If you look at the accident rate on this team,
it's very, very high.
It's not unheard of to get through a full assignment without a major accident.
But it's rare.
As I've started to go through my last season,
I am very aware
that the odds are stacking against me.
It's my job to make sure that it's not just me that doesn't die,
but every one of these members of the team.
And the emotions that come with that are enough to keep you awake at night.
Hey, how you doing?
-Doing well, sir. -Sorry, man, I missed.
Yeah, perfect.
-Have a great day. -Thank you so much.
-Make some noise. -Yeah. We're gonna.
You are the most experienced, extraordinary,
handpicked airmen in the force.
The Thunderbirds represent the best of humanity, but it's more than that.
The Thunderbirds represent excellence as something greater than ourselves.
If we get this right, we will actually inspire.
We'll ignite a unifying sense of purpose within our country.
But to do this and to do it right, we can't just be good.
We have to be extraordinary.
This is our mission.
Welcome to Show Center, the air show podcast.
One of our first episodes of 2023.
I'm air show announcer, Matt Jolley, joined by my colleagues,
air show announcers Rick Peterson and Rob Reider.
One of our first episodes of 2023.
Thunderbirds, check.
We're talking about the Thunderbirds.
Talk about the exceptionalism of these aviators.
Let's run 'em up!
These pilots truly are the best of the best of the best.
And we're set.
…of the rap game Not bragging
Lips bigger than Jagger Not saggin'
Spell it backwards I'mma leave it at that
That ain't got nothing to do with rap
-Get up -Just like that
Thunderbirds!
The Thunderbirds are the US Air Force's display team,
and they're demonstrating the exceptionalism
that our US Air Force operates at
to air shows all across the world
in hopes of inspiring that next generation.
-Get up -Just like that
They are America's top guns,
executing the most extraordinary combat maneuvers
in formation.
That's right, Chuck, man That's what you gotta do
The Thunderbirds are truly the rock stars of this world.
They're the headline act.
How close does this number two get to a number three?
18 inches from my canopy to his wing.
Full send.
We'll do 62 shows this year.
Break now.
-It's meant to look nearly impossible. -And roll.
So it's time to leave you a preview
When you zip that zipper, a lot of responsibility comes with it.
Because suddenly you're somebody, you're a Thunderbird.
These are spectacular athletes.
These are exceptional humans.
One, two, three, four!
They're America's team.
Welcome to Show Center, the air show podcast.
2023, January here, we're rolling into the season,
a lot of new folks on the Thunderbirds.
They're turning over three of these pilots,
and it's like taking the Etch-A-Sketch and just shaking it.
Oh yeah, and the big-time training has begun.
They're flying two, three times a day now.
Let's talk about the boss a bit, Astro Elliot.
One of the great bosses of the Thunderbirds.
Very effective in the last season.
The variables are all there for this one.
He has three months to figure this out.
Hey!
Papi chulo! Okay, okay.
This the last one?
All right, guys, welcome to Spaceport.
If you take a look at the flight line,
this is what it was always meant to be, guys.
We got zero traffic that's not the US Air Force Thunderbirds.
This is the ideal flying situation for training this team
to be the best it's ever been.
Team 2023,
six pilots,
three veterans.
Number five, Thunder, the lead solo.
You look at his jet on the ground and the number five is upside down.
Why? Because he spends most of his time upside down.
Number four, Threat.
She's the instructor, she flies in the back of the diamond,
keeping her eyes on the newbies on the wings.
Go diamond.
Thunderbird number one, the boss.
That's Astro.
He's the guy in charge of everything that goes on in the air
and also on the ground for all 135 members of the team.
What he says goes.
The miracle about the Thunderbirds to me is the fact that
we change team members every single year.
Every year we swap out 50% of our pilots.
You build a team from nothing.
We have three new pilots joining the team this year.
They're gonna serve two years on the team.
They are already the three best combat pilots the Air Force has to offer.
But air demonstration is a completely different animal.
Thunderbird 6 is gonna be Miami.
He's the new solo on the team.
As for a new guy, they tell me the rules.
Don't hit the ground.
Zeke is joining the team as Thunderbird 2.
He'll be our left wingman.
Feeling good, but I'm also feeling stressed.
I don't know how the training goes. So it's just a trust in the process
that this is all gonna fall into place, kind of like a puzzle.
Finally, we have Primo.
Primo has an extensive background on the F-16.
