ABSTRACT
The history of the military airshow stretches back to the early years of aviation in the first decade of the twentieth century. The first aeroplane flight in the UK took place in 1908 at Farnborough, when renowned adventurer Samuel Cody took control of a copy of the Wright Brothers' famous Flyer I. The UK's annual airshow calendar includes approximately 100 shows with the larger of these, like Fairford's Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT), attracting crowds of 130,000. The airshow offers a unique opportunity to get close to the military. As political geographers interested in military spaces and the projection of state power, these occasions offer author's chances to encounter military personnel and materiel somewhat on their own terms. Today, military airshows are a key location where civilians are tied into broader currents of militarism, either directly through military recruitment, or more subtly through a range of embodied and aesthetic experiences.
