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Flying over three parades this 4th of July, will be none other than The Hooligans Flight Team. The celebrations in Allendale, Grandville, and Dorr will be highlighted with an air show of breathtaking precision and military honor.
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John Workman is one of the pilots and founders of the Hooligans, which formed in the late 1990s. Much of the time the T34 planes are in formation, they are only five feet apart and traveling at a speed of about 150 miles per hour.
If you think about the wingspan of an average adult, that’s about how cozy these planes get to each other. Now throw in some bumpy turbulence. These pilots are steady handed, focused, and extremely skilled.
And yes, they practice. Workman has about 1200 hours of formation flight experience. “It’s not just a bunch of people getting together who do it for fun,” he said. The pilots are certified by FAST (Formation and Safety Team) which is a formation alliance that tests those who have been training by having them pass a check ride.
So, how much communication is happening as the pilots zip through their patterns? A lot, as in, the communication is constant. Workman often flies the lead plane. The wingmen never take their eyes off the lead aircraft or the aircraft they’re following.
For abrupt turns, the wingmen will hear directives from the lead such as: Turning right, now. Turning left, now. For changing formations, they will hear commands such as: Go to diamond, now. Go to fingertip strong right, now. Smoke on, now.
Workman explained that the aircraft have smoke trails they can turn on and off. “It makes it look kind of cool.”
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The pilots are not always in the same position with each performance. Though Workman has assumed the lead for many events, he finds it easier to be a wingman. As a lead you have to think as a lead, but as a wingman you just have to stick to your lead.
Weather can be a challenge. It’s much harder to fly in turbulence. The Hooligans have set parameters for what weather conditions will keep them out of the sky. They limit themselves to a 1500-foot ceiling (measurement from the ground to the base of the lowest layer of clouds) and a five-mile visibility. Workman said the parameters are needed because the pilots have to find and be able to see the target when they are on perch (in a holding pattern), though they also rely on GPS.
And they won’t fly in the rain. “Rain screws up your canopy (the transparent cover over the cockpit) and you can’t see as well, limits the visibility,” Workman said.
When the Hooligans fly over the Berling Raceway—as they will do Saturday—they are given a TOT (time over target). Their TOT for Berlin is 6:37, which will be at the end of the national anthem. In order fly in at that exact time, the Hooligans will be on perch about three miles away—which is about a minute and a half inbound. They will then try to time it so that they arrive at 6:37:00, when the national anthem should be ending. That is precision. Workman said, “We’ve done several on TV with NASCAR and the Indy car race, and you don’t want to mess it up.”
At the Summit Motor Sports Park Racking in Norwalk, Ohio, the Hooligans can key the mic and hear the music in the aircrafts.
“To this day it still gives me goose bumps to hear it as we fly over, when we can hear the national anthem,” Workman said.
At the end of an event, they usually do a 360-overhead break for a landing. They first set up in an echelon, which is with the planes all on one side of the lead. And then they do a three second, 360 break. In other words, when they get to the numbers on the runway, they pitch up one at a time, do a 360, and land. The method allows them to get slow enough to put their gear down and land with gear flaps. Otherwise, they have to slow down a ways away from the airport.
“The landing is similar to what the military would do in Vietnam, for example. They didn’t want to slow up—not over the airport—because there were enemy troops. So, they kept full bore right to the airport and then did a 360 and landed, so they could stay within the airport perimeter,” Workman said.
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Before the flight the Hooligans brief their plan, so they know where their position is, what the maneuvers are going to be, the disengagement, and how they’re going to land, etc. And then at the end of the event they’ll debrief. They talk about what went right and what went wrong. They do this “because it’s pretty serious,” Workman explained. “You’re flying 150 miles an hour, 5 feet from another airplane. We want to take it very seriously.”
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So, when did Workman's passion for flight begin? “Something drew me to flying as a young boy,” he said. He told how he had one of those “wired planes that you start a prop, and it goes around, and you’d get dizzy going around in a circle.” When he was 40, his wife gave him a Christmas present of a Blue Sky Special for $10, which was a 30-minute intro flight. And he was hooked.
By the middle of February, he had his license and went through the progression from private, to instrument, and then a commercial license. He explained that it just makes you a better pilot to get all of your certifications.
Workman always wanted a warbird. He found a T34 that was born in 1956 and served training pilots in the military through 1960 at Lackland Airforce Base. The military sold most of these planes to foreign countries when they were done using them because they won’t sell directly to civilians for defense purposes. So, Workman’s plane went to Indonesia for 30 years. Some guys brought it back from Indonesia restored it nose to tail, and he bought it from them. At one of their events, someone recognized the numbers on Workman’s plane.
When the original logbook was checked, the man had flown Workman’s plane in January of 1957 as his first training mission at Lackland Airforce base.
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When Workman went to his very first air show he met a T34 guy named Russ McDonald, who has since passed away. The two of them started flying together and then decided to get their formation patch and assemble a team. They added other pilots through the T34 association and formed The Hooligans Flight Team. All of the Hooligans’ planes are owned by the pilots and have been used in the military—warbirds.
Have you ever wondered why pilots wear flight suits? They’re made of Nomex which is fire resistant. The suits are a safety protocol, just like helmets. “Plus, we think they’re cool,” Workman said, adding that his wife likes a man in uniform. But they’re hot. The military can wear them more easily because they tend to have air-conditioned aircraft.
The Hooligans sign up for about 60 flights per year. This weekend alone the pilots will do seven events. There are eight pilots on their team and most of them are a part of a T34 association. In addition to parades and racetrack events, the team often does missing man formations for the funerals of veterans who have passed—which is very meaningful.
The pilots don’t do this for a living. They do these events because 1. These flights are their passion. 2. They want to help celebrate and show honor.
The Hooligans’ mission is to honor those who have served in the military, both currently and in the past.
Be sure to catch them at one of their upcoming events:
July 4
Parades in Allendale, Grandville, and Dorr
July 5
• Soar into Summer event at the Critter Barn in Zeeland
• Monticello Veterans Boat Parade in Indiana
• Berlin Raceway
• Evening events in Saginaw
Krista Yetzke is a native of Ottawa County. A jeep-driving, guitar-playing wife, mom, and everyday adventurer, Krista was raised on the love of Jesus, the great outdoors, the arts, the value of frugality, and the beauty of food as medicine.
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