Flying with the Tigers

“They just don’t have a community to go fly with. You’re not going to go around and talk to a 51 guy and say, ‘When’s the last time you went up in a four ship?’ And they’ll be like, ‘Oh, last year at Oshkosh,’” he says. “We do it twice a week.”

Ekberg is the leader of the Tiger Squadron, a civilian formation group flying Nanchang CJ–6s. With pilots based primarily in LA’s South Bay and flying out of Zamperini Field in Torrance, California (TOA), the Tiger Squadron completes two to three flyovers a month for parades, holidays, sporting events, and memorial services. Not only does the group get to fly together with a frequency unavailable to many other warbird pilots, but this weekend in June alone, they have three flyovers in a row for the three days of the BeachLife Festival.

The Pied Piper of Zamperini Field

While the squadron is established now, the group started, as many things do, with just a few friends.

“In 1978, I lived two miles from this airport, and I was watching airplanes fly over my house,” Ekberg says. “I’d be out in the Jacuzzi having a drink and I’d be looking up at these airplanes. One day, and I can’t tell you why, I decided to drive to the airport. I drove to the airport, walked in, went to a flight center, and they said, ‘Would you like to go for a complimentary ride?’ I’m like, ‘Of course.’

“Forty-five minutes later, the guy’s like, ‘So, if you had a good time, come back, talk to us, we can sign you up.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m ready.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ And I said, ‘Let’s go now.’”

Within three months, Ekberg had his private pilot certificate and instrument rating. From there he added on commercial, but the timing to be a professional pilot wasn’t favorable. Military pilots returning from the Vietnam War got most of the airline jobs, but Ekberg is “super happy” the airline pilot path didn’t end up working out for him.

“I wouldn’t have made as much money as I have,” he says with a laugh. Although retired now, he worked in real estate and construction. That career clearly worked out. The Ekberg hangar is the Tiger Squadron’s base of operations and besides his Nanchang and Yak, there are several college educations’ worth of cars in addition to some eye-catching murals, walls lined with articles of flyovers and art, a loft, and a well-stocked and inviting bar and lounge area, plus a white board and airplane magnets for briefings. The hangar’s famous on the field and has been a hangout spot for all the local legends; Louis Zamperini and Bob Hoover themselves used to stop by.

The squadron pilots are seemingly happy to be led, and all are, for the most part, notably successful businessmen, lawyers, and realtors, among other professionals, who choose to make flying a priority. After earning his certificates and accepting that the airline path was not for him, he bought the Nanchang. Ekberg wanted to learn formation flying and ran into a “really great group of guys” that included Dan Pedersen and Darrell Gary. Pederson started Top Gun (yes, that Top Gun), and Gary was one of Pedersen’s wingmen. They all became great friends and expanded beyond formation flying to air combat, trips to Oshkosh, and vacations to Mexico and the Bahamas.

Ekberg has 4,400 hours in the Nanchang alone thanks to those adventures. A training airplane for China, the Nanchang CJ–6 is a relatively affordable warbird that is still produced in limited quantities. The fact that these airplanes are still made makes them much easier to maintain since parts are more readily available than many other warbirds, although mechanic Scott Brownlie stays busy keeping the Tiger Squadron’s fleet airworthy with his on-the-field maintenance business, Brownlie Aviation. He’s in the hangar today, too, chilling with the team and ready to help make sure everything is shipshape before the flyover.

From all that, the Tiger Squadron was born, and ever since, Ekberg’s been enticing folks on the field to join him. Several people, unprompted and on different days, call him the airport’s pied piper for his expertise in social engineering people onto the team. The squadron pilots are seemingly happy to be led, and all are, for the most part, notably successful businessmen, lawyers, and realtors, among other professionals, who choose to make this flying a priority.

Within Ekberg’s recruitment process for new Tigers, he notes that formation flying isn’t for everyone, and that experience and ratings don’t always mean someone will take to it. Formation pilots start with the basics—a formation card.

“There are people with driver’s licenses that drive well and there are people that don’t. So, the card doesn’t mean that much,” Ekberg says. “It’s really up to flight lead and the squadron to determine skillset levels and how good people are, put them in the right places in the flight. Everybody is constantly learning.”

To stay proficient, and thanks to California weather, the Tigers fly year-round with at least one or two practice flights a week. With a changing number of airplanes depending on what kind of event is booked, flyovers typically consist of a minimum of four and up to 13 if the whole fleet is there.

Out of the many flyovers over the years, past memorable flights include the annual Rose Parade in Pasadena, where the Tiger Squadron was the only civilian squadron ever to overfly. The Rose Parade emblem is now painted on the nose of the aircraft.

“That was quite the honor.”

One flight that stands out even more than that is when the Tigers had the chance to fly Vietnam War veterans.

“Richard Nixon released a bunch of POWs, mostly pilots from war camps, and brought them home, brought them to the White House, and threw a big dinner for them. And every year they get together,” Ekberg says. “Now there aren’t that many of them left anymore, but we flew for them at the Nixon Library, landed, came over, and had dinner with them. They were in tears, I was in tears. It was truly very memorable.”