Lots of combat time.
He'll be joining the team this year as Thunderbird 3.
We wanna be the best we can be
day one at the air show, which is…
Like, it seems like it's tomorrow.
All right, guys. This is all I wanted to say to you.
The next two months are gonna be no joke.
We're gonna fly on weekends, we'll do two-a-days.
It's January 9th right now.
COMACC cert is in exactly two months.
It's closer than you think.
It's a big deal.
And this is why we're here.
Okay, we're gonna do it right with blind trust.
Thunderbirds!
Blind trust!
There is a lot of pressure riding on the certification process.
It hinges on the team's ability to perform
at the top, in front of the American public.
And ultimately, that decision for certification
rests in the hands of the four-star general
in charge of air combat command.
And it's a yes or a no.
Teams that say they're elite aren't elite until they actually start performing.
There are high standards that are not negotiable.
If we had a certification go poorly, we're not gonna clear the team
to go out the door and represent the Air Force and the nation.
And no one can fake it.
That final certification is fixed on the calendar,
and that can be daunting.
-Setting up for a high show. -High show two.
-Three. -Four.
-Five. -Six.
Diamond's gonna enter TFR with a loop on takeoff from right to left
and a left-hand turnout, dropping in for a clover loopover.
Combat pilots are used to flying combat.
Well off the ground, in a fight, focused on targeting, focused on the enemy.
Flying aerobatics is just not something we train for.
You have to divorce yourself from your survival instincts
to fly this demonstration.
It's 45 minutes of total chaos.
When you watch the diamond,
it's jets one, two, three and four.
The diamond shows the formation capabilities of the team.
Diamond Pass in Review is
the tightest formation of flying that exists.
18 inches apart at a high rate of speed. It's nerves of steel.
The slightest bobble with either of my hands
will cause a four-jet collision.
Solo pilots, Thunderbirds 5 and 6,
are their own act in itself.
Two jets flying at a high rate of speed.
Coming at each other with closing speeds of nearly 1,000 miles an hour.
You are microseconds of lag from a life-threatening situation.
Six jets flying 18 inches apart, nearly at the speed of sound.
They're doing the unbelievable.
Once they've thrilled everyone beyond belief,
they blow everyone away with the climax of the show,
the high bomb burst.
There's this quiet that comes over the crowd,
and every cell phone is up.
The high bomb burst is actually one of the most dangerous things we do.
You see these jets, they're rocketing up toward the heavens.
-Then they break over the top. -Let's make… ready now.
We fly four different directions across the sky.
We pull down through the vertical.
Two mile section.
Two point four.
Forty-five hundred.
-Let's pull! -Pull up.
They cross within milliseconds of one another.
Showing me their talent.
And finally, the rejoin.
In order to make the rejoin,
some of the pilots need to make a high-velocity upside-down turn,
subjecting themselves to unbelievable G-forces.
All three of the wingmen have to anticipate the rejoin line
and the ground that is approaching rapidly.
Just purely visually.
…310, 320, 330, 340.
If done properly,
all of these jets meet at air show center.
Show center.
It's freaking awesome.
This assignment will either destroy your family or make you stronger.
There's really no in-between.
Three hundred days deployed.
No weekends together for two straight years.
Guys, get your shoes and then breakfast, okay?
Okay, I'll wear the black shoes.
There you go. Good decision.
Are you staying there all night?
Yes.
Only for one more day.
It's heartbreaking when the boys ask, "Hey, Dad, are you staying tomorrow?"
And I have to say, "No, I'm gone for 25 days."
Are you guys excited about school?
Okay, very good.
I didn't want him to be a Thunderbird.
I remember when he came home and he said,
"Hey, like, do you want to do this?"
Then I looked at all the crashes and accidents and casualties
that had happened in Thunderbirds and I remember calculating it,
and I thought, "That's 10%."
10% of Thunderbirds have died.
"I don't want Justin to do that." I said no.
What's four fours?
Four fours… equals 16.
Whoa.
-I know that. -How do you know that?
Because none of…
But watching the show really was like an art form.
Instead of just combat flying,
it's almost like music.
You make this sound, it has no words, you don't give it meaning,
but every person in the audience, they have their own story
or response that they're feeling as they watch.
It was really amazing, what they did, and then I said, "Okay, sure."
"Go ahead."
"Throw your name in the hat."
Here we go. Yes!
