John and Sue Paul, founders of the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa, Idaho, have always placed a high priority on remembering veterans and those who died in service to the United States.
Each Memorial Day for about 15 years, an historic flight with the museum’s three flying warbirds flies along a circuitous route that highlights the Veterans’ Cemetery, Veterans Memorial Park, other parks, hospitals, and other sites in the Boise, Idaho, Treasure Valley.
For Memorial Day 2025, the honors went to Warhawk Air Museum’s two P-40s and its P-51C.
Warhawk Air Museum’s longstanding collaborative efforts with the Planes of Fame museum in California saw Planes of Fame pilots John Maloney and John Hinton join fellow Californian Jim Thomas to fly the 30-minute Memorial Day mission.
Momentum favors active organizations like Warhawk Air Museum, and the Memorial Day flight that used to be a launch attended by a handful of friends of the museum has become a Treasure Valley event. This year, a special museum admission price for Memorial Day and the presence of food vendors served a crowd counted at 2,144, said Warhawk Air Museum Executive Director Carson Spear. That’s a jump from last year’s 1,600.
And one can only guess how many of the Boise region’s 850,000 residents heard the burble of Allison and Merlin engines, and looked up past the many flags flying on Memorial Day to watch the tribute in the sky.
For those in attendance at the museum, the three World War II fighters were parked just beyond a crowd rope line, affording a good view of the engine start-ups and the associated popping and roaring sounds that accompany the ritual of firing up a warbird.
The P-51C and two P-40s took off in time to form up and start their run over the community by 10:59 a.m. About a half hour later, their mission complete, pilots Hinton, Maloney, and Thomas made a memorable pass for the Nampa airport crowd before returning to peel off for landing.
Attendees at the museum’s Memorial Day event could see the former Warhawk maintenance and storage hangar stripped bare, with thoughtful changes underway to make the building a museum gallery in tribute to those who served in the Global War on Terror. The gallery is set to open Sept. 13, 2025.
Fred also created this video of the event:
For more information: WarhawkAirMuseum.org
