A Riveting Near Disaster

Butch Voris, founding leader of the Blue Angels, talks about when the team first switched from Grumman’s F7F Hellcat to its F8F Bearcat in the late Forties.  Butch often told outlandish self deprecating stories so it was hard to know when he was serious.

“We were flying our Bearcats from practice out over the Atlantic to the Sanford, Naval Air Station in Florida,” Butch said, “ and I decided to put on a little air show for the ground crews.  Arriving over Sanford we formed up in a diamond and went into our routine.

“Bear in mind that the leader is the only person who sees where the four-plane formation is going – the other Blues are flying formation on a small bit of the plane they’re keeping station with – they hang tight and go where their leader takes them.

“I put the formation in a dive over Sanford’s runways, as always using a rivet on the cowling as my guide – when that rivet lines up with the runway centerline it’s time to pull up.  So I put us in a dive and head down.

“But damn, somehow I’m way past vertical and the runway is coming up like crazy.  I pull up, the diamond follows and we head back upstairs.  I had come darned close to flying all four planes into the ground.  I never told number four how close he had come to that concrete runway.

“Turns out the cowling on the Bearcat is a tad longer and slopes down more than the Hellcat’s cowling.  That rivet wasn’t where it was supposed to be.

“I had to go change my shorts when we landed.”

True story?  Only Butch would know.

-BB-

Submitted Feb. 28, 2014