[MilCom] Blue Angel #6

[baycomm at earthlink.net]

 From a Navy pilot friend of mine.

FYI, I talked with a former Blue Angel Boss who had talked with another 
former Blue Angel who said that he had seen a video on CNN that showed 
the accident--(I haven't seen this).  Anyway, he said that it shows that 
he was in the rendezvous (for the last maneuver I think) and he aligns 
the fuselage with the rest of the formation and as he does the nose 
falls through.  He is relatively sure that it was gloc (g loss of 
consciousness).  Since they don't use g suits and they have springs on 
the stick that force them to maintain some back pressure on the stick at 
all times, if he looses consciousness the stick will automatically go 
forward and the nose would come down and he flew into the trees.

The only blessing is that he was doing what he loved to do, the 
maintenance troops won't be slitting their wrists because they caused a 
death with a mechanical failure, and they didn't kill anyone on the 
ground.  They will re-group, possibly re-look at the difficulty of that 
particular rendezvous--(a 360 degree turn for #6), and take a deep 
breath and probably get back to it.  It sounds like they may have 
already identified a replacement for him.  The #5 from 2 years ago 
"Merlin" Olsen.  That's all I have for now.