Oh, get out of here.
-My turn. This is the strongest. -All right.
When you first join the Air Force,
service before self is a very easy value to get behind.
Okay, here we go.
You have kids,
now that value changes.
-The yellow ones definitely go farther. -I know. Well, no…
It's not just me going and putting myself in danger.
It's now doing that with a young family that is starting to understand that risk.
-Come give dad a hug. We gotta go. -What do you mean?
Dad's gotta go fly.
All right, come here.
Ah!
All right, fine…
It's really hard. It's hard on the kids. I think it's hard on Justin.
The most exciting things about being a parent, right, he misses that.
Don't smash me. I gotta go fly.
Hey, all right, you guys have fun, okay? I'll see you.
Babe.
All right.
Love you a lot.
I love you too. Don't die.
All right.
"Don't die."
That's what she says. That's her number one rule, her only rule.
She really does get that the risk is real.
But Victoria and I believe it's important
for our kids to see us set objectives
and go after things in the name of service to something bigger than ourselves.
Ah. I don't see 'em.
They're there. Got them covered?
Yeah.
All right.
On the delta loop, as they pull four Gs, four times the force of gravity,
they weigh four times their body weight as they're going up into the air.
Your heart rate and blood pressure go up, your breathing increases.
Yeah.
And you have to do that, maneuver after maneuver,
for 45 straight minutes.
When you talk about G forces,
it's a multiple of gravity.
So one G is Earth's gravity, what we're sitting at now.
So for a 200-pound person, that person weighs 200 pounds.
A lot of times in the demonstration, seven to eight Gs are pulled,
which means during that moment, like, for those 10 to 15 seconds,
that person can weigh almost a ton, or 2,000 pounds.
As much as a small elephant.
About four Gs is where your resting tolerance usually is.
Once you get above that,
your heart is no longer able to pump blood to your head.
So what ends up happening, five Gs, six Gs, seven Gs, eight Gs…
Now the blood is getting lower and lower and lower.
By the time you get to eight or nine Gs, all the blood's draining out of your skull
and it goes straight down to your feet.
You can't stay conscious in that situation
because the brain is a very high-level organ.
It requires a ton of oxygen and blood.
So in that situation, you start to experience some changes.
First thing you see is all the colors will go gray.
Crank up the Gs, seven, eight, nine…
First, the vision outside the peripheral vision goes away.
And then over time, it keeps moving in.
Black, black, black, black, black, black, until you're looking through a soda straw.
If you don't do anything to fight back…
everything goes black.
And when you lose it, your body goes slack.
Your hands come off the controls.
And when you're that close to the ground going that fast…
Warning! Warning!
…if you come to, it's often too late.
Regardless of how that went, when we look at the tapes,
remember this, we did it.
Now we're gonna make it good.
Okay, so, we'll get into it with a standard debrief.
So, we have a lot of work to do, in all seriousness.
Lots to take away from this one. That's why we do this.
And we're gonna pick apart everything that went wrong.
And it's gonna feel like you're getting crushed.
That final certification on March 10th, it is not going to move.
And it can put pressure on us as a team to sometimes push limits and boundaries
that we don't want to push.
I think it's very important for me and for our Diamond Instructor Pilot, Threat,
to be in lockstep on how fast to push those risk boundaries.
With wind shear and turbulence, if you do get sucked in,
try and stay cool, calm and collected and only gingerly apply that rudder,
so that they're not seeing a whole face full of jet coming their way.
Growing up, I always wanted to be a fighter pilot.
It was like a longtime dream of mine.
In 2nd grade, I came home like, "I wanna be a fighter pilot in the Air Force."
I don't know what that meant, I didn't know what that meant in high school.
And I don't think I really, totally understood that
until I got to my first operation squadron.
Every once in a while, I'll look down and be like, holy shit. Sorry, holy crap.
We have six airplanes so close.
This is so cool that I get paid for my job to do this.
All right, what you're looking at is three missile tips-- ish--
above the canopy bow.
And then that third static wick in pointing at the crux of the tail.
So it's deeper than you'd think it is. And it's a little nebulous.
Um, so a lot more movement…
I'm also the training officer. So I'm in charge of the training for the 2023 team.
I'm kind of like a lead-by-example kind of person.
And if I am not good enough, it's my fault.
So I have to do the work.
I didn't have any aviation background before starting pilot training.
So the natural skill wasn't there, but I was determined.
