“We love the Navy Flight Demonstration Team” doesn’t have the same pizzazz as “We love the Blue Angels”.
But that’s what the beloved Blues were known as when formed in April 1946. There were plans to give the team a snappier name, according to the website aerobaticteams.net, and the “Blue Lancers” was originally proposed.
“Blue Lancers.” Doesn’t quite do it either, does it? Maybe it’s just me but that conjures up visions of overdone dandies. − though the dashing flight suits the Blue Angel pilots wear today are pretty fancy looking too. Yes, Blue Angels fits perfect for the flight squadron headquartered at Naval Air Station Pensacola since summer of 1955, a fitting description for those graceful, jet-powered fleeting visions that trace and pierce our Gulf Coast skies so often.
But where did the Blue Angel name come from, though honestly it almost seems inherent?
Personally, I always figured it had something to do with 1930 Marlene Dietrich (ask your grandparents) flick “The Blue Angel.” That’s not it.
According to the Blue Angels official website, the “name was picked by the original team when they were planning a show in New York in 1946. One of them came across the name of the city’s famous Blue Angel nightclub in the New Yorker Magazine.”
Also known as “The Blue Angel Supper Club,” an integrated nightclub founded in Manhattan in the early 1940s that hosted such notable artists as Eartha Kitt, Florence Desmond, Pearl Bailey, and so many more, including a personal favorite, Edith Piaf.
So that’s the history of the Blue Angels name. But…
See, there are other stories out there in the Internet ether too. Stories heard through the years by former Blue Angels team members. Stories that offer alternatives to the origin of a name known worldwide, an enduring, symbol of pride to Americans in the United States.
On June 8, 1955, the Pensacola News Journal published an article by reporter Odell Griffith, a Marine Corps veteran who had witnessed the raising of the U.S. flag at Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima during World War II.
The article, which was about the Blue Angels performance highlighting Pensacola’s Fiesta of Five Flags celebration that year, noted that the Blue Angels received the name “during the Cleveland Air Races when Arthur Godfrey, famous TV and radio personality, in observing the aviators said ‘they looked like Blue Angels’. The name stuck and since they have been known as the Blue Angels.”
We asked former Blue Angel pilot and former Pensacola Mayor John Fogg about the name. Surely, he knew.
Fogg served as a Marine Corps fighter pilot flying 200 combat missions during the Vietnam War, and flew with the Blue Angels in 1973-1974. He served as Pensacola’s mayor from 1994 through 2009.
“I’ve heard one story that some lady was watching them fly and said ‘They look like Blue Angels” (exactly what the News Journal reported that Arthur Godfrey said. “But I don’t know for sure.”
Different origin stories. Which one do you believe? (Me, I’m not going to argue with the U.S. Navy.)
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Blue Angels could have been the Blue Lancers. Where did iconic name come from?
Reporting by Troy Moon, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
