U.S.NAVY BLUE ANGELS "RICK" 1/6 DRAGON

BLUE ANGELS 

The First Blue Angels Pilots

At the end of World War II, Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, ordered the formation of a flight demonstration team to showcase naval aviation. The team performed its first flight demonstration less than a year later, June 1946. Flight Leader, Lt. Cmdr. Roy "Butch" Voris led the team flying the Grumman F6F Hellcat at Craig Field at Naval Air Station (NAS) Jacksonville, Florida.

The Navy Flight Demonstration Team transitioned to the Grumman F8F Bearcat, August 25, two months after the first demonstration. In 1947, flight leader Lt. Cmdr. Robert Clarke, introduced the famous Diamond Formation, now considered the Blue Angels' trademark. The Blue Angels began flying its first jet aircraft, the Grumman F9F-2 Panther, by the end of the 1940s.

In 1950, the Korean Conflict put a great demand on naval aviation. The Navy responded by reassigning the Blue Angels to the aircraft carrier USS Princeton (CV-37), where the Blue Angels became the nucleus of Fighter Squadron 191 (VF-191), known as "Satan's Kittens."

The Blue Angels reorganized in 1951 and reported to NAS Corpus Christi, Texas, where the team began flying the F9F-5, the faster version of the Panther. The team remained in Corpus Christi until the winter of 1954. The beginning of 1955 brought the team to its present home, Sherman Field, at NAS Pensacola, Florida, where it transitioned to flying the swept-wing Grumman F9F-8 Cougar.

The ensuing 20 years saw the Blue Angels transition into two more aircraft. In 1957 the team began flying the Grumman F11F-1 Tiger, followed in 1969 by team's first dual-engine jet, the McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantom II.

In December 1974, the Blue Angels reorganized as the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron establishing Cmdr. Tony Less as the commanding officer and flight leader. The squadron added support officers and redefined its mission to support Navy recruiting. The Blue Angels also transitioned to a new aircraft in 1974, the McDonnell Douglas A-4F Skyhawk II.


On November 8, 1986, the Blue Angels celebrated their 40th anniversary by unveiling its present aircraft, the sleek McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) F/A-18 Hornet. The Hornet is the first dual-role fighter/attack aircraft serving on the nation's front lines of defense.

In 1992 the Blue Angels deployed for its first European tour in 19 years. More than one million people in Sweden, Finland, Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain saw the Blue Angels perform during their 30-day tour. In November 1998, Cmdr. Patrick Driscoll landed the first "Blue Jet" on a "haze gray and underway" aircraft carrier, USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75).

Since its inception in 1946, the team has flown for more than 393 million fans, including more than 17 million spectators during the 2004 show season.

 

        
 FAT ALBERT
 

 

F/A-18 Hornet

History

The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet traces its direct ancestry to the Northrop Cobra, a twin engine multimission fighter design developed for the export market in the late 1960s. The Cobra was never built in this form. In 1975 the Navy was directed by Congress to base the VFAX on either the YF-16 or YF-17 designs. Two of the companies having a major interest in the VFAX, which was redesignated the Navy Air Combat Fighter, paired with the F-16/17 builders; neither of the latter had experience in producing Navy carrier fighters. Vought as a prime contractor teamed with General Dynamics on a single-engined F-16 derivative, while McDonnell Douglas became the prime, paired with Northrop, on an F-17 derivative.

To meet Navy requirements, considerable improvements in areas such as combat radius and radar capability were incorporated, in addition to carrier suitability features. The resulting redesign was extensive and, when the McDonnell Douglas design was selected as winner in 1976, it was assigned the F-18A designation. The developed versions of the YF-17's YJ101 engines were redesignated F404s. While the general configuration of the YF-17 was retained, the F-18 became a completely new airplane. To meet the single-place fighter and attack mission capability, full use was made of new technology in digital computers. Coupled with cathode ray tubes for cockpit displays and appropriate controls based on thorough pilot evaluations in simulators, a single airplane and subsystems configuration for both missions was evolved

The formidable task of converting the land-based YF-17 lightweight day fighter into an all-weather fighter-attack aircraft capable of carrier operations with heavy ordnance loads required significant changes from the earlier configuration. Structural strengthening and a new landing gear design were required for catapult launches and arrested land-ings. The aircraft gross weight rapidly grew from 23,000 lb for the YF-17 to a projected weight over 33,000 lb.

