Happy Birthday
The US Navy Blue Angels turned 60 this year. They are celebrating with an air show in Pensacola, Florida on November 10-11th.
"In your last 30 seconds coming aboard a carrier, you have levels of concentration, and in combat there are those few moments of stark terror when you have intense concentration, but with the Blues you have intense concentration the entire time," he said.
Christensen and dozens of other former Blue Angels will gather for a Nov. 10-11 reunion and air show to mark the 60th anniversary of the Navy's elite aerial-demonstration team at its home base of Pensacola Naval Air Station.
"Each air show is as close as you can come to the environment around an aircraft carrier. The environment around an aircraft carrier is unforgiving — you cannot make errors because there is a chance somebody will get hurt," said retired Capt. Gil Rud, who commanded the Blue Angels from 1986 to 1988 and oversaw the team's transition from the A-4 Skyhawk to the F/A-18 Hornet.
Aside from the mental challenge, the job is physically taxing as well. Blue Angels don't wear the traditional G-suits that most jet pilots use to avoid blacking out during maneuvers. The suits inflate around the lower body to keep blood in the brain, which could cause a pilot to bump the control stick — a potentially deadly move when flying inches from other planes. Instead, Blue Angels manage G-forces by tensing their abdominal muscles.
And Blue Angels pilots learn to fly with a 40-pound tension spring attached to their flight stick to give them tighter control over their aircraft.
"It will tire your forearm out, especially after three training sorties a day. Sometimes you kind of have to peel your fingers off the stick," said Cmdr. Stephen Foley, the team's current lead pilot.
Altogether, 223 aviators have served on the team since it was formed by Adm. Chester Nimitz in 1946.
Raleigh "Dusty" Rhodes, 88, joined the Blue Angels in their second year, after returning from three years as a Japanese prisoner of war. The aerobatic flying was therapeutic, he said.
"I was so busy flying that I didn't have time to think about the war," he said.
Looking back on the last 60 years, "gives you a real sense of pride," Rhodes said. "It is the greatest type of flying and they are the greatest team in the world."
Rhodes' team began the diamond barrel roll, where four jets perform a loop in a tight diamond formation, becoming inverted at the top. "They still do it today," he said.
"For its time, it was pretty spectacular and considered to be dangerous by a lot of people, but for us, it was what we did."
I have seen the Angels perform and it is truly a sight worth seeing. They will make your heart stop now and then. The Blue Angel website is a pretty good place to get a lot of information on them. And do turn the volume up!
By Bleepless, Saturday, 4 November , 2006 @ 10:32 pm
60? Pretty good for old guys.