And so I'd study six to seven days a week relentlessly,
the same stuff over and over and over again.
Because if it's a bad flight, it's only on me.
So the contact point, then, if you miss inside,
and tight is your missile rail, the boss is dead.
Okay.
Threat's just an incredible human being. You want to learn from her.
And it's nice to know you have somebody who wants you to get better.
Her goal is for 2023 to be even better than 2022.
But it seems like that's unachievable.
So I've been F-16s my whole career in the Air Force.
I was in Japan for four years. I was traveling around, uh, the Pacific,
putting on air shows as a single-ship demo pilot.
My vice wing commander used to actually be Thunderbird 1.
So he brought me into his office one day, like, "Hey, Primo,
ever thought of being a Thunderbird?" I was like, "No,
I don't wanna be a Thunderbird." You know, the Thunderchickens.
There's the Prima Donnas that wear tight flight suits.
But the more I got to talk to him,
the more I got to learn about the actual mission.
And it's the hardest flying I've ever done.
That was my first spark of, like,
I want to be a part of some sort of team dynamic that is professional
and is a beacon of excellence.
Right now,
it feels like I take one step forward…
maybe two steps back.
So hopefully, that's still moving forward. I don't think mathematically it is.
I think it's moving backwards.
Blind trust is the core motto of this team.
Blind trust is the ability to trust that the people you're flying with
are gonna do their job, they'll do it to the inch and so extraordinarily well
that you just have to worry about flying your job to the inch.
Boss winds 3-2-0 at eight.
You are cleared for takeoff runway 3-4. It's showtime!
If you're the right wingman, for example, your body's turned 90 degrees this way
because your plane of reference is Thunderbird 1 on your right-hand side.
And so you're frozen in this position for 40 minutes.
Lift that right bank, get a little more fall.
The wingmen don't know where the ground and the sky are.
They only know where the boss is.
They trust him without reservation.
If number three is out of position and four is flying blindly,
then four's gonna hit three.
Diamond ready now.
But we ask her to blindly trust that three is gonna be in position.
If you don't have that blind trust,
the show will not work.
We build that blind trust through all the repetitions we do.
It takes training season to earn it.
The Diamond Pass and Review, it is the barometer for the team.
If you see the Diamond Pass and Review fly by and it's asymmetric and spread out,
that team doesn't trust each other.
This Diamond Pass and Review
looks like the easiest maneuver in the show to the crowd.
It's just the diamond flying by in front of you from right to left.
But to make this maneuver work,
I actually have to aim to hit the ground in front of the crowd.
And I'll hold that velocity vector without flinching
with an aim point that is going to hit the ground,
and the only reason it doesn't is because number two slides into position,
creates enough lift under my left wing that it actually rolls my jet slightly
and corrects that vector up in front of the crowd to tag exactly 100 feet.
We cannot fly it without complete trust in one another,
because once I call pull set,
either Zeke slides into position or we hit the ground.
And unfortunately, we've been there.
In 1982, a very important incident to the team,
it's kind of in all of our hearts, it's called the Diamond Crash.
My parents live here in Hampton, so I'm excited to be back in the area.
They're looking forward to seeing the show.
Four Thunderbird jet fighters slammed into the desert floor
at speeds close to 400 miles per hour.
An amateur photographer took this picture seconds after the crash.
The Thunderbirds were practicing this spectacular formation.
The planes did not collide. They simply flew straight into the ground.
Four men, including the Thunderbird team commander, were killed.
The commander leader crashed his aircraft,
and the rest of the team members stuck with him and crashed as well.
We lost the commander of the Thunderbirds, number 2, 3, and 4,
that day, January 18th, '82.
The pilots on this team put absolute trust in me as the formation leader.
A blind trust. And that's the only way any of this works.
But I have to earn that trust, because if I make a mistake,
we all pay the price.
So we're not gonna rush it.
I am… Right now I'm flying the diamond purr differently,
because I'm counting on your lift, and it's not there right now.
Once I get you in a bit closer, I will start pull setting,
basically to crash. I know it sounds, like, morbid, but it's not.
-And then you will… You will fix that. -Mm-hmm.
So when you get in, it'll go rrrr! And we'll… And we'll climb.
So no pressure.
Uh, I was born in Illinois.
Uh, at a young age, we moved down to Gainesville, Florida.
My parents got divorced when I was at a young age.
