For the first time, the Blue Angels, the US Navy's aerial demonstration team, will be able to have a woman in command of a fighter F/A-18 Super Hornet in their presentations. The squadron revealed today (18) its new pilots for the 2023 season and among them is Lieutenant Amanda Lee, nicknamed Stalin.
The aviator is among six new team unveiled on Monday, including two other F/A-18 and C-130 Super Hercules pilots, an event coordinator, a maintenance officer and a squadron medic.
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Lieutenant Amanda 'Stalin' Lee is an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter pilot, the US Navy's flagship fighter jet since the retirement of the F-14 Tomcat in 2006. She is currently a member of the VFA-106 Gladiators Airborne Fighter and Attack Squadron, based at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia.
She also serves as a Super Hornet instructor and demonstration pilot for the Navy's Rhino Demo Team. In June 2021, Lieutenant appeared in a video where singer Gabriel Brown managed to sing the song Danger Zone (soundtrack from Top Gun) perfectly, even suffering 6.3 times the acceleration of gravity, the famous “G Force”.
Along with Lieutenant Amanda, Lieutenant Commander Thomas Zimmerman of the VFA-11 Red Rippers also s the Blue Angels as a new demonstration pilot on the Super Hornet.
Formed in 1946, the 76-year-old squadron is the second oldest in the world, second only to the Patrouille de of the French Aerospace Force. Throughout its history, the Blue Angels have used F6F Hellcat, F8F Bearcat, F9F Panther and Cougar fighters, F-11 Tiger, F-4 Phantom II, A-4 Skyhawk and F/A-18 Hornet. Since 2020 the team has used the Super Hornet in its demonstrations.
In addition to the fighters, the Blue Angels also perform with the C-130J/T Super Hercules, nicknamed Fat Albert, which despite being a cargo plane, also performs in-flight demonstrations.
Despite being the first female selected to fly fighters in the Blue Angels, Lieutenant Amanda Lee is not the squadron's first female aviator. In 2014, Major Katie Higgins became the first Blue Angels pilot and between 2015 and 2016, the Marine Corps officer flew the C-130 Fat Albert.
According to The War Zone, selecting a pilot who already has Super Hornet flyby experience and is familiar with the airshow routine is certainly logical. Furthermore, Lieutenant Lee started at the bottom, ing the Navy as a recruit in 2007 and pursuing every possible opportunity to become a pilot.
She later became an Aviation Electronics Technician, which led to selection for the Sailor to iral Commissioning Program (STA-21). She majored in Biochemistry at Old Dominion University and earned her officer's commission in August 2013, being declared an aviator in 2016.
It is important to highlight at this point that, in the US, it is necessary to have a higher education degree to become an officer in the armed forces.
In this way, Lieutenant Stalin's career is also a great tool for the Blue Angels, whose mission is to publicize the work of the US Navy and its forms of ission. It is essentially the same task as the Smoke Squadron of the Brazilian Air Force.
During an interview in January 2019, Lee said that she is “first driver, second person and my gender is not really an issue”. At the time, she was scheduled to participate in the first all-female flyby in the Navy, in honor of Captain Rosemary Mariner, a pioneer in US naval aviation.
Lee credited Mariner, who died on January 24, 2019 at age 65, with having “This path has been opened for us. So it's really a great honor. I am super honored to be part of this viaduct in his honor”.
Now, Lee prepares to officially introduce himself to the Blue Angels in September, along with his five new teammates. He will still be trained and evaluated by Squadron . If she es all the tests, she will then be declared a demo driver on one of the most famous stunt teams in the world.
