An unusual moment occurred at the Rockford Airfest yesterday when Blue Angel #5 lost a piece of his wing! The outer portion of the leading edge flap on the left wing went missing some time before or during the Line Abreast Loop. The flap is an aircraft control surface that helps the wing maintain lift at high angles of attack. You can see the remaining portion of it angled slightly down in the photo above. The pilot, LCDR Mark Tedrow, completed that maneuver but appeared to give the rest of the formation some extra spacing until it was completed. He then came in to land while the rest of the team continued the performance, jumped into a two-seat backup jet, and amazingly took back off to finish the show. The situation was serious, but proved to be another shining example of the skill and professionalism of the team.
This is the second time a piece of a Blue Angel jet has fallen off in as many weeks. A fisherman found a small piece floating in a wetland area after the team’s performance in Rochester New York on May 23rd. He recovered the piece and returned it to the team. No word on whether the missing part from Rockford has been recovered or not, but the team is set to perform again today assuming the weather holds out.
Look for more coverage of Rockford soon, especially on the AirshowStuff Facebook page!
Peter Ciro
I was there and I have a similar shot as shown above.
Gary dale
Yes sir I found missing part in bean field
Katie Higgins
Gary,
Anyway I can contact you privately for more info? Thanks!
Airshowstuff
Gary, shoot us an email at rs@airshowstuff.com. Same for Katie- we’ll try and get you guys in touch with each other.
Andrew Serafyn
Also been there, and have a lot of shoot of missing piece of wing.
Rob
and here is my shot of #5 after he lost it, performing the 5 abreast before his uneventful recovery landing: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cmraseye/18559893226/in/dateposted/
mike H
awesome shots Rob!
Rob
Thank you! Mike
Sam W
Here is my shot of #5 still in formation with #2 during the 5 ship line abreast formation. Shortly after #5 landed with out an issue and pilot shortly there after took off in #7 to finish the show.
Sam W
Sorry for the double, forgot the URL.
Sam W
Here is my shot of #5 still in formation with #2 during the 5 ship line abreast formation. Shortly after #5 landed with out an issue and pilot shortly there after took off in #7 to finish the show. https://flic.kr/p/ttnQ2A
Mike A
they must have gotta it fixed because I saw a video on YouTube that showed #5 landing with the rest at this year’s Airfest. And 5 didn’t land with them in Saturday. 🙂 I think it was this site’s channel, too.
Curt Drumm
Our viewing area at Emery Air was 25′ from where the backup plane was parked. The swap-out was an incredible thing to watch. Before the damaged aircraft even pulled up, the backup plane was already started and idling in front of us.It had been pre-flighted earlier in the afternoon. We didn’t know why they started it at first. But when the other plane showed up, it was nothing short of a demonstration of incredible military precision. At least 10 guys were waiting, split between the 2 planes. The damaged plane had no sooner stopped rolling, and it was chocked with guys on the wings each side of the pilot. Canopy popped open, guys started helping the pilot unplug. He jumped out, ran across the ramp, where two more guys were waiting on the wings for him to jump and and reconnect. They jumped off the wings, closed the canopy and he taxied out and took off at the nearest intersections. The whole thing took less than 3-4 minutes. It was really neat to watch, and we were amazed he went out and finished the routine. Incredible military demonstration in and of itself….something the rest of the crowd never got to see. You could tell this was very well rehearsed.
Wuestenkarsten
Looks like that the “Problems” with the legacy Hornets starts to rise….
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