My dad was addicted to drugs and basically chose that life
and that lifestyle instead of his family.
I remember I was a freshman in high school
and we checked my dad into rehab on Christmas.
And it was like, "Man, this is… This is bad."
And that, I think, was the time that I was like, "Man, I…"
"I do not want this for myself."
So I chose a different path and I pursued aviation, all thanks to my grandfather.
He kind of instilled that in me.
And the month prior to my commission into the Air Force,
he was hospitalized. We didn't know if he was gonna make it.
He was like, "I''m gonna be at the University of Alabama,
and I'm gonna be his first salute."
And he was pretty sick. He made the trip out to Columbus, Mississippi,
and got to put wings on my chest.
I remember him telling me, he's like, "You're gonna do great."
"Every time you fly, look out your right wing. I'll be riding on your right wing."
Um…
I need a minute.
He passed away. I remember I couldn't make it back to the funeral.
I'm like, "All right, I'll take a picture on the right wing before I fly."
So I climbed up, took a picture on the right wing and was like,
"I got a new wingman."
Every time I climb up the ladder, I look out my right wing and say,
"Hey, Grandpa, like, hang on. It's gonna be a hell of a ride,"
every single day.
All right, fix that spacing.
Winds aren't bad. No pitch.
As the ground-based evaluator for the team,
my role is to tell the team how they're gonna look to the crowd.
Decent roll.
TT bobble.
Nine right. Nice formation.
Probably a slow first half.
I'm looking for symmetry. Are the solos crossing offset from center?
Six high.
I want them to be pristine.
Ready now. Break ready now.
Pretty decent. Pretty decent.
As all of this continues, we're gonna be watching it unfold here
as they approach certification coming up.
That's a big deal. It's not a given.
You know, that looms really large.
And I know that in Astro's mind it's there,
and in each of those pilots, that's there too.
"Please don't let it be me that screws this up."
Especially the newbies.
I mean, Primo, criminal justice is what he studied.
I was trying to figure out how these guys get into fighter jets.
He's studying criminal justice and had to fly a jet.
The high bomb burst is one of the most difficult maneuvers of any air show,
and that's the one that we end it on.
All right, here we go.
7,000 in nose, coming up on 30, right on into four.
Standby to break. Let's break, ready now.
Hold the line.
Two out, action.
Altitude, altitude.
Because we fly so close to the ground,
we turned off the safety features
that would protect us from hitting the ground.
-Warning. Warning. -Oh!
Pull up. Passing, passing. Warning, warning.
One mile.
Fix that spacing. Smoke was a mess.
Join it up, diamond.
In this maneuver, Primo is not only gonna have to hold positive G,
but he's also gonna have to kick in the rudder, which he gets lateral G,
so he's getting two different forces on his body at the same time.
Come on, stay in there.
Why is it… That rejoin line is too aggressive.
310, 320, 330.
Get on that line. Come on, Primo.
Get on the line. Ah!
Hmm. Overshot the line.
Yeah.
-I think we should try another. -Maybe.
So Primo actually stays in this time.
Okay, so this rejoin is where it gets way late.
Holy shit.
Yeah, that is not a great picture.
Primo is struggling with the rejoin phase of the high bomb burst,
and that's that last phase where he's conducting a 135-degree slice
upside-down while trying to find me and rejoin to my wing,
all within a couple of seconds.
Can you back it up to the start of that?
I think you have too much G initially.
Because you want to float it slightly here and then increase.
You kind of want it to be like…
Shoom.
You know, as a newbie in the demo,
there's immense amount of pressure to get this thing right.
Training season is such a finite amount of time.
At the second rejoin, I get really low.
I don't know if I'm, like, too far away
on the outbound,
but then I don't want to pull seven Gs.
The reason the high bomb burst is particularly, um…
just a challenge for everybody, um,
and is nostalgic for us is not just because it's our primary maneuver,
but because the high bomb burst was our last fatal accident.
Um, in 2018, um,
we lost Major Cajun Del Bagno in the high bomb burst
and in that exact rejoin.
Some breaking news.
An Air Force Thunderbird pilot is dead following a crash outside Las Vegas.
An F-16 fighter jet has crashed near Nellis Air Force Base.
An F-16 crashed during a routine training flight.
It marks the third crash for the Thunderbirds in less than two years.
Nellis Air Force Base has identified him as Major Stephen Del Bagno.
