Thunderbirds Flew Fort Wayne While Blacksnakes Converted F-16s

The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds flew F-16 Fighting Falcons at the Fort Wayne Air Show on July 12 and 13, 2025. The 122nd Fighter Wing hosted the weekend at Baer Field Air National Guard Base while it was still converting to the same jet.

Nine months later the wing said the conversion was done. The demo team had already shown Fort Wayne what a Falcon looks like when the city is asked to keep backing a fighter base.

Thunderbirds Closed the Weekend in F-16s

Gates opened at 9 a.m. Feature flying ran from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and the field closed at 5 p.m. General admission was free, with paid premium seats for people who wanted shade and a marked row. Tech. Sgt. Kathleen LaCorte of the 122nd shot a 2-minute 15-second public-domain reel of the team on July 12, posted July 14.

The jets arrived July 8 and 9. Practice was July 11. Col. Nathan Malafa led the 130-person U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron from Thunderbird 1. The team has flown the F-16 since 1983 and the F-16C since 1992. The show itself runs about 50 minutes, down from a 90-minute script used in earlier decades.

Lt. Col. Alana Minx, director of the 2025 122nd Fighter Wing Air Show and Open House, told visitors in the 2025 Fort Wayne Air Show program that the weekend mixed the Thunderbirds with historic aircraft and ground acts, and that sponsors and volunteers had carried the load. The official show site later posted a thank-you and left the 2025 dates on the page.

THE WEEKEND BILL

• Headline jet team: The Thunderbirds closed both public days in F-16s, the same type the host wing was converting onto.
• Military jumpers: The U.S. Special Operations Command Para-Commandos opened the sky with a parachute demo.
• Warbirds on the field: The Commemorative Air Force brought P-51D Mustang Gunfighter and B-25 Miss Mitchell.
• Civilian noise: Kyle Franklin’s Flying Circus, Skip Stewart, Ghostwriter Nathan Hammond, and the Smoke-n-Thunder JetCar (Westinghouse J34-48 engine) filled the gap between military passes.

Fort Wayne Air Show, Inc. listed Mike Gouloff as board president. The civic nonprofit runs the open house with the wing. Earlier Thunderbirds weekends here were 2019 and 2022, the same three-year gap a 2023 base briefing had already put on the calendar for 2025.

The Host Wing Was Still Converting

The program’s welcome from Col. Scott “Tug” Boatright, commander of the 122nd, put the inventory in print: the wing maintains and flies 21 F-16C Block 40 aircraft at Fort Wayne International Airport. It also said the unit had flown only fighters for 82 years, a line that traces to the 358th Fighter Group, activated in January 1943 on the P-47D.

Those 21 Falcons were not a finished combat fleet in July 2025. The A-10 Thunderbolt II had left. The F-16s were back. Inspections were still in front of the Blacksnakes. In March 2026, still short of the flag, Boatright said the unit was technically in conversion and the jets were not quite ready.

Master Sgt. William Hopper of the Indiana National Guard wrote that the wing completed conversion to F-16 Fighting Falcons on April 27, 2026, and had regained combat certification and deployment readiness. The last gate was Checkered Flag 26-1 at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, where the wing employed live munitions, plus the inspections stacked around that trip.

I am extremely proud of my fellow Blacksnakes who poured their heart and soul into the mission every single day to make this F-16 conversion a resounding and historic success. The Blacksnakes now stand ready to do the nation’s business as a lethal, mission-ready and combat-capable fighter wing.

Col. Scott T. Boatright, commander, 122nd Fighter Wing, Indiana National Guard release

The National Guard Bureau put the same milestone on its account on May 4, 2026, tying the new Falcons to airpower for combatant commanders.

The @NationalGuardIN's 122nd Fighter Wing successfully completed conversion to new F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft, allowing the wing to continue providing lethal mission-ready airpower in support of combatant commanders around the globe. https://t.co/d0m0EC9v1n

— National Guard (@USNationalGuard) May 4, 2026

Local replies treated it as a hometown win, not a Pentagon footnote. That is the way Fort Wayne has talked about these jets for a year: they belong on this ramp.

