October 1981

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels. Since the beginning of the 1981 air show season in March, the Blues have flown over 50 air show demonstrations in 33 cities around the United States and Canada.

The demonstration schedule keeps the squadron on the road from mid-March to mid-November, spending about 290 days away from its home base of NAS Pensacola, Fla.

The Blues met their largest audience in Coney Island, N.Y., where over 800,000 people packed the flight line in one afternoon to catch a glimpse of the Navy's finest. During the course of the Coney Island visit, over one and one-half million people watched the Blues fly. Their audiences think of them as men in the air, but as the Navy's ambassadors of goodwill the Blue Angels spend much of their time on the ground - meeting people, visiting schools, hospitals and getting involved in the communities they visit.