Pilots at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, reached back to a tradition born in the early decades of combat flying to pay tribute to a stunt pilot who died at the base.
Flyers and other personnel gathered at sunset on Friday, April 25, to burn a piano, a tradition among fighter pilots that dates at least to World War II, in tribute to stunt pilot Rob Holland, who died in a crash on the base the day before.
Holland crashed on the base’s runway while practicing for the base’s airshow, Air Power Over Hampton Roads. His custom, carbon-fiber stunt plane reportedly slammed into the ground when he mistimed a low-level maneuver. Holland was a 13-time national stunt flying champion and widely known across the aviation world for one-of-a-kind stunts in highly customized acrobatic planes.
Holland was not a military veteran, but Air Force Col. Matthew R. Altman, commander of Langley’s 633d Air Base Wing, said he was well known and admired in military flying circles, particularly among fighter pilots, who specialize in high-speed maneuvers and perilously low altitude flying not unlike Holland’s stunt work.
“We lost a great friend to the Air Force,” Altman said. “On behalf of all of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, all the friends and family of the pilot, just want to offer our deepest, deepest condolences.”
A fighter pilot’s tradition
While the airshow went on as planned, pilots and others at Langley burned a piano at dusk Friday to honor Holland in a gathering captured by many on phone cameras and posted to social media. The Instagram account aviatress_alyssa, which frequently posts about airshows and other civilian flying events, posted three videos from the event.
In the first video, at least one Air Force member wearing a flight suit appears to play the piano in the middle of a grassy lawn, as a crowd of perhaps 100 gathers, including safety-minded troops with radios and a fire extinguisher.
In a second video, as skies darken, a man in a flight suit briefly tells an origin story of the piano burning tradition among pilots in World War II. In one squadron, he says, one pilot played piano and “sometimes they’d come back from a mission and if they all made it, the piano player would play for them and they’d all celebrate and sing joyous songs.”
On days when a squadron member did not return, the man recounts, the piano player would lead songs of remembrance.
After one mission, returning pilots found that the missing flyer for the day was the piano player.
“To honor their fallen comrade, they set the piano on fire,” he says. “Tonight we’re gonna burn this piano in honor of Rob Holland.”
Using lighter fluid, pilots then light the piano ablaze as those in the crowd raised a toast.
Unclear origins
Though the brief speech at the Langley ceremony reflects one version of the piano burning’s origin, the facts behind the tradition are unclear.
Mostly undisputed is that the tradition traces to early Royal Air Force pilots. But different histories put the first burned piano in different wars and offer different meanings. Some link the tradition, as the Langley event did, to a single pilot, while others say the first piano was burned in revolt against that most military of foes: a perceived drop in recruiting standards.
A 2018 article in Pianist magazine by Alec Coles-Aldridge traces the tradition to World War I, where the brand-new Royal Air Force was so desperate for pilots — and went through new ones so rapidly on the battlefield — that pilots were recruited from middle class families, a major break from the English tradition of drawing its officer corps from well-to-do society.
“These new arrivals were considered uncultured and lacking in the education of a proper member of the Royal Air Force,” wrote Coles-Aldridge. “Consequently, piano lessons ensued, much to the distaste of the new arrivals. An unfortunate incident at a squadron clubhouse caused a significant fire; enough to destroy a piano. The piano lessons stopped, and soon other squadrons were using the same solution.”
A 2023 post on Cannon Air Force Base’s official Instagram account captures a piano burning led by an RAF exchange pilot. That version — presumably taken from the RAF pilot — puts the origin back in World War II’s Battle of Britain, but says a piano was burned each time any pilot was killed — a tradition that would have been a toll of over 500 pianos just for RAF fighter pilots, or close to 1600 including bomber crews from the campaign.