Wing Wave From an Angel

 

The Peace River in southwest Florida is usually as calm as its name suggests. Every couple of years or so, it’s a quiet place to watch angels. Well, not your average angels since these angels are performing at the Florida International Air Show at Punta Gorda, on Florida’s southwest coast, right where the Peace River empties into Charlotte Harbor. These angels are very fast and very noisy and happen to be flying jet planes. The US Navy’s Blue Angel Flight Demonstration Team draw crowds wherever they perform and Punta Gorda is no exception. The grandstands and the flight-line are packed with thousands of spectators whenever the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds, the US Air Flight Demonstration Team, perform here.

US Navy Blue Angels - Photo USN

Mecki and Agi, friends visiting from Germany, were accompanying us on a trip up the Peace river to try out a waterfront restaurant tucked in among the Spanish moss draped live-oaks that line the river. I had recently overhauled my outboard motor on our boat and was anxious to show our guests the beautiful river. It turned out to be the same weekend the Blue Angels were back in town.

I immediately checked the air show schedule. I knew the flight patterns from watching previous air shows so I knew their flight path. I decided to anchor in a quiet, mangrove cove in the placid Peace River on the return trip after lunch, directly in line with the runway, but also close enough to the airport to still be under their flight path. I wanted to be in direct line with the runway, especially during the closing petal of the famous Fleur de Lis and the crossover where all the aircraft rejoined over the mesmerized crowd in the grandstands just a few hundred yards below.

There were three or four other boats anchored near us as we stood in the mustard-colored “Namaste” and watched the phenomenal air show. Single aircraft passed directly overhead several times. Our German friends were as enthralled as we were. The show was as astonishing as ever, the precision and timing exemplifying the skills and intense training that is the mark of the ultimate professional.

As one of the final maneuvers, a single aircraft descended from the peak of a formation in our direction, looping back toward earth where we could see the top of the beautiful blue and yellow F-18 until the very moment the pilot leveled off, mere yards above us. In that one, indescribable suspension of time and moment, the aircraft was headed directly at us, traveling hundreds of miles an hour but yet suspended motionless, and I impulsively saluted. It was an automatic reaction. I had no choice but salute. That I got a subtle wing waggle, an almost imperceptible, balanced wing tip dip, first to one side and then the other, from a Blue Angel as the aircraft screamed over us, was as emotional a moment as I ever had in the eight years I served in the Air Force. An astonishing moment I’ll never forget. A wing waggle is one way for a pilot to say hello, goodbye, or in my case, it was to return a salute.

Blue Angel up close, exactly as we saw it - Photo USN

I’m sure in the debrief the pilot probably wrote up the anomaly as unexpected uplift, perhaps a riser, the beginning of a thermal, from the river, but that pilot left me without words for several moments. I won’t say I was overwhelmed at the moment, but I was in fact overwhelmed. The trip home was quiet and actually anticlimactic. I have no doubt I will never attend another air show that meant as much to me as a wing wave from an Angel.