PENSACOLA BLUES
Anderson, Claudia
Casual PENSACOLA BLUES The Blue Angels—the Navy’s demonstration team, the guys behind those six shiny blue fi ghter jets that fl y in formation at air shows and do heartstopping loop-de-loops...
...It was Tom’s last show before, as a friend put it, “hanging up his halo...
...When the festivities wound down, we learned later, Kevin disappeared upstairs...
...The last show of the season is at the team’s home base in Pensacola...
...Former Blues come back for the occasion, and families and close friends are invited...
...They ended the demo with the starkly moving “missing man” formation...
...Another friend who’s shared the vicarious thrill of Tom’s career exclaimed, “It’s like being in the NFL...
...Then from March into November they’re on the road, performing almost every weekend...
...That’s not just the six pilots, by the way, but the entire squadron that decamps to El Centro to perfect its teamwork: 16 offi cers and over 100 enlisted men and women, who maintain the planes, plan the shows, and perform a thousand other essential functions...
...Wherever they go, they visit schools and hospitals as well as fl ying for the public some 60 times all over the country...
...Tom’s second winter at El Centro, he was the training offi cer...
...At night, at the party downtown, talking once again with Tom’s wonderful teammates and friends, and with Kevin’s parents and brothers whom we fi rst met two years ago, we realized that in a sense we too had become old timers, part of the Blues’ extended family, connected for life...
...They also have to master the physical techniques that allow them to pull Gs without wearing the usual pressure suit, too bulky for their precision fl ying...
...It’s the Blues themselves who interview the eight or ten fi nalists, then agree which three will succeed the senior three of them...
...In September, the new guys start shadowing the team, following them to air shows, observing before they ever put on the blue fl ight suit to actually perform...
...The commander of the team—who fl ies the lead jet—introduces his teammates, with their wives in the case of married members...
...Blues get the same pay they would in any squadron—and they get two extra years tacked onto their commitment to the Navy for the privilege of serving...
...After the party, my husband and I went to our hotel, but the celebration continued back at the house Tom was sharing with two other single new guys, Kevin and Russ...
...Then Russ came down —in full Elvis regalia...
...They spend the winter training in the big, empty skies of the California desert, down near Mexico...
...He and we were outsiders being inducted into a special world...
...Tom went upstairs and changed into his blue fl ight suit too...
...After applause, they go sit down, and the commander introduces the team for the coming year, made up half of old guys, half of new...
...Their mission— the purpose for which we taxpayers support them—is recruitment...
...The team dedicated that fi nal performance to their beloved brother Kevin Davis, killed in a crash during a show in South Carolina last spring...
...One by one, they join him in the spotlight on a tiny stage...
...Before we knew it, Christmas had come and gone, and the Blues were heading out to El Centro...
...Well, sort of —without the money and without the personal celebrity, and with the military ethic of sacrifi ce...
...This time the commander was new, so the senior guys taught their boss...
...There’s a cash bar, a buffet dinner, then a simple ceremony...
...He came down resplendent in his sharp blue flight suit...
...Once last year’s season began, we got to see the team fl y twice, at Andrews Air Force Base and on Nantucket, on a clear, bright day with the sun glinting off the jets and the sea...
...In mid-summer the pilots add to this routine the process of selecting three new pilots (and several other officers...
...At the party two years ago, when my son Tom was one of the new guys, we were still delirious with the excitement of his having been selected...
...During the 2007 season we watched the Blues perform for the Naval Academy’s graduation, then again in Brunswick, Maine, as well as in the fi nale in Pensacola just the other day...
...And that night there’s a party at a club downtown...
...Casual PENSACOLA BLUES The Blue Angels—the Navy’s demonstration team, the guys behind those six shiny blue fi ghter jets that fl y in formation at air shows and do heartstopping loop-de-loops at 500 miles an hour—have a peculiar shape to their year...
...As the six-plane delta fl ies slowly overhead, one jet breaks away and disappears straight up into the sky...
...Each winter, the new guys have to learn the moves, and build up enough strength in their right arm to pull against 40 pounds of pressure on the control stick, through shows that last three quarters of an hour...
...CLAUDIA ANDERSON...
Vol. 13 • November 2007 • No. 11
