Thunderbird emergency breakaway caught on video

I was at a large conference, and they had a Blue Angels pilot as keynote speaker. (Don't laugh, I went to a conference where someone talked about climbing Mount Everest) His talk was all about 'teamwork'. (Interesting topic for these days, eh)

He said that you have to TRUST your teammates. You have to implicitly, and explicitly trust them, because at the speeds they are flying, there is literally no room for error. You have to assume that if nothing is happening that is bad, everything is good.

He described looking at the planes beside, and in front of you. 'You concentrate on them. You do not let them out of your sight. If they so much as flinch, you have to be ready to pull up, or down, but you stick to them like glue'. Which explains the few crashes where plane teams have flown literally into the ground. They are following the other planes/pilots and listening to the ground observers, and if they don't get the clue that something is going tragically wrong, they can, and have, followed each other into the ground.

I was fascinated by his talk. Afterwards, many at the Q&A asked some inane questions, but that's expected, and there was a bunch of hero worship too. He was asked about his history flying. It got a little tense, when he got into flying in war, but he pulled it our in the end.

I can see that pilot thinking 'OH SHIT!!!' and pulling out. It seems a little delayed, but who knows what they were focused on. But also how fitting would it have been for a worthless gesture to end up with flaming plane debris falling into peoples homes. A guilt driven episode of 'I'll buy you ice cream if you stop crying' going catastrophically wrong.

Those doctors and nurses need PPE, they need to have people respect the 'stay at home orders' they need a government supporting the people, not the investor class, they DO NOT NEED a damn Blue Angels flying over their hospitals! Flying those planes over hospitals is not patriotic, it's psychotic, and this stunt almost cost people on the ground their lives.

But, growing up on a military base, and later moving to a town with a huge Coast Guard base, I have seen some great areal displays. But never to make up for an administration that has tossed human lives, and healthcare employee lives, into the fire.

But still, I'm sure the nurses and physicians would really have rather had PPE and respect than a meaningless PR stunt, but that seems to be all this administration is capable of.

'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED' then, as GW Bush made sailors and aviators circle away from their loved ones to sail for a few days to create the 'perfect shot' for his 'The gulf war has ended!' party some few years before the GOP lost the next election.