In the Air, Seconds Matter. On the Ground, So Does Leadership.

WARBIRD RADIO - The seventeenth season of Warbird Radio opens not with spectacle, but with sobriety. Last year, during what should have been a routine flight in a P-51 Mustang, veteran airshow pilot Jim Pietz encountered one of aviation’s most unforgiving emergencies: an in-flight fire.

In an aircraft designed in the crucible of World War II, where systems are mechanical and margins can be thin, smoke in the cockpit is not an abstraction. It is immediate. It is disorienting. It is measured in seconds. LISTEN TO EPISODE: https://www.warbirdradio.com/featured-shows-1/episode/f15ce4ee/warbird-radio-jim-pietz-and-josh-wells-season-17-episode-1

What followed, as Pietz recounts in a candid conversation that anchors the 2026 premiere of Warbird Radio, was not improvisation but preparation. A former Chairman of the International Council of Air Shows, Pietz is widely regarded as a pilot’s pilot — an instructor, mentor and trusted adviser to some of the most accomplished aviators in the airshow community. His response in that moment reflected decades of disciplined training and a deep familiarity with the performance characteristics of the airplane he was flying. What might have been instantly fatal became survivable.

In the interview, Pietz resists dramatizing the event. There is no theatrical retelling, no indulgence in adrenaline. Instead, he speaks plainly about decision-making under pressure and the culture that makes such decisions possible. Warbirds, he notes, are neither forgiving nor sentimental machines. They reward precision and preparation; they expose complacency without hesitation. LISTEN TO EPISODE: https://www.warbirdradio.com/featured-shows-1/episode/f15ce4ee/warbird-radio-jim-pietz-and-josh-wells-season-17-episode-1

The conversation does not end with the emergency itself. Later in the season, Warbird Radio will return to the incident, widening the lens beyond the cockpit to examine maintenance practices, inspection culture and the sometimes uncomfortable but necessary candor that underpins safe operations. In a sector where aircraft are both historic artifacts and active flying machines, transparency is not merely professional courtesy. It is preservation.

The episode opens, fittingly, on another front of stewardship. Josh Wells, executive director of Doc's Friends, joins the program to discuss the ongoing work of operating one of only two airworthy B-29 Superfortresses in the world, B-29 Doc. Keeping such an aircraft aloft is as much an exercise in organizational leadership as in mechanical aptitude. It requires volunteers, donors, logistical planning and an unrelenting commitment to standards that honor both history and safety.

LISTEN TO EPISODE: https://www.warbirdradio.com/featured-shows-1/episode/f15ce4ee/warbird-radio-jim-pietz-and-josh-wells-season-17-episode-1

Wells outlines the aircraft’s upcoming tour and the network of support that sustains it, underscoring a central truth of the warbird community: these airplanes do not fly by nostalgia alone. They fly because individuals accept responsibility — for systems, for teams and for the legacy embodied in aluminum and rivets.

Taken together, the two conversations establish a theme for the season ahead. Whether confronting an emergency in a high-performance fighter or preparing a 141-foot wingspan bomber for public display, the work hinges on leadership under pressure and humility in preparation. The spectacle of flight may capture the public imagination, but it is the discipline behind the scenes that determines whether these aircraft endure.

Season 17 begins there — in the seconds that matter, and in the steady work that makes those seconds survivable. LISTEN TO EPISODE: https://www.warbirdradio.com/featured-shows-1/episode/f15ce4ee/warbird-radio-jim-pietz-and-josh-wells-season-17-episode-1