The U.S. Navy Blue Angels say they’re ready to put on a show for the hometown crowd at the Pensacola Beach Airshow for the team’s 80th anniversary and the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
The Pensacola Beach Airshow has an expanded roster of aircraft performers this year, but the biggest draw will be the Blue Angels. Aerobatic acts will begin at 10:45 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, with the Blue Angels set to perform at 2 p.m.
The 80th anniversary show in front of a hometown crowd is on the pilots’ minds, as their job is to demonstrate the precision flying capabilities of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
“When Butch Voris started this team in 1946, no one realized that 80 years later we’d be performing in F-18 Super Hornets here still over our home show in Pensacola Beach,” No. 4 pilot Marine Corps Lt. Col. Brandon Wilkins said. “So it brings a whole different level of an impact, not just to us, but the community that supports us, and our Navy and Marine Corps that supports us to be able to even get this far.”
No Blue Angels ‘without Pensacola’
Several members of the Blue Angels have described Pensacola as a special place to them, and Wilkins, who has flown on the team since 2024, is no exception.
“The Graffiti Bridge folks were very proud to get us a mural up yesterday,” Wilkins said. “Everything has been wonderful. Everyone supports us in every way. It’s just so nice to be home, and I can’t tell you how lucky we all are to be a part of an 80th celebration here in Pensacola.”
Blue Angels commanding officer and lead pilot Navy Capt. Adam Bryan said doing it at Pensacola Beach is the only place where the pilots can hear the cheers of the crowd that come through over the radio from the ground team.
“That’s a really, really powerful thing for us flying out there,” Bryan said. “When we hear them key the mic and we hear the crowd. It’s a special place, and you have to pinch yourself every single time you get to perform anywhere, but here is more of a squeeze, because this team means a tremendous amount to this community, and this town, and the city, and the community means so much to us as a team.”
Flyover stirs sand and online controversy
The fans who come out to the show love the Blues as well, and those who turned out early for the “Breakfasat with the Blues” on July 15 got a preview with a low pass that thrilled people on the beach and stirred controversy online.
During the event, the team typically flies around the airshow area to familiarize themselves with the layout and do a few passes for the crowd. During one pass, after a jet flew over in front of the water, the No. 3 jet came approaching the beach low at a much higher rate of speed, similar to part of the regular Blues’ performance known as the sneak pass.
The sneak pass is a crowd favorite during the regular show. The narrator of the show will draw the audience’s attention to the main diamond formation as one solo pilot flies at high speed at 50 feet above the ground in front of the audience. As the crowd watches it, the other solo pilot approaches from an angle, usually behind the crowd, at extremely high speed.
“I just love the show sequence there,” No. 6 pilot Marine Corps Maj. Scott Laux said. “We try and lull people to sleep a little bit with a very graceful maneuver out of the diamond, and then wake them up as No. 5 comes down the show line. Then, right when their heart rate settles just a hair, I fly in from behind and wake them up again. So it’s great. It’s a fun sequence.”
Because of the speeds, the audience doesn’t hear the solo jet’s approach until it is already overhead. The Blue Angels’ official maneuver manual notes the plane passing over the audience should be 500 feet above the ground during the maneuver.
Laux said that he aims to reach about 95% of the speed of sound, or as fast as they can get without creating a sonic boom from pushing past the sound barrier.
“It’s about 730 mph each time,” Laux said.
During the Breakfast with the Blues low pass, the No. 3 jet approached the beach; he banked right and started to climb but flew over the crowd gathered on the beach at low altitude. The subsequent wake turbulence from the jet blew up sand and umbrellas.
Video of the pass quickly went viral online, and the discourse around it quickly turned political in the wake of two other recent military flyovers by helicopter pilots that led to pilots being suspended from flying duties then reinstated. An ABC World News segment added fuel to the online controversy in a July 15 segment describing it as “terrifying,” despite the visible reaction of enthusiasm from the spectators caught in the videos.
The White House and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth issued statements of support for the flyover.
Outside of the online political ruckus, the Blue Angels team said they were conducting a safety review of the incident.
Bryan told the News Journal and other reporters that the pass was unsafe because the aircraft was too low when it flew over the crowd at the beach.
“We’ve been taking a heavy look at yesterday to ensure that we are doing things first and foremost safe,” Bryan said. “The pilot found himself unfortunately in a situation that we would deem unsafe over the beach. We never intend to fly over the crowd that low, and we’ll heavily debrief it, ensure that one, we continue on with safe flight demonstrations, and that we learn from those different things that happen from this team.”
Bryan added that every maneuver of every flight is “heavily debriefed” back on the ground, and that this is how the team gets better each flight while remaining safe.
Being safe doesn’t mean the Blue Angels will be throttling anything back, however.
“What you’ll see from our flight demonstration is going to be what the public, what this town, what our team expects today,” Bryan said. “So there’s not going to be any difference in how we go out there and fly. In fact, if we go to try to fly and be cautious, that actually becomes more dangerous for us. So we’re going to train to our standards, and we’re going to learn from the things that happen before us to ensure that we do things the most safe we can.”
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao issued a statement on July 16 saying that the “flight debrief” had been completed, and that there would be no reprimands related to the incident.
Bryan said when the team goes up in the air over Pensacola Beach, he’ll take a moment to view the crowd of more than 100,000 people and the thousands of boats gathered to see them, but then they’ll be focused on putting on the best flight demonstration for Pensacola.
“We would not be the Blue Angels today without Pensacola,” Bryan said.
Jim Little is the City Government Accountability Reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. If you have a news tip, please send it to jwlittle@pnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Blue Angels thrilling fans even before Pensacola Beach Air show begins
Reporting by Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal | USA TODAY Network