The report says that pilot Major Stephen Del Bagno
didn't input any flight controls during a short period
as the plane barreled towards the ground.
Everybody wants their child to say "mom" or "dad" first.
Stephen, he was still a little tyke and really hadn't said his first words.
And there's an airplane that flew over, and he's pointing up in the sky.
"Airplane, airplane, airplane."
Really? You're gonna say "airplane."
You can't say mom. You can't say dad.
Airplane is a two syllable word. Mom is one.
Dad is one, but he said, "Airplane."
That was where everything really started. He was, like,
what, two? Two, three years old at that time.
What up, Pops?
It's just me calling to let you know it's official-official now.
The entire, uh, Thunderbird team called today to say that
I'm going to be the next Thunderbird 4.
Anyway, love you. Hope you guys are having a good day.
Talk to you more soon. Take care. Bye.
Pretty much was a day like any other day.
I had gone off to work.
My IT manager came to my office and said,
"Joe, Joe, Joe, there was an accident at Nellis Air Force Base in an F-16."
I go, "Okay, did they say 'Thunderbird'?"
And he said, "No."
I says, "Okay, then I'm feeling pretty good about the fact that
it's not a Thunderbird, so Stephen's okay,
we're gonna be just fine."
I get a call from Cindy. Um…
"There's-there's two suits at the door. What do I do?"
Joe wasn't home, but I had to bring them in the house.
They had a hard enough job to do.
The clergyman was great because he held me and he let me cry.
The officer did a great job maintaining his composure.
How they can do it is beyond me.
Never in a million years did I think Stephen would die in an airplane.
I mean, he was so, so meticulous
and so thorough on everything with his flying.
I mean, I would've seen him stepping off a curb,
tripping and hitting his head before I would've thought he'd die in an airplane.
In the investigation,
it wasn't determined that Stephen did anything wrong.
It was the high bomb burst rejoin.
The difference in the amount of Gs, it knocked him out.
And he was too close to the ground to recover.
And so his trajectory in was,
I think they said that it was a 90-degree angle.
We-we knew there wasn't much of him left.
It's the worst thing in the world.
You know, you expect you're gonna say goodbye to your parents,
but you don't ever expect to say goodbye to your child.
Coming right now is what's called the pitch.
And that is the signal that the show's over and they're coming in to land.
Next thing we'll hear is the landing codes.
Landing codes will come in, uh, one through six in that order.
Um, and that just gives maintenance the heads-up on what we need to work.
Thunderbirds are back on deck. One is code two.
FLCS single fail will not clear.
Good run.
Welcome to the flight line, where everything starts and everything ends
for the demonstration and all jets in the Air Force.
That's where work happens.
We have maintainers, jets, oil, gas,
and a lot of blood, sweat and tears.
We understand that we don't have the most alluring job in the world.
You're in the belly of the beast.
It's brash, but when your name goes on the side of the jet,
and you're the dedicated crew chief, that means something.
It's not just six demo pilots.
There's 130-some-odd people in this squadron
working tirelessly and effortlessly to make the job happen.
I've spent more time with an aircraft than I have with my family and friends.
You want the aircraft to be the best.
You want it to be the best looking, to be the best flying, the go-to jet.
That's your baby.
It's game time when it comes out here.
One major mistake could mean life or death.
Although these jets are maintained to the highest standards,
sometimes things do go wrong.
The ejection seat in an aircraft is an incredibly awesome safety feature.
You know, it allows us to get away from an aircraft that is moving very, very fast
and have a parachute to save our lives.
But it's an incredibly violent way to leave an airplane.
Pulling a handle that is lighting a rocket motor underneath you
and can get upwards of 20 to 25 times the force of gravity
as it launches you out of that airplane…
So with Miami, he had an ejection a few years ago.
He ended up losing an entire inch of height.
Deep breath in.
His muscles are all shorter than they should be.
And over time, that will actually calcify
and cause, like, significant muscle knotting in his back.
And all those compressive forces continually make it worse.
Because you guys are doing the Gs, you're always under compression.
So, just, honestly, one of the simplest things you can do
is, you're just gonna relax,
just kind of gently pull that leg down that's shorter.
Any pain there at all?
Uh…
Other than me being not flexible at all.
I know, I need to do more yoga too.
Ejections have a tremendous physical and mental impact on a pilot.
Getting back into the jet after one ejection is a miracle.
