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Geneseo Airshow highlights Western NY military aircraft roots

Vintage airplanes will be in the skies over Geneseo this weekend for the 38th annual airshow put on by the National Warplane Museum.

The theme of this year’s airshow is “Wings of Western New York,” and a spokesman for the show, Dave Cooper, says it will highly the contributions to aviation that came from this part of the state.

“A lot of people don’t know that during World War II and prior to World War II, the Curtiss Wright factory which built engines and the C-46 were built in Buffalo. Over 30-thousand P-40s were built by Bell Aircraft in Buffalo.”

Cooper, says vintage aircraft and even some of those who were on those planes originally will be there.

“And at the same time that the C-47 is here, we have the last surviving paratrooper who actually jumped into Normandy; he’ll be here joining us for the weekend, his name is Les Cruise and Les is 93 years old and we just love having him come down.”

Another focus of the airshow in Geneseo this weekend is encouraging young men and women to explore career opportunities in aviation.

The show runs from 10am to 3pm on both Saturday and Sunday.

There was an accident involving a small plane which crashed Friday evening, unrelated to the airshow itself; three people suffered non-life threatening injuries. You can find more details here.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.