The Blue Angels

Yesterday we were back at Naval Air Station Pensacola to watch the Blue Angels practice.

As I mentioned before, they’re the Navy’s flight demonstration squadron. The team is based in Pensacola where they practice their show twice a week when they’re not performing in air shows elsewhere.

The show included 6 F-18s that fly in close formation, do cool fly-bys, and perform difficult maneuvers.

The team has been flying F-18s since the late 80’s, but flew A-4s and F-4s before that. After getting called out about my poor aircraft identification skills on my post about the National Museum of Naval Aviation, I stopped by again and took this picture of the different aircraft the Blue Angels have flown. Just in case you’re curious.

But they’ve flown F-18s the longest and I know that’s what they were flying yesterday. Here are the soloists doing a super slow pass in front of the crowd.

At the end of the show, all the aircraft line up to land and there’s lots of applause. The crowd yesterday was sizable, and I think it is every time. We arrived about 30 minutes early and the parking lot was already packed.

We walked over the museum after the show since Brian’s brother hadn’t seen it yet. Inside were some new additions since last month, including this unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which was just recently tested to land of aircraft carriers. Preliminary testing was done at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station.

Needless to say, there was a whole lot of American spirit going on yesterday. Now I’m in the mood for the 4th of July.