In an event with the almost-menacing moniker Rolling Thunder, almost half a million motorcyclists rumbled across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, snaked around the Mall and dismounted en masse near the Lincoln Memorial. Most of the bikers were clad in black leather, many sported Visigothian manes and beards and almost all straddled brutish, black Harley-Davidsons or H-D clones.

The bad-boy biker image began decades ago. In Hollister, Calif., on the weekend of July Fourth, 1947, a motorcycle rally became rowdy. Some drunken participants (restless war veterans among them) were arrested, and Life magazine ran a story featuring a staged photograph from Hollister of a belching biker perched on his machine’s footpegs, surrounded by beer bottles. In 1953, Columbia Pictures projected a highly fictionalized and sensationalized version of the event on the silver screen in the Marlon Brando film “The Wild One.”

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Every Memorial Day for the past 21 years, bikers from all over the country have traveled to the nation’s capital for a one-mile trip from the Pentagon to the National Mall. Event organizers call it Rolling Thunder because of the sound made by thousands of motorcycles crossing Memorial Bridge into the District of Columbia. The event’s main focus is to publicize American servicemembers who are prisoners of war and those who are still listed as missing in action.

This year, the National Guard’s Patriot Chopper made its maiden voyage, ridden by Maj. Gen. James Nuttall, deputy director of the Army National Guard, at the front of the Rolling Thunder ride.

Although the Patriot Chopper is mostly used for recruiting purposes and to draw attention to the National Guard, Nuttall pointed out its equally important purpose: “We use it to demonstrate that you can ride a cool motorcycle and still be safe,” he said.

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