The required approach speeds for carrier landings resulted in modifications to the wing and leading-edge extension (LEX). surfaces of the YF-17 configuration to provide more lift. Changes were made to the aircraft configuration. The geometric shape of the YF-17 LEX was extended farther forward on the fuselage and the plan view of the LEX was modified to produce additional lift while retaining the good high-angle-of-attack characteristics exhibited by the YF-17. The deflections of the wing leading- and trailing-edge flaps were increased and the aile-rons were programmed to droop in low-speed flight to augment lift. Finally, a "snag" or discontinuity was added to the leading edges of both the wing and horizontal tails to provide more lift. 

F/A-18A/B Hornet

Making the first flight on 18 November 1978, the F/A-18 and its two-place derivative [subsequently redesignated the F/A-18B] underwent most of their development testing at the Naval Air Test Center at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. Under the new single-site testing concept, the preproduction flight-test program lasted from January 1979 to October 1982. While much attention was focused on development problems, these were largely typical of those in any new program, with their resolution being part of the development process. For the most part, these occurred in the basic aircraft hardware rather than in the digital electronic systems.

Initial results from flight evaluations at Patuxent River in 1979 indicated that the cruise performance of the F/A-18 was significantly below expectations, with a shortfall of about 12 percent in cruise range. The performance deficiency became a weapon for those who sought the termination of the F/A-18 Program. A number of reasons for the poor performance were identified. Modifications to the engines, computer-controlled schedules for the deflection of leading- and trailing-edge flaps, and other changes reduced the cruise range deficit to about 8 percent, but aerodynamic drag remained a problem. Modifications included increasing the wing leading-edge radius, variations in the LEX camber, and filling in the slots in the LEX-fuselage juncture.

These changes were implemented on the F/A-18 test aircraft at Patuxent River where they were found to favorably increase the cruise range of the aircraft. The impact of filling in the LEX slot on high-angle-of-attack characteristics was found to be acceptable in additional F/A-18 flight tests.

In 1979, an F/A-18 test aircraft at Patuxent River suddenly and unexpectedly departed controlled flight during a wind-up turn maneuver at high subsonic speeds. None of the baseline wind-tunnel data predicted this characteristic, and the F/A-18 Program was shocked by the event. Following exhaustive wind-tunnel tests in the Full-Scale Tunnel, the wing leading-edge flap deflection was increased from 25 deg to 34 deg at high angles of attack. Following the implementation of this recommendation on the test aircraft (via the flight control computers), no more departures were experienced, and the flap deflection schedule was adopted for production F/A-18's.

During development, two-place trainer versions were added, to be built in limited numbers as TF/A-18s, intermingled with the basic F/As. Minimum changes were made to incorporate the second cockpit, with the two-seat airplanes retaining the ability to perform combat missions.

The original F/A-18A (single seat) and F/A-18B (dual seat) became operational in 1983 replacing Navy and Marine Corps F-4s and A-7s. It quickly became the battle group commander's mainstay because of its capability, versatility and availability. Reliability and ease of maintenance were emphasized in its design, and F/A-18s have consistently flown three times more hours without failure than other Navy tactical aircraft, while requiring half the maintenance time.

The F/A-18 configuration was found to be extremely resistant to spins. (The pilot was required to maintain prospin controls for over 20 sec to promote a spin.) When spins were entered, recovery could be effected very quickly. In the spin tunnel tests, the F/A-18 model demonstrated the best spin recovery characteristics of any modern US fighter (as had the YF-17 configuration). During the limited model tests for spins, the phenomenon known as "falling leaf" was not encountered, but it became a problem in operational usage.

The falling-leaf maneuver originated during World War I as a flight training exercise. In this exercise, pilots intentionally stalled the aircraft and forced a series of incipient spins to the right and left. The aircraft descends as it rocks back and forth, much as a leaf does falling to the ground. In the early 1980's, an unintentional falling-leaf mode surfaced as a severe out-of-control problem during developmental flight tests of the F/A-18A. The out-of-control falling-leaf mode is a highly dynamic mode where the aircraft oscillates so that it is very difficult to reduce angle of attack and recover. The term "alpha hang-up" was used to describe this problem with the F/A-18 and it was a key driver in estab-lishing the aft center of gravity and the maneuvering limits for the aircraft. During early operational use of the F/A-18, the falling-leaf mode was rarely encountered; however, by the early 1990's increasingly aggressive maneuvering had exposed a susceptibility to the falling-leaf mode with numerous incidents and losses of aircraft.

