Blue Angels to get ‘Super’ upgrade

The Boeing Co. of St. Louis, Mo., was awarded $17,002,107 delivery order Aug. 14 for the retrofit documentation and kits to convert nine F/A-18 aircraft models into the Navy’s Blue Angels’ demonstration team configuration. Work will be performed in St. Louis, and expected to be completed in December 2021. The Blue Angels have been flying Boeing’s F/A-18 Hornet since November 1986, according to the team’s website, their 40th anniversary. The contract is for nine Block 1 F/A-18E Super Hornets and two Block 1 F/A-18F Super Hornets for the team from their current F/A-18C/D jets. The work will convert operational Super Hornets with equipment tweaks required for aircraft to be used by the demonstration team. The differences between the jets flown by the Blues and those in the fleet are that the team’s F/A-18s have nose cannons removed and replaced with smoke-oil tanks; and painted in the team’s distinctive blue and gold colors. A civilian instrumentation landing system is put in each plane and each cockpit has a spring installed on the stick to maintain a constant seven pounds of forward pressure to enable improved formation and inverted flying. “Otherwise, the aircraft that the squadron flies are the same as those in the fleet,” according to the Blue Angels website. Each aircraft is “capable of being returned to combat duty aboard an aircraft carrier within 72 hours,” the site indicated. (Source: USNI News 08/14/18) The Blue Angels flew at the Biloxi (Miss.) Gulf Coast Air Show on July 21-22. The final show of the 2018 season will be Nov. 2-3 at its home base of Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla.