The Blue Angels -- What you see is what you think.

Seafair is over; the Blue Angels have left town. Did you just hear hateful, god-awful, ear-splitting noise --- or like some boosters, did you hear “the sound of freedom?” It depends….

What are the Blue Angels? Why are the Blue Angels? What do the Blue Angels mean?
On April 24, 1946, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations, ordered the establishment of an air acrobatic team “to enhance Navy and Marine Corps recruiting efforts and to represent the naval service to the United States, its elected leadership and foreign nations.” Note “its elected leadership” -- an underlying mission was to generate public and political support for a larger Navy allocation of what would clearly be shrinking War Dept. and Navy Dept. budgets. (Consolidation into the DOD came later, in 1947.) It was a brilliant move; you can’t steam a battleship into Kansas, but you can show off naval aviation anywhere in the country.



Public and political support: these are still the missions today, perhaps the prime mission.



Within a week, Lt. Commander "Butch" Voris, a World War II fighter ace, was charged with creating a flight demonstration team. Voris selected three fellow instructors and went to work. The group perfected its initial maneuvers in secret over the Florida Everglades so that, in Voris' words, "...if anything happened, just the alligators would know."



Only two weeks later, the team gave its first demonstration before delighted Navy officials. One month later, Voris led his diamond of four F6F-5 Grumman Hellcats through their inaugural, 15-minute public performance at home base, Naval Air Station Jacksonville.


Over the past 63 years, the team has grown from the diamond four to eight plus Fat Albert and to a huge support staff. They graduated from pistons to jets in 1949, taking off in Grumman’s F9F Panther. The first time I saw them was in 1957, off Virginia Beach. I was thrilled… by then they were flying the Grumman F9F Cougar.

In 1986, they adopted the McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing’s) F/A-18 Hornet. Those are still the angels’ chariots, 23 years later.


In this show season, the team will have flown their F/A 18s in 70 air shows at 35 sites in the United States. A total of 15 officers voluntarily serve with the Blue Angels. Pilots rotate out every two years. Blue Angels officers return to the fleet after their tours of duty.

“Boss,” the Blue Angels’ Commanding Officer, who flies point in the diamond, No. 1, must have at least 3,000 tactical-jet flight hours and have commanded a tactical-jet squadron. This season, Boss is Commander Greg McWherter.

The Events Coordinator, who calls the shots on all scheduling and logistical matters and flies Number 8, is a Naval or Marine Corps Officer who, like the pilots of Numbers 2 through 7, must have a minimum of 1,250 tactical-jet flight hours. This year, she is Lt Commander Amy Tomlinson.



Career-oriented officers and enlisted men specializing in airframe and power plant maintenance, communications, avionics, administration, aviation medicine, public affairs and supply fill 108 support positions.

So that’s the what, the who, and the why of the Blue Angels. Audience?

• Some 15 million spectators view the squadron during air shows each season (March through November) and 50,000 more are visited at schools, retirement homes and hospitals.
• Key to the pr/lobbying process is to invite media reps and VIPs to fly. The squadron has two F/A 18 D’s, two-seaters, for just this use. Three media members are selected at each show site and a handful of VIPs from television, sports, music and the movie industry are taken for spins -- literally.

Danger?

• During its history, 26 Blue Angels pilots have been killed in air show or training accidents, with considerable collateral damage. Through the 2009 season there have been 264 pilots in the squadron's history. That’s a 10% fatality rate. In a peace-time assignment.

Costs? The Great Mystery

• An oft repeated number on internet sites is $20 million for the squadron, but I can find no hard source for that.
• I examined the Navy budget for 2009, searching for Blue Angels, demo teams, air shows, etc. No entries.
• A 2005 GAO report to Congress said the Angel’s costs are carried – or buried is more like it -- in the Navy’s recruiting advertising budget, which this year is about $115million.
  

So what might the costs be? An F/A 18 costs about $29million. Is the Navy still buying them? Some critics have nattered about fuel costs, but that is only a pittance. An F/A 18 burns roughly 8,000 pounds in an hour show or 1,200 gals @$2.35 (I hope the Navy pays wholesale), so the squadron total for four days of flitting about is under $100,000. Fuel isn’t the issue.

Maintenance, salaries, training, etc. would be done as part of naval aviation, were there Angels or not. Certainly there are incremental expenses for a travelling air demonstration team – some 45 people travel 240 days a year – so transport expenses, room and board, communications, pr and all the rest. How much? If it’s $500/day/pp, that is only $5.5 million.

Whatever the true costs of this recruiting and lobbying effort, if the Dept. of Navy knows, they aren’t telling Congress nor us citizens.

Does it work? We don’t know and neither does the Navy.

• Guess what? Studies show that people who go to air shows like them. Duh!
• Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, deputy director of the Defense Information Center: "No study has been conducted to determine how effective the teams are as recruiting gimmicks." Note he uses the word “gimmicks.”
  

So, are the Blue Angels just a gimmick? What do the Blue Angels mean?

• You may have watched an uplifting demonstration of America’s might at a time of national self-doubt. Perhaps, but, like me,
• You also may have seen taxpayer dollars being frittered away on superficial public relations at a time of ballooning national deficits.

• You may have seen a thrilling demonstration of American ingenuity and leadership in aerospace engineering, or – like me,
• You may have seen unnecessary environmental stress -- wasted fuel, exhaust emissions, noise pollution.

• You may have see evidence of our having the finest airmen in the world to protect us and project our force – yes, but at the same time, like me,
• You may have witnessed a depressing demonstration of America’s love affair with armaments,
• and the military-industrial complex’s shameful manipulation of public opinion.
  

The point is that what you saw last weekend is a function of what lies behind your eyes – those attitudes and beliefs and values you brought with you to Seafair. What you saw is what you think…

I think I’d rather see that money, whatever the total truly is, spent on pre-schools for armed service families, or for more PTSD clinicians, or for more dependent family subsidies, especially to forestall foreclosures. Yes, the Angels are thrilling, but we have better things to do.