The air display that accompanied the Parade of Sail was divided by type: fixed-wing aircraft went up the Hudson, rotary-wing aircraft went up the East River. And a trio of V-22 Ospreys, for no obvious reason, circled round and round Liberty Island.
This is actually something military helicopter flights over NYC like to do: if you track them, you'll find they almost always do a couple of orbits of the Statue. So maybe the Ospreys were just giving some senior officers a private tour.
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