Just finished watching an episode of Blue Angels: A Year in the Life, and was frankly impressed with their apparent dedication, strive for perfection, all that “paint” talk, etc. Am wondering though if they are presently respected within their flying community, by their aviation peers in the Navy, Marine Corps, or are they commonly thought of as pretty boys, etc. Airman Doors, mebbe you got something?
As far as I know, speaking as a civilian with 35 years of acquaintance with Navy pilots, they are well respected. Pilots rotate through the BLue Angels. It isn’t an asignment for a whole career. There are qualifications to be met but a Blue Angels assignment is available by application as their website says in the menu on the right side of the page…
I am an aviation buff and I read all kinds of aviation magazines and books. I was even in Air Force ROTC for a while. As far as I know, they are very respected everywhere. They put on shows but they don’t so tricks. That is precision flying and takes extreme skill and dedication to pull it off as safely as possible. I can’t think of any reason why anyone would scoff at that. Translating their skills into combat flying should be pretty direct. As a matter of fact, I have never heard anyone make fun of any stunt pilots, test pilots, or others as long as the skills are genuine and they aren’t overly reckless.
They certainly are. They’re the real thing.
Former USAF F-16 pilot stationed at Nellis AFB, home of the Thunderbirds …
I have no direct knowledge of the Blue Angels & their in-service reputation, but I have to believe the attitude of the regular fleet F-18 pilots is similar to my experience …
The predominant attitude of myself & the other F-16 pilots I worked with was that the TBirds were damn good at a small slice of our real mission. We’d admire the skill every time they flew a practice, which was daily during the ramp-up season & at each road trip departure & arrival during the show season. We’d also admire the sheer fun they were having blasting around the base at 500 knots at 50 feet; if we did that we’d be court-martialled.
Beyond that, they were definitely thought of as pretty frat boys, with an ego to match. When an F-16 pilot complains about somebody else’s oversized ego, you know we’re talkin’ about a whopper of an attitude.
In a typical line squadron of 30-ish pilots we tended to beleive that 20 of us could be taught to fly that mission as well as they did, but darn fewer than 1 of us had the connections, the personal appearance, the personality, & the PR attitude to get hired to do the rest of job.
Sour grapes? Maybe. But watching the applicant/tryout program fairly up-close-and-personal, it sure seemed like the first cut was based on your personnel photo, not your flying record.
The good news is that since they only need 2 or 3 new pilots per year, and the USAF or Navy has hundreds, if not thousands of pilots qualified on the airplane, all of which are good enough or nearly so, they can indeed afford to pick from only the best faces & PR skills without sacrificing flying quality.
Thanks for the insight LSLGuy.