This weekend’s flyover is special for entirely different reasons. It is tied to one of the squadron’s sponsors—Daou Winery. The sponsorship took several years to come together and was born from relationships Ekberg and the team made through rally driving, but now that it has, everyone seems pretty happy with it. The undersides of the team’s wings are painted with Daou branding, red on white, and the Tigers have agreed to fly so many events for them every year, both up at the winery in Paso Robles and around the country as needed. That the BeachLife Festival, which is produced by Goldenvoice and sponsored by Daou, is just a few miles from TOA is exceedingly convenient—a straight-out departure from 29R puts you almost directly over the stages.

I just wanna fly

The mood has been jovial and relaxed, but once Ekberg, who will fly lead, summons the team for the brief, everyone is on and all chit-chat stops as fast as someone turning down the volume knob on the radio. Ekberg checks his watch, verbally notes the time, one look around the room the equivalent of a conductor raising a baton, and gets right into the briefing. The pilots first review their positions, which are a surprise to no one, and discuss the plan. First, a formation takeoff and join over the water. Then some coastal flying over a nearby resort where Ekberg’s worked out a deal: a few passes for some apps and drinks later. Hopefully, this flyover (which is essentially a freebie) might entice the hotel to book their services in the future. Flyovers are surprisingly reasonably priced, starting at around $250 per airplane depending on where and what, and going up from there. After flying the coast of Palos Verdes (former home of Frank Robinson and Bob Hoover and also where Tiger Woods got his second-most-recent DUI), it’ll be time for the three passes—diamond, arrow, diamond—over BeachLife, which is set up in Redondo Beach’s King Harbor, by the pier.

Today I’ll fly with pilot Ben Holm, one of the squadron’s newest members, in the number eight spot. He’s been flying since 2017 and sold the Cessna 152 he trained in and purchased his Nanchang in 2020 after some encouragement from Ekberg and the rest of the team. He now has more than 500 hours of formation time—all but a few of these are in formation with the team.

Holm warns me about the air releasing I’ll hear throughout the flight. The CJ–6s use pneumatics rather than hydraulics for many systems including starting and brakes, and the slow-going hiss-and-turn taxi brings to mind Star Wars machines on a snow-covered planet.

The Nanchangs take up the whole runup area, and in a line, make an impressive and imposing sight. We get a view of it all from the end of the line, and Holm lets number seven know once we’re ready to go. We take off in the second group of four, staggered on the left side of the runway. Once we pass the shoreline on the straight-out departure, the join begins. If you’ve ever been in a formation join-up, you know it can feel mighty uncomfortable as you intentionally increase your closure rate to get in position efficiently. I grit my teeth and accept my status as passenger as Holm finds our number 8 spot. Holm’s rock steady and locks it in.

We fly the coast first, make sure everyone’s feeling good and the airplanes are solid. After smoke-on over the resort, Ekberg takes us back out over the ocean to prepare for the main event.

Time on target (TOT) is the name of the game. Ekberg’s passenger, whom I can clearly see from our closeness, barely takes his eyes off his watch, his left arm frozen with his wrist directly ahead. It’s go time.

First is the diamond, and while a committed banner tower plays chicken over the pier, lead sets the team up for the pass. The low wings and nature of formation flying make it hard to see anything below us, but once we’re past the pier, Ekberg swings the team out in a racetrack to reset into the arrow. Another pass, another reset. The smoke-on passes bring that smoke into the cockpit, and like the hissing pneumatics, Holm warned me about this on the ground. One final pass in the diamond, and then we’re finished. It all takes just a few minutes. The formation loosens up and splits to head back to the airport in two pre-briefed flights of four, the group of eight airplanes still not terribly convenient even in smaller groups to the tower, which has us circle before clearing us to land.

Generally, the texts, photos, and videos start rolling in immediately after a flyover, and since this one was so local, the team gets a ton right away. To no one’s surprise, everything looked great. Good even spacing, smoke on, and as it turns out, Sugar Ray was midway through their song Fly on the festival’s headliner stage during one of the passes—the Tigers were overhead right at the best part. I just wanna fly…. I just wanna fly.

“We hit the TOT within seconds. You start getting the photos back and it’s like, Oh, that’s just exactly what we want. And it’s so rewarding, because that takes years and years of prep to make those few moments happen,” Ekberg says. “It’s a true team sport.”

For the love of the game

While hitting the TOT is the ostensible goal, Ekberg and the rest of the team acknowledge that the best part of the squadron is the people. By the time we tuck Holm’s CJ–6 away and get back to Ekberg’s hangar, friends and family have arrived with pizza, sushi, and appropriately, a couple bottles of Daou. The debrief is short and uneventful; everyone did a great job, and they seem, mostly, to all be happy with each other.

The following day, we get to do it all over again, and I hop into the backseat of the number two spot with Dave Shaby. This time we finish up with some in-trail aerobatics, which feels like having ice cream for dinner—how is this what we get to do on a Sunday afternoon? Back on the ground a couple ride-alongs from Daou look a little green around the gills. Minds blown, they make plans to drop off more wine soon, and no plans to eat anything for the rest of the day. The life of the Tigers isn’t for everyone.

Even with the festival flyovers complete, the summer season has just begun, and for the rest of the year the Tigers will stay busy with two to three flyovers a month. Ekberg could have a P–51, if he really wanted, I think. But where’s the fun in that, when he can fly his Nanchang with friends instead?

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