By the Spring of 1946 the US military had demobilized and the US Navy was looking for a way to attract young men into aviation. The Secretary of the Navy approached Vice Admiral Frank Wagner at Pensecola about the possibility of the Navy forming a Flight Demonstration squadron using their best aviators to attract crowds at air shows and possibly draw young recruits into Naval aviation.
Dispatch from Wagner reached Rear Admiral Ralph Davidson who approached Lt. Cdr. Roy M. "Butch" Voris to put some thoughts together on forming a flight demonstration team. Voris picked only batchelors for his team and the F6F-5 Hellcat for his aircraft. Wanting a unique paint scheme, Voris decided on using Gloss Insignia Blue in lieu of the Non-Specular Sea Blue then in use by the Navy. Voris stated; "it was a lighter shade of blue than our usual sea blue and I wanted something different." For the markings, he went with Chrome-Yellow paint. We had not come up with a Blue Angels motif at the time, so the nose was bare." The Blue Angels went on to perform six exhibitions in 1946 starting at the 1946 Southeastern Air Show in Jacksonville, Florida in June. From there they went on to perform at NAS Corpus Christi, the Des Moines Air Show, the Kansas City Air Show, NAS Pensacola, and finishing up at the Omaha Air Show.
Although Flying Iron includes four of the Hellcats in Blue Angels markings in their liveries, they are incorrect in color and Font. At the time the US Navy used Long Beach USN, which is now simply called USN Stencil Regular. USN Stencil Regular is a free True Type Font found on the web. True Type Long Beach USN Font can be found, but costs for anything other than a demo version. I have the paid version of Long Beach USN, because I am a modeler and also make my own transfers (decals) for models.
In 1947, the Blue Angels went to the Grumman factory in Bethpage, New York and picked up their new F8F-1 Bearcats in the now familiar Blue Angels Blue paint livery with their familiar logo motif on the nose. The Blue Angels shield marking did not arrive until they started flying F9F-2 Panthers.
To install, unzip CD_Hellcat_BA1.zip and drop the "CD_Hellcat_BA1" folder in your MSFS 2020 Community folder.
