Blue Angels To Blaze Through Dallas Skies

Before Hollywood made Chuck Yeager a household name, the “right stuff for me was always a cheeseburger and french fries. Even though I spent nearly four years in the U.S. Air Force, my closest brush with death came at the hands of a couple of drunken B-52 mechanics.

Maybe that’s why I began to sweat profusely when a jet aircraft crew chief recently strapped me inside the rear cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk II, the official aircraft of the Blue Angels, the U.S. Navy’s showcase flight demonstration squadron. “Don’t touch any of the yellow buttons or levers,” he said. “You’ll be ejected.” He then handed me a plastic bag.

My heart was thumping like a rabbit’s as I told myself I had nothing to be nervous about. After all, the Navy has been flying the Skyhawk since the Korean conflict and Navy literature speaks of the subsonic aircraft as sort of an old friend. The seven men who jockey these blue and yellow jets are the best in the business. So why worry?

1 had traveled to the lonely naval outpost eleven miles from the Mexican border in El Cen-tro, California, the winter training home of the Angels, to go flying with Lt. Wayne Molnar in the Angels’ demonstration jet, known as the “7 jet.” It was a preview of what we can see when the Blue Angels come to Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth for shows on May 24 and 25. Though he has eight years of flying experience, the tall, lanky Molnar still looked like somebody’s kid brother, I thought as the canopy was closing.

I first saw the Blue Angels at an aerial show in San Francisco last fall. I’m a child of the Sixties, but watching the six jets glide across the bay at nearly 500 miles per hour punched a few red, white, and blue buttons in my head. You don’t have to be a kid to enjoy watching the Angels run through such eye-popping maneuvers as the line-abreast loop, the tuck-under break, the solo opposing four-point-hesitation roll.

The next hour proved to be one of the most exciting and enjoyable of my life. (Except for the split-second 360-degree roll that made me a bit queasy.) Molnar took me for 180-degree climbs, 3 5 0 – mi1e-an-hour loops, 360-degree rolls, 480-mile-an-hour low altitude runs across the desert terrain and through mountain passes, and several aircraft carrier touch-and-go landings. Every so often Molnar would lift his right hand off the control stick and say “You’ve got it. Do whatever you want to.” I did take it, but very carefully. Though we were at a safe 16,000 feet, gentle banks to the left and right were enough for me, thanks. I have to admit it fell good when the wheels hit the ground for the final landing and even better when the cockpit canopy popped open.

“We have complete trust in our aircraft,” says Blue Angel slot man Lt. Pat Walsh, a Dallas native and 1973 Jesuit Prep School grad. “And you’ve got to have absolute trust and confidence in your people when you fly only thirty-six inches away from each other.

“This is a team effort. There’s no room for individuals here. This job is very unforgiving. But if there’s ever a way to go back home, it’s in a blue airplane, making noise and smoke.”