The U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels is world-renowned for its aerial acrobatics and the flying skills of its pilots, who make their maneuvers look almost easy. The video below, using 360-cam technology, gives a particularly impressive in-cockpit view of one of the many demanding parts of the flight demonstration team’s show routine: five F/A-18 Super Hornets flying in line abreast formation doing a synchronized loop.
Just how smooth this all looks in the video, seen above, belies how challenging it is for all the pilots to keep in steady formation, and safely separated, through the entire loop. The fact that the jets are so well locked into position even as the flight dynamics change drastically throughout the maneuver — as the jets head up, over, and then down the loop — is remarkable. At the end of the clip, the jets can be seen quickly forming up much closer to each other for the next part of the routine.
The additional videos below show what the Blue Angels’ five-ship loop looks like to spectators on the ground.
If you’re interested in seeing this and the rest of the Blue Angels’ routine live, there are still multiple chances to do so this year. There are seven shows left on the team’s official schedule for 2023 between now and the first week of November.
Of course, if you do make it to a show, the view still won’t be as spectacular as it is from the cockpit.
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com