The 2022 Law That Replaced the A-10s

The swap did not start with an air show. Congress wrote it into the fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec. 23, 2022, which set 21 A-10s at Baer Field to be replaced with F-16s. Conversion work began in April 2023.

It was a return, not a first look. The Blacksnakes had already flown F-16s from 1991 to 2010, then moved to the A-10, then came back. Boatright’s 2023 line for the city was short: fighters in Fort Wayne. He said the A-10 was going away, the wing had fought to land the F-16, and the jet sits you on a rocket. The nickname on the tails is older than either airframe. He has said it comes from “Mad” Anthony Wayne, called a blacksnake for how he fought.

THE F-16 RETURN AT BAER FIELD

1. December 23, 2022: The fiscal 2023 NDAA is signed and sets the A-10-to-F-16 swap for the 122nd.
2. April 2023: Conversion work begins at Baer Field.
3. July 12 and 13, 2025: The Thunderbirds headline the Fort Wayne Air Show on F-16s while the host wing is still in conversion.
4. Checkered Flag 26-1: The wing shows full mission readiness and live munitions at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida.
5. April 27, 2026: Hopper’s release says conversion is complete and combat certification is back.
6. September 11, 2026: Certified 122nd F-16s fly over 10 northeast Indiana high school football games.

From the Thunderbirds weekend to the certification announcement was nine months. From the law to the announcement was about three years, the span Hopper used.

What an F-16C Block 40 Does

The jet on both the demo team and the Blacksnake ramp is a compact multirole fighter. The Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon fact sheet puts its air-to-air turn and combat radius ahead of threat fighters it was built to meet, and says it can haul weapons more than 500 miles, defend itself, and come home. With a full internal fuel load it is built to pull 9 Gs. The bubble canopy and 30-degree seat are there so the pilot can see and tolerate that load. Commands go out fly-by-wire through a side stick.

Block 40-42 jets reached initial operational capability in 1989. The 122nd’s book for the air show called its jets Block 40s and noted the Air Force plans to keep F-16s flying at least another two decades. That timeline is why a Guard wing will take a “legacy” fighter and still call it a future.

F-16C FIGURES THE AIR FORCE PUBLISHES

A Thunderbird jet, the program said, can be combat ready in 72 hours. That sentence sat a few pages from Boatright’s inventory of 21 jets that were not yet certified. The crowd watched the ready version. The wing was still building its own.

$113 Million Tied to Those Hangars

Greater Fort Wayne Inc. hired the Community Research Institute at Purdue University Fort Wayne to measure what the base spends and supports. Rachel Blakeman, the institute’s director, delivered the Purdue Fort Wayne economic impact study dated Sept. 20, 2023, using IMPLAN and figures the wing supplied.

Statewide impact was put at $113 million a year. Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District, 10 northeastern counties, was $94.1 million. Allen County was $63.5 million. The study said the wing supports more than 1,100 jobs in Indiana and 672 in Allen County. John Urbahns, then president and CEO of Greater Fort Wayne Inc., separated the payroll mix from the “part-time Guard” stereotype: 423 full-time military and civilian employees and 727 part-time military employees, 1,150 people on the books.

WHERE THE 2023 STUDY PUT THE BASE

Blakeman said the reach is centered in Fort Wayne and runs across northeast Indiana and the state, and that the true figure is likely larger than the data can show. Col. Joshua C. Waggoner, who commanded the 122nd when the study landed, said more than 1,000 citizen-airmen live and work in the Hoosier heartland and that the wing is the community, not a guest in it. A free air show on that ramp is how a lot of the county meets the payroll that study was counting.

Boatright Calls the Falcon a Bridge Jet

The conversion flag does not end the argument inside the headquarters building. In March 2026, while the jets were still short of ready, Boatright told Fort Wayne’s Morning News that the F-16 assignment is how the base stays in the fighter business long enough to compete for what comes next.

In order to keep fighter aircraft here in Fort Wayne, we’ve got to modernize this base to be as competitive as we can when the Air Force selects the next F-35 unit. This F-16, though a phenomenal airplane, is really a bridge mission from that A-10 that we had to a fifth-generation fighter like an F-35. Our goal is to make sure this base is upgraded and modernized so we can have fighters in Fort Wayne for the next two, three, or four decades.

