Replies

The Blue Angels F-4 Phantom airshow was wicked awesome! IMHO, the excitement of those shows will never be topped. They were big, fast, noisy and flew with 36" of separation.

Unfortunately, there were several fatal accidents when the Team was flying F-4s, and they switched to A-4s and "loosened up" the formation a bit -- or so it seemed.

The F-18 is a good airshow airplane, and they Blues can perform several manuevers in the F-18 they could not do in the F-4 and A-4, but for a good old sound and fury, the Phantoms were the best! Real crowd pleasers!

Any old-timers remember when the Blues were flying the F-11? Those were some spell-binding shows!

The 4-plane T-bird disaster was definitely early 80's at the latest.....I saw them flying their new F-16s for the first time around 1983-85 at Travis, Calif. (they were flying T-38s when the 4 plane formation augered-in). I never knew about the 1972 crash, but I wasn't even a teenager yet back then... I was at Reno Air Races in Nevada several weeks ago, and saw the Thunderbirds fly there the 3 days (Thursday, Fri. and Sat.) before the Sunday Idaho crash. Their shows were flawless... Here's a couple of photos I took LESS THAN 24 HOURS before the Idaho crash.....The second shot is of planes 5 and 6 as they were catching up with the diamond... I used a hand-held 500mm lens on a Canon A-1, so they aren't the sharpest shots...

I also watched the Angels fly at Moffett Field in the early 80's a month before they had a 2-plane collision at Niagra Falls (2 A-4s collided diving towards each other while forming a heart-shaped pattern with their smoke). One pilot ejected safely while the other rode his plane into the ground, possible killed in the collision itself. It was after that happened that they switched to F-18s. Looking forward to seeing the Blues in San Francisco next week for "Fleet Week"....they always look awesome performing over the bay.... ...and I will see the T-birds again in Salinas near the end of October.....May God fly with them all and protect them from harm... Question: Any downloadable movie clips of the Idaho crash available? My slow connection doesn't like streaming realplayer videos...