In light of the growing falling-leaf problem on early models of the F/A-18, there was concern that the emerging F/A-18E/F, which was then preparing for developmental flight tests, would have the same problem. Falling-leaf susceptibility was extensively evaluated on the F/A-18E/F during the high-angle-of-attack flight-test program. While the unaugmented aircraft was shown to exhibit the falling-leaf mode, a new control system design was shown to be very effective in suppressing the mode and the falling-leaf problem was considered solved for that aircraft. Largely due to the success of the F/A-18E/F program, the Navy considered retrofitting earlier models of the F/A-18 with the updated control law for the purpose of eliminating the falling-leaf problem.

Interim change #75 to the NATOPS Flight Manual introduced yet another change to F/A-18 Out-of-Control (OOC) flight procedures. The change essentially eliminated specific recovery procedures unique to the "falling leaf" mode. The falling leaf mode is now grouped together with OOC flight departure recovery procedures. This change simplifies NATOPS OOC flight recovery procedures. Alternate recovery procedures for the falling leaf mode have been investigated in the Naval Air Warfare Center engineering simulator. The simulator results suggested that a more rapid recovery from a positive AOA falling leaf might potentially be achieved by applying full aft stick (instead of forward stick or controls released).

Strike test pilots attempted to validate this full aft stick recovery method (along with testing the full forward stick recovery which had not previously been flight tested but was adopted after engineering analysis) using an F/A-18B aircraft. . The primary problem with the validation process was making the airplane depart into a recognizable falling leaf OOC flight mode.

Throughout the history of the departure demonstration program, over 1,700 departures have been flown without entry into a sustained falling leaf. It is impossible to validate the full aft stick recovery procedure in the airplane without generating repeatable, sustained falling leaf departures. Because of this and concerns that the falling leaf may transition to a full aft stick stall with wing rock, preventing a pilot from recognizing that he was recovered, resulted in full aft stick procedures not being recommended for NATOPS.

The Hornet has been battle tested and has proved itself to be exactly what its designers intended: a highly reliable and versatile strike fighter. The F/A-18 played an important role in the 1986 strikes against Libya. Flying from USS CORAL SEA (CV 43), F/A-18s launched high-speed anti-radiation missiles (HARMs) against Libyan air defense radars and missile sites, effectively silencing them during the attacks on Benghazi facilities.

Specifications
Contractor	Boeing [McDonnell Douglas Aerospace] and Northrop Grumman (Airframe), General Electric (Engines), and Hughes (Radar)
	F/A-18C/D Hornet	F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
Power Plant	Two F404-GE-402 afterburning engines, each in the 18,000 pound thrust class, which results in a combat thrust-to-weight ratio greater than 1-to-1. Depending on the mission and loading, combat radius is greater than 500 nautical miles.	Twin F414-GE-400 engines, each in the 22,000 pound thrust class. On an interdiction mission, the E/F will fly up to 40 % further than the C/D.
Accommodations	·     The F/A-18C and F/A-18E are single seat aircraft. ·     The D and F models are flown by two crew members. ·     The aft seat in the D and F may be configured with a stick and throttle for the training environment (or without when crewed with a Weapons System Officer).
Performance	·     F/A-18C maximum speed at level flight in altitudes of 36,089 ft. Mach 1.7	·     F/A-18E maximum speed at level flight in altitudes of 36,089 ft. Mach 1.6
Armament	·     F/A-18C/D can carry up to 13,700 pounds of external ordnance. ·     Weapon stations include: two wingtip stations for Sidewinders; two outboard wing stations for air-to-air or air-to-ground weapons; two inboard wing stations for fuel tanks, air-to-air, or air-to-ground weapons; two nacelle fuselage stations for AMRAAMs, Sparrows, or sensor pods; and one centerline station for fuel or air-to-ground weapons. M61 Vulcan 6-barrel rotary cannon with 520 rounds of 20mm ammunition is internally mounted in the nose AIM-9 Sidewinder AIM-7F Sparrow AIM-120 AMRAAM AGM-65E Maverick AGM-84 Harpoon AGM-88A HARM MK82 10 CBU-87 10 CBU-89 GBU-12 GBU-24 JDAM B-57 or B-61 Nuclear bomb	·     F/A-18E/F can carry up to 17,750 pounds of external ordnance; two additional wing store stations have been added.
Mission and Capabilities	·     The F/A-18 Hornet can perform both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. ·     Cockpit displays and mission avionics are thoroughly integrated to enhance crew situational awareness and mission capability in high threat, adverse weather/night environments. ·     Cockpits are night vision goggle compatible. ·     Multi-Sensor Integration and advanced data link capabilities further enhance situational awareness.	·     The E/F model will be able to perform a strike tanker mission while carrying a self-protection air-to-air missile loadout. ·     The E/F model will also have greater payload flexibility, increased mission radius, survivability, payload bring back, and a substantial avionics growth potential