Col. Scott “Tug” Boatright, commander, 122nd Fighter Wing, on Fort Wayne’s Morning News, March 2026

No F-35 decision for Fort Wayne has been announced. The bet on the table is narrower and already partly paid: take the Falcon, finish the inspections, stay visible, and do not let the city forget what a fighter wing looks like from the parking lot. The Thunderbirds weekend was the loudest day of that pitch. Recruiting still lists (260) 478-3247 and 122.FW.Recruiting.Org@us.af.mil on the wing site, a reminder that an open house is also a hiring hall.

After certification the Blacksnakes did not go quiet. They showed the new jet at the 2026 Grissom Air & Space Expo at the end of August, flying with a KC-135R from the 434th Air Refueling Wing. Sen. Todd Young walked a cockpit on May 29, 2026. The political and public calendar filled in around a unit that could again say it was deployable.

F-16s Over 10 Friday Night Games

On Sept. 11, 2026, 122nd F-16s were scheduled over 10 northeast Indiana high school football games around 7 p.m., after a moment of silence for the attacks 25 years earlier. Boatright has said readiness is the first thing the base works on because the next call is unknown, and that the wing already does flyovers for big sports and wanted that courtesy for local high schools.

He has a personal date on that anniversary. He has said he was back from Korea and about to train in F-16s when he watched the attacks on television, and that it locked in his decision to enlist. The jets over the Friday lights were the same type he was then waiting to learn, now assigned to the wing he commands, after a three-year conversion and a Thunderbirds weekend that put the silhouette on every phone in the county.

The 2025 show site still reads as a thank-you, with no new public dates posted. The last three Thunderbirds visits here were 2019, 2022, and 2025. Whether that cadence holds is a later press release. The certified Falcons are already in the local sky.

Frequently Asked Questions

When Was the 2025 Fort Wayne Air Show?

The public show days were Saturday and Sunday, July 12 and 13, 2025, at the 122nd Fighter Wing’s field at Fort Wayne Air National Guard Base, with the Thunderbirds also practicing on July 11 after arriving July 8 and 9. Videographer credit on the wing’s public reel is Tech. Sgt. Kathleen LaCorte, and the clip’s video ID is 970036.

What Jet Do the Thunderbirds Fly?

They fly the F-16 Fighting Falcon and have done so since 1983, moving from the F-16A to the F-16C in 1992; the 2025 team book listed five earlier show jets (F-84G, F-105, F-100C, F-4, and T-38) and said a Thunderbird aircraft can be made combat ready in 72 hours. The squadron was activated June 1, 1953, at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, and its first civilian show was that July in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

When Did the 122nd Finish Its F-16 Conversion?

The wing’s announcement, written by Master Sgt. William Hopper, is dated April 27, 2026, after about three years of work that began in April 2023 under the fiscal 2023 NDAA. The F-16A first flew in December 1976 and the first operational F-16A went to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, in January 1979, so Fort Wayne’s new jets sit in a line that is already half a century old.

How Often Does Fort Wayne Host an Air Show?

The last three Thunderbirds shows at the 122nd were 2019, 2022, and 2025, and a 2023 base briefing said the fighter wing stages an air show every three years, with 2025 named as the next one at that time. The 2025 book credits Herb Gillen Advertising for program design, and Fort Wayne Air Show, Inc. remains the civic board on the paperwork.

What Did the Purdue Study Find on Jobs?

The Community Research Institute counted more than 1,100 jobs statewide and 672 in Allen County, with almost 1,025 in the 3rd Congressional District, on top of the $113 million statewide impact figure. An F-16C/D unit cost on the Air Force sheet is $18.8 million in fiscal 1998 dollars, a procurement number that is separate from the yearly local spend the Purdue model was built to catch.

Friday lights in Allen County now get a Falcon pass from a wing that can say it is certified. The Thunderbirds had already drawn the outline in July 2025, on a ramp that was still taking the test.