The U.S. Navy‘s premier aeronautical acrobatical demonstration workforce referred to as the Blue Angels has been wowing air-show audiences around the globe for almost 80 years. However for viewers at house, Amazon MGM new documentary “The Blue Angels” offers an inside take a look at greater than the squad’s Boeing F/A-18 Tremendous Hornets — it reveals what it takes to get behind the stick of these vaunted flying machines.
Filmed in IMAX, the brand new documentary from producers JJ Abrams (“Misplaced”) and Glen Powell (“High Gun: Maverick”) completely captures the up-close aerial choreography of the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, providing a cockpit view of the Angels’ precision flying. We additionally meet the daring Navy and Marine Corps aviators who need to put on the distinctive blue and gold uniforms and discover out what it takes to be a part of one of many U.S. navy’s most elite demonstration groups.
Even for seasoned fighter pilots, changing into one of many Blue Angels is just not a straightforward aim to satisfy, and issues do not get any simpler after you lastly make the workforce. Following a painstaking choice course of, the naval aviators endure a rigorous bodily and flight coaching routine, one they proceed for the whole lot of an eight-month present season. Between March and November, the workforce travels throughout america and Canada to carry out for an estimated 11 million individuals yearly.
The Blue Angels have been first shaped within the Forties on the behest of Adm. Chester Nimitz. The concept, in accordance with Roy “Butch” Voris, founding father of the Flight Demonstration Squadron, was to take the sort of flying that aviators have been anticipated to do excessive within the sky and convey it right down to the place the American public (and future naval aviators) may see it.
Their first efficiency, flying in Grumman F6F-5 Hellcats, got here at Naval Air Station Jacksonville in Florida on June 15, 1946. The viewers was the Navy brass, particularly Nimitz himself. The admiral’s response upon seeing them in motion for the primary time seemingly echoes these of the hundreds of thousands who’ve seen the Blue Angels since.
“You loopy sumbitches,” Adm. Nimitz reportedly stated. “You are gonna kill yourselves. However it’s a fantastic present.”
For individuals who have by no means seen the Blue Angels in motion, Adm. Nimitz was proper: It’s a nice present. Viewers can see the Blue Angels’ 2024 present schedule on the workforce’s official web site.
If they don’t seem to be coming to an air present close to you, you’ll be able to nonetheless watch “The Blue Angels,” completely in IMAX theaters for one-week solely, starting Friday, Might 17, and streaming globally on Prime Video starting Thursday, Might 23, 2024.
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