Blue Angels pilot talks about what it takes to be a member of the team

Before Damon Kroes enters his gold-and-blue F-18 Hornet jet, he takes time to visualize the maneuvers he is about to perform — how close he is to the other jets and the famous diamond formation.

Kroes is a pilot and lieutenant commander for the Navy's Blue Angels, and has been flying for the Navy for 10 years.

"We go on flight demonstrations for the public to represent all the soldiers and sailors and airmen all around the world in harms way that are often out of sight to us here at home, and represent them and the service and the sacrifice that they offer to all of us," Kroes said. "So we're very proud and privileged to do that and we're extremely happy to be in Myrtle Beach to do so."

This year is the first time the Blue Angels have flown into Myrtle Beach, which once housed a United States Air Force base. The team will be performing their air show Saturday and Sunday at the site of the former base, now The Market Common.

"Coming and driving in this morning, we see the A-7 and the A-10 Thunderbolt," Kroes said. "But really, it's an area of the public that today is not exposed too often to military service and so we're just excited to come here and share what the Navy and Marine Corps are capable of performing and we perform that in the form of a flight demonstration."

The Blue Angels

In 1946, the first team of Blue Angels took flight. Today, about 130 people make up the Blue Angels team, with six aircraft flying in demonstrations at air shows and other events.

Every season, each Blue Angel performs between 30 and 35 shows, beginning in mid-March and lasting through November.

"They each have a very specific and important contribution to our mission, that we cannot perform our mission without each one of those sailors and marines," Kroes said. "So they're working tirelessly all throughout the year to get these six jets airborne every single day and to the frequency required to let us pilots perform at the level that we're going to perform this weekend and do it safely."

In order to qualify as a Blue Angel, pilots must log about 1,250 jet hours, which amounts to roughly eight years of flying Navy jets. After a person is picked, they are required to fly about 120 training flights before they perform in a show.

But the team does more than fly.

While in Myrtle Beach, Kroes said the team will visit local high schools and talk to students.

"We talk to them kind of about life lessons and principals and I really truly thing our culture of excellence, what we preach out everyday is applicable to all aspects of life and what that really boils down to is how we train," he said. "How we become excellent is never make excuses.

"Everyone has failures, we should all be trying to be doing the hardest things we can because, guess what, we all learn failure. Failure really is the greatest teacher in life."

And Kroes works to apply his own advice to his flying.

Through visualization and 'chair flying,' Kroes and the team work through difficult maneuvers before they are performed in the air.

"We'll do that with a few maneuvers before every flight and it really gets you in the mindset, it's almost like you perform the act before we get in the plane," he said. "Truthfully I don't think we could perform at the level that we do day in and day out without that daily regiment of chair flying and visualizing prior to each one of these intense maneuvers."

This story was originally published April 26, 2018 at 5:43 PM with the headline "Blue Angels pilot talks about what it takes to be a member of the team."