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Jets over Jax Beach: Hell, yeah.

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blue angels at jacksonville beach

I took this with my iPhone. (Just kidding. It’s a Navy photo.) Navy Photo

Here’s how I spent my Sunday afternoon: Watching the best pilots in the world tear up the sky over Jacksonville Beach. The Blue Angels may be another big waste of taxpayer money, but at least you get a thrill out of it. You can’t say that about federal crop-price supports.

Just between you and me, I’ve always had a weakness for warplanes. I guess most American males do. We imagine ourselves up there, pushing the envelope. In lieu of that, we like to casually identify all the ones we know, believing against all evidence that such knowledge might impress a woman. It never does.

I like warplanes. I put about together about 250 Revell models during my formative years, old favorites like Fw-190s and P-51 Mustangs and F-86 Sabres. I occasionally emerged giddy from all the glue. I sometimes wonder now if that’s why I’m not as smart as I used to be. Oh well. No help for it now.

Anyway, I waited a lot of years to see the Blue Angels. Now I have. I don’t know what portion of my tax dollars goes into this kind of thing, but I’m going to say it’s money well spent.

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Comments

  1. John H. says

    I favored Monogram models, but otherwise my story is the same, including the part about naming the planes when I see them. Shockingly, my wife also is not impressed. Fortunately for me, my wife is interested in history, so we both enjoy airshows and sites like the air museum on Ford Island, in Pearl Harbor.

  2. Deb says

    I’ve never put any models together but I’ve seen the Blue Angels and also the Thunderbirds—-and ‘thrill’ is the exact word to use. Of course, I think touch and go’s are exciting as well—it’s the planes, definitely.

  3. Joan says

    When I was a small child (many decades ago), my family lived at Jacksonville Beach. At the time, the Blue Angels were stationed there. We used to be able to watch them practice over the Atlantic from our apartment window. Good memories!
    I have seen them twice since then at airshows. They are the absolute best at what they do.

  4. Paula says

    How smart of you to pick up on the fact that we aren’t impressed! There is a big military air show near here every year, and we avoid it like the plague. We don’t even go into the city that weekend, too much noise.

    I personally feel it is a taxpayer funded way of getting to impressionable young people and making them want to be in the military. Just hook them on the glamour and hope they’re too immature to realize there is also carnage and war crimes against both military and civilian populations behind the flyboy image. Plus lifelong health problems from toxins they are exposed to without their knowledge.

    • Dave Knadler says

      Can’t argue with that. There was an Air Force recruiting van parked near the beach. Do you suppose there was a connection?

      I don’t care. War sucks, but the warbirds are cool. Call me an aging hypocrite.

  5. Gale Wilson says

    We saw The Blue Angels for the first time this past May at a show over the Baltimore harbor. We were able to view them from a rooftop deck. While I believe that awesome is a word that is overused, it is the one word that I would use to adequately describe that demonstration. What a gift to be able to fly those planes in such close proximity at such high speeds. It was one of the best events I have experienced in a long time. Thrilling is a great description; awesome is too!!!