But if a pilot has to eject twice,
that will likely be the end of their flying career.
The first time I landed after that,
my hands were, like, shaking uncontrollably.
It was definitely a hurdle I had to get over.
But one of the main people that helped me out was Thunder, number five.
He specifically was always there for me.
I went to his room, asked him if he needed groceries.
Just talked to him because it had been a very traumatic event.
That was, like, my first introduction to the type of people that are on this team.
Honestly, though, the first 180 degrees of turn
looked real nice as far as altitude control. So I started at 340.
Thunderbird 5 is the other instructor role on the team
because they're in their second year and they flew six last year.
Ready, hit it!
The way I like to instruct is more visual, being able to use the GPX lines,
to show where I'm at to make timing.
We're always under a little bit of, like, the "I'm gonna die" factor,
but that keeps your adrenaline running and really focused.
Like this!
Rule number one, don't hit the diamond. Number two, don't hit the ground.
Rule number three, don't hit me.
Here's a C-130 Hercules. We saw these drop jumpers today.
It's huge.
It's got the wheels in that little part. I always liked that kind of design there.
Well, this is it.
This is pretty much the best you possibly can get.
You got airplanes flying over.
Who's that guy?
There's a new level of cool.
Yeah.
-Wow. -Oh.
-Wow. -What a camera angle.
Great photography.
This house was full of airplanes.
Out in that garage was just a whole setup of models.
Every spare second,
it was, get the homework done as fast as he could on the way home from school
because he was going out there to build airplanes.
And as a little boy, Kevin also took him down there all the time to NASA.
So he grew up with that. It was just, like, in the veins.
"I'm gonna be an astronaut."
As a four-year-old in preschool,
his teacher asked him to draw a picture there of something in space.
Wow, this is really different.
Four-year-olds, the sky is blue. He knew that space was black.
And that space shuttle became a theme for him.
But he just kind of never let it go.
When I first met him,
he told me that he intended to become an astronaut.
And I was thinking, "Good luck, buddy."
Nice dreaming.
NASA astronauts are mostly Air Force or Navy fighter pilots,
specifically test pilots.
And so I knew that if I wanted to go to space,
this is what I had to do with my life.
So I went to weapons school and then went to test pilot school,
graduated a year later as one of only three people that I know of
who graduated from both of the elite flying courses in the Air Force.
I was certain I knew what I was gonna do with my life.
-Your planes are back in line. -All right.
As it narrows down from 18,000 initial applicants to 1,000,
got down-selected again to 120.
Approaching my son's first birthday in February, I got called back
to the second round of interviews, which was down to 40 to 50 at that point,
and became an astronaut finalist. And that was surreal.
Like, I really, at that point thought, wow, I've made it this far.
There's a chance. Like, I might just make it.
Until I got a call from my friend, Brick, the commander of the Thunderbirds.
When it came to my replacement, I had a lot of thoughts on that.
And the most important factor is who is Thunderbird 1?
Who is leading the team?
Because they will set the culture.
They will set, kind of, the, uh… The overall character of the squadron.
It was very important that we got this right.
He said, "Hey, Astro, I want you to think about applying to take this team."
And I said, "Absolutely not."
The NASA application had been launched. I was close to starting interviews.
I knew what my future held, and it wasn't air demonstration.
As a flight surgeon, my main job is, one,
be able to fly, understand the pilots, keep them safe.
But one of my favorite jobs that I get to do during the air shows,
I run something called The Shine.
Boss and the solos can use our signals from a light gun
to line up perfectly on the line every time.
I thought for sure that would totally…
When you're going 600 miles an hour, sometimes he'll only have a split second
or an instant to look back over his shoulder and find that one little light
and go, hey, yeah, that's the one I'm going for. Line up on the line.
Pitchy entry, three.
Nice conditions. Come on, Primo. You got this, baby.
At this point in the training season, I'm starting to see some frustrations.
You know, they have that one kind of thorn-in-their-side maneuver
that they just can't seem to get over the hump on.
All right, y'all, let's make this one happen.
Come on, let's see some progress on this one.
Let's make ready now.
All right, I like it, I like it.
And pull.
Pull up. Pull up.
That's pretty.
Take the lead, come on.
Yes, outstanding.
330, 340, 350,
360, 370.
He's behind.
Come on, catch up!
His rejoin angle was off.
It's the most frustrating thing I've ever done.
I just can't get the rejoin down.
