us a little bit. A lot of people came to our defense when people bashed the Vietnam theme and the C-130s, saying "I'm sure the guys at Thunder are not going to ignore World War Two." We never planned to. We had thought of the Victory Flight as a neat thing to give the WWII fans their fix at the same time as we’re opening up our arms to different generations of warbirds and to different enthusiasts.

Are there new challenges you foresee in 2009, such as dealing with the impact of the economic downturn?

The economy is a big challenge for us, but bad economic times also work in our favor. In 2008 we had a 90% jump in foreclosures in the Detroit area, we had just over 100,000 people laid off – and this was all just prior to our show. We had some of the worst economic conditions, but we saw an increase yet again in Thunder’s attendance. And ICAS reported record attendance at shows all across North America in 2008.

Because people don't have the money to go on fancy vacations out of town, they're looking to their hometowns to provide entertainment. Going up to Mackinaw Island for a week is no longer affordable for a lot of people, but going to the airshow for a day is. In the Great Depression, the number-one thing people did was go to the movies. Movie theaters saw incredible revenues back then, and it was the same philosophy – let's look for something inexpensive and local to entertain the family. I think a lot of people are going to be using the airshow, as we saw last year, as kind of a "Staycation" where instead of going out of town, Mom and Dad but cheap tickets online to our event, kids under 15 are free, and the family has a great day at the airshow.

Airshows are super, super cheap entertainment, and I hope the airshow industry does a better job of selling itself on that point. Compared to a couple of hours at a pro sporting event like a Red Wings game, a day at an airshow is a steal, an absolute bargain.

All that said, we are responding to the hard times. For one thing, we're extending our discounted ticketing throughout the airshow weekend, so people will not have to pay the gate prices if they log on and buy tickets online. They can save money right up until Saturday or Sunday morning when the show starts.

I think we'll do alright in 2009. In some respects, it's just about getting word out there about the value we represent.

How did you come to be involved with airshows?

My dad was the founder of the London, Ontario airshow in 1974, and ran it through to 1997. For 23 years he put on one of the biggest military airshows in Canada. Obviously that's where I caught the bug – four years old, watching Voodoos and Phantoms from Selfridge, Starfighters from the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Air Force Vulcan, and all those other great old airplanes.

When I joined the Yankee Air Museum, I had no intention of doing any events with them. I actually had joined just to be a grunt. I said, "I don't know anything about airplanes mechanically, I'm not an A&P, I just want to help. I'll wipe down engines, I'll mop floors."

Mike got the idea to do a small airshow in 1999. He came to me and asked if I'd help him. I said yeah, but I never thought it would get to this level. We were just making a weekend event to go along with other weekend events for the museum. It's just kind of blossomed. It's like watching you kids grow up – you never expected them to get that big!

It's challenging for Mike and I to work on Thunder through the year because we both work full-time. We put in tons of hours off-shift and on weekends, working together to keep this thing going.

Earlier we talked about your favorite aspects of the 2008 show. Looking further back, what has been your proudest moment overall, after ten years of holding Thunder over Michigan?

If I had to pick the most special year, it was 2005. The very next day after the October 2004 fire at the museum, when the ruins were still smoldering, the president of the museum made a statement that there would be a 2005 Thunder over Michigan airshow. We had our three flyable aircraft, a couple of toolboxes that were dragged out of the hangar, and that was it. We’d lost all our show signage, we’d lost tugs, we’d lost towbars... all this equipment we used to run Thunder. But that day was the proudest moment for us because it showed that, as a museum, we weren't going to roll over. We weren't going to take our premier event and quash it because we were worried about losing money. The museum's board of directors unanimously said "We have to do it, we have to go for it." We got back on our feet and set a record at the 2005 show with eight B-17s in attendance. When the eighth B-17 arrived on Saturday morning, we thought "Wow, this is something else."

Obviously your name and Mike's come up frequently when Thunder is talked about, but who are some of the other people involved with the show who deserve to be recognized?

You know, to single any of them out and not mention all the others would be a disservice. There are 400-plus people to thank. Every volunteer should feel, whether they're keeping the ramp clean of FOD or taking admissions or working security, that there's no one group you could take out and say "we don't really need these guys." The whole thing would fall apart. Mike and I can dream all we want and plan all we want, but it would be nothing without the volunteers. They are the heart and soul of Thunder.

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