Missing Man Formation
Against a crystal blue sky, at the Annual Veterans Day Celebration at the Alachua County Veterans Memorial in Kanapaha Park.
The flyover was one of the events on the program. A missing man formation is an aerial maneuver which is intended to honor dead or missing members of the military, specifically pilots in the air force. The origins of the missing man formation lie in the First World War, when Royal Air Force (RAF) crews got into the habit of doing an organized flyover when they returned to their home airfields, to alert ground crews that they were coming in. During the flyover, ground crews would also take note of how many men had returned from the mission, and since the layout of a tight flight formation is very rigid, the ground crews could figure out who was missing. Quite an emotional display. According to RAF history, the first official missing man formation as a military honor occurred with the death of the Red Baron, a famous flying ace of the First World War. Pilots decided to enact a spontaneous tribute to him, executing a flyover, also known as a flyby, in which an aircraft was obviously missing, symbolizing the Red Baron's departure from the world of the living. By 1938, the United States had picked up the practice, and it has since become common at prominent military funerals.
Missing Man Formation
Against a crystal blue sky, at the Annual Veterans Day Celebration at the Alachua County Veterans Memorial in Kanapaha Park.
The flyover was one of the events on the program. A missing man formation is an aerial maneuver which is intended to honor dead or missing members of the military, specifically pilots in the air force. The origins of the missing man formation lie in the First World War, when Royal Air Force (RAF) crews got into the habit of doing an organized flyover when they returned to their home airfields, to alert ground crews that they were coming in. During the flyover, ground crews would also take note of how many men had returned from the mission, and since the layout of a tight flight formation is very rigid, the ground crews could figure out who was missing. Quite an emotional display. According to RAF history, the first official missing man formation as a military honor occurred with the death of the Red Baron, a famous flying ace of the First World War. Pilots decided to enact a spontaneous tribute to him, executing a flyover, also known as a flyby, in which an aircraft was obviously missing, symbolizing the Red Baron's departure from the world of the living. By 1938, the United States had picked up the practice, and it has since become common at prominent military funerals.