For several hours Tuesday, a section of the Vicksburg-Tallulah Regional Airport took on the appearance of a World War II aerodrome.

Five war birds — a Japanese Zero fighter, P-40 Curtis Warhawk fighter, FG1D Corsair and P-51 Mustang fighters and an Avenger torpedo bomber — from the Texas Legends Flying Museum in Houston, landed at VTR on their way home from a performance in Maine.

The pilots stopped for fuel, food and to wait out a weather system, which prevented the planes and their pilots from completing the journey to Ellington Field, a former U.S. Air Force base that is now home to a joint reserve base and the home of the Legends Museum.

The Texas Flying Legends is composed of pilots from across the U.S. who fly the vintage World War II planes to fulfill the museum’s mission of reminding “our younger generations of the virtue, strength, pride and valor that each member of our armed forces carried with them during a period of time when our country needed them most.”

The planes perform at air shows across the country, giving people a look at the planes and their performance.

“We were in Oshkosh (Wisc.) and Mason City, Ind. and then to Maine, where we did two shows,” said Warren Pietch of Minot, N.D. “We were scheduled to fly for President Bush 41 and 43, last Sunday, but the weather was bad.”

Pietch flies the Zero, which was found on one of the islands in the Solomon chain in the Pacific in 1966 and restored.

“It’s an amazing airplane,” Pietch said. “For what it was designed to do, it does a great job. It’s not very fast, compared to allied fighters. It’s very maneuverable, and it’s an interesting experience to fly an airplane that’s widely hated.”

He said the Zero is used in the show to demonstrate the superiority of Axis fighters to American planes at the beginning of World War II “because we had let our guard down, and what our society had to overcome in a short period of time.

“When we start doing our demonstration, the Zero starts winning and ends up losing,” Pietch said, adding the Zero defeats the P-40 and a B-25 bomber in combat before falling to the Corsair, which Japanese pilots called “Whistling Death.”

Besides the combat performance, the planes also fly in what Legend pilot Sam Graves of Tarkio, Mo., called a “dissembled formation” because of the different types planes involved.

Graves, a Republican Congressman from Missouri, flies the Avenger TBM torpedo bomber similar to the plane former President George H.W. Bush flew in World War II. Bush’s signature is on the propeller, along with the plane’s original Navy pilot, Lt. H.L. Baderow.

“This plane has some combat history,” Graves said. “It sank two Japanese ships, a light cruiser, the Nishi, and a destroyer, the Oyodo.”

The Avenger has another, more infamous place in history. Five Avengers comprised Flight 19, the formation of planes that legend says disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle while on a training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in December 1945.

“This was the largest single-engine plane built in America during World War II,” Graves said. He described flying the plane as “trying to drive a loaded semi truck out of a soft field without power steering.”

He said the plane was very stable in the air and capable of holding a torpedo or up to 2,000 pounds of bombs in its bomb bay.

“It’s just wonderful to be able to fly these planes and bring this history to the people,” he said.