High Time for Stealth Appearance : Air show: About 225,000 attend the Edwards open house. Many get unscheduled glimpse of the bat-winged bombers.

Dave Hopkins and John Murray, a pair of veteran aviation enthusiasts, traveled thousands of miles from England to the Mojave Desert to attend the annual open house and air show here Saturday. They figured they would see something new.

They weren’t disappointed.

Not only did the B-2 stealth bomber make its first-ever air show appearance to close Saturday’s event, but early arrivers among the crowd estimated at 225,000 also got to see an unscheduled two-hour flight by two of the bat-winged bombers before the show started.

“It’s just so unusual,” said Hopkins, a computer consultant from London. “To see it fly is really something. It looks like a Klingon warship.”

The open house went off without any reported major hitches and drew spectators from throughout Southern California and from countries as far away as Japan and Australia. Laden with cameras, binoculars, sunglasses and plenty of sunscreen, they oohed and ahed as the planes zipped overhead.

The weather was near-perfect for the show, with clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid- to upper 80s, cooler than the blistering heat of prior years. Although the large crowd spent more than four hours in the sun, officials reported only minor medical problems and no serious cases of heatstroke.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Richard Engel, commander of the base’s Flight Test Center, called the show “a living corporate report to the people” on the service’s activities.

Air Force officials said the show featured more than 40 aircraft on ground display, including a B-2 bomber, a new C-17 transport, the Boeing 747 that carries the Space Shuttle, and the once super-secret SR-71 Blackbird spy plane and its U-2 ancestor. The U.S. Army’s Golden Knights parachute team also performed.

Originally, the Air Forces’ Thunderbirds aerobatic squadron had been scheduled to highlight the show but had to cancel its performance because its team leader came down with back problems. So instead, Air Force officials a week ago got permission for the B-2s, four of which are undergoing tests at Edwards, to fly in place of the Thunderbirds.

The unexpected change drew mixed but mostly positive reactions from the crowd. “Beautiful. It was worth it. I’d stand outside in the sun all day to see it again,” said Tino Rishmauwy, a Rockwell International engineer from Hacienda Heights who works on the Space Shuttle.

Al Galuis, who drove 1 1/2 hours with his 4-year-old son, Justin, from their Simi Valley home, had a different view. He had come specifically to see the Thunderbirds, figuring their high-flying exploits would be more exciting than the lumbering B-2’s flying overhead. “It’s a little disappointing,” he said when told the Thunderbirds had canceled. “We didn’t hear about it.” Galuis said he may now try to catch the Navy’s Blue Angels squadron at today’s Point Mugu air show in Ventura County.

The air show is the only time of the year when the normally secrecy-obsessed base, home of the Air Forces’ Test Pilot School and proving ground for most of the services cutting-edge technology, throws its doors open to the public. The only outwardly visible sign of caution was a handful of airmen, rifles slung over their shoulders, who stood guard around some of the more sensitive aircraft.

Other planes, such as the behemoth C-5 cargo jet, were opened to spectators. In fact, the C-5 on display appeared to draw the longest line of any plane at the show as people waited to peer into its cockpit.

By late afternoon, the sun began to take its toll, driving many people to seek shelter under the wings of the half dozen largest aircraft parked on the flight line. Jason McMillen, 15, and Tabatha Deibel, 14, both of Canyon Country, took a different approach, napping briefly inside the cargo section of the giant transport plane.

But for Deibel, the star of the show was clearly the B-2. “It was cool. I liked the shape of it,” she said. The show’s downside? “Looking at the sun.”

Retired Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier when he flew the X-1 at Edwards in 1947, opened the show by duplicating his record feat in an F-15 Eagle, sending a sonic boom rumbling across the desert.

“I’ve been regularly doing it ever since,” said Yeager of his sound barrier breakthrough. “The only mistake I made back in 1947 was not patenting it,” he told the crowd.

The show also generated some news as the Lockheed Advance Development Co., which operates its super-secret Skunk Works plant in Palmdale, announced a $250,000 donation spread over five years toward the base’s planned flight test museum.

That donation, coupled with a Friday night fund-raiser in Lancaster that officials expected to net about $50,000, will fund the first phase of construction of the museum. Construction is expected to begin in mid-1994 and be completed by the end of that year.

Hopkins, one of the two English visitors, said the Edwards show was just one of four, along with today’s event at Point Mugu, that he planned to attend during his three-week U.S. stay. But he said Edwards will be the favorite, adding, “There’s always the chance of seeing something new.”