Show center.
Don't worry about symmetrics. Let's just get there timely.
Fight, fight, fight.
Come on, catch up.
Uh…
Wide.
You have too much G.
Instead of rejoining on him, rejoin on where you think he'll be.
Come on, stay in there. Don't fall back, come on.
What's going on here?
The rejoin lines are mismatched.
Whoa, whoa, whoa now.
I keep over rolling on the top. And then the rejoins are still trash. Three.
Little low, little low. Come on.
Show center. Slow.
It's because you're 1,000 feet low,
which really changes your slice and G.
It's a thing. There's always a thing.
We just don't know which one it'll be and who's gonna have it.
This one is yours, baby. Go get it.
Fight, fight, fight.
Get strong. Do it.
Left, left.
Come on.
He had it.
So this week has been an eventful one.
We had two safeties happen back-to-back,
where the aircraft and people are actually in jeopardy.
Two.
-Three. -Four.
Yeah, I'm feeling all of those bumps.
Don't know if they'll show in the tape, but I'm just like…
So we're all stacked.
We turn. It's one, two, three and four.
So I'm, like, tucked up very close underneath Boss.
I felt unsafe being that close to Boss with my current skill levels.
So I had a really big ease into Primo.
And set timer and down.
Whoa… Oh, shit.
And our wingtips were… I don't want to know how close.
Primo just had no option but to eject himself out of the formation.
And we just watched it over and over and over again in the debrief.
To the best of your ability, Zeke,
try and stabilize your wings with Boss.
But you see, even that little ease that you had there, um,
again, absorb what you can absorb.
And then if you can't absorb it, move, and…
It felt personal that I put Primo in such a dangerous position.
It's something you go home and think about, man, that was close.
That could have been catastrophic for all of us,
which is not something you want to think about
going to work the next day.
All right, everybody who's watching the video, thank you for taking the time
to-to take a look at the new show sequence. We decided…
When I showed up to the team in August of 2018,
we'd just had a series of three Class A mishaps.
We had one that had a fatality associated with it.
I was very interested in the history of the team.
I had a drawer that had a bunch of old documents
dating all the way back into the, you know, early '90s, into the '80s.
And one day I just started reading through it.
I slowly started to build a picture of previous versions of the team.
We had kind of drifted off in some areas that we were unaware of.
When accidents or near misses happened,
the leadership was spring-loaded
to just raise the altitudes and spread the formations out.
Sometimes it's very difficult
to see culture creeping in the wrong direction
in an organization.
Sometimes it's not.
And for about the last 20 years,
this is what the Diamond Pass in Review looks like for the Thunderbirds.
It's asymmetric. It's out of position. It's wide.
That's never what this institution was meant to be.
A layperson would look at it and say, "Well, aircraft are safer
when further away from each other," which makes sense.
Aircraft are safer when they're further from the ground.
But when Brick took a step back, he came to the theory,
we can actually execute a better show
by actually being closer to each other,
not only better optically, but better safer.
It's not inherently obvious.
He saw that the further we push, the harder we push,
and the more we aim for precision, the safer we fly.
Because at that level, it's all you can focus on.
And so I really, really focused on making the demo more difficult to fly
as opposed to easier to fly.
The order, the methodology.
We have to fly close, we have to fly low, and we have to find a way to do it safely.
I knew it wasn't gonna happen overnight.
And so my concern was that once I left,
there may be an effort to try to undo some of these things.
We needed somebody who was gonna take that mantle and continue pressing forward.
Somebody who's got the tactical sense of, like, a weapons school graduate,
the physics and aerodynamic sense of a test pilot school graduate.
Well, those people don't exist.
Well, one existed.
As that project grew in my own mind,
I started to realize everything the Air Force had given me.
Sending me to weapons school to be a pinnacle instructor,
sending me to test pilot school to understand the nuances of…
Of precision flying.
To the point that it began to feel selfish to pursue my childhood dream
when there was this potential for enormous impact
in reforming a team that could inspire the entire country.
It just felt like it was time to give back.
So I left the flight line, went straight back to my office,
and sat down and wrote the most difficult email I've ever written,
and said that I had to withdraw my application
because I had been selected to be Thunderbird 1 for the US Air Force.
Yeah, it was so close.
It was so close that I was already picturing how amazing it would be
to-to get to realize this dream.
Let's take a moment and talk about the Daytona 500.
We have an opