Another shot of Blue Angels ship '6' - this time plus '5', which was Bu Aer 153876 (c/n 2450) - lost 7.8.73 during airshow at Lake Charles, LA. Pilot ejected safely, but shortly after the Blue Angels transitioned to the more manageable A-4. Look at the serial numbers - they happened to be almost a mirror image too! It may appear like a Photoshop clone job, but I can assure everyone it's straight from the slide. Quite a performance for big heavy jets

All six Blue Angels (153072/1, 153081/2, 153084/3, 153829/4, 153876/5 & 153076/6) along with their support KC-130F. At the end of the following year, the team re-equipped with the smaller A-4F

53 Sqdn's "Heracles" was one of the 10 Belfasts delivered to the RAF in 1965 and went on to become Heavylift's G-BFYU

This was Blue Angels Fat Albert #1 in the original white colours - although there are many online shots of the later blue/yellow colours on the replacement Hercules (surprising to find six different ones have been used since), it is much less commonly found in this scheme. Replaced a C-121J support aircraft in 1970 and served the Angels till 1973, then reverting to a normal Marines career which took her through to AMARC retirement in 2.06

There are plenty of images on the internet of an F-4 in the Speyer museum pretending to be 153072, but this is the real Blue Angels ship #1 and was only the second production F-4J. Written off in a collision with 153081 (ship #4) at NAS Lakehurst, NJ on 26.7.73 - just two months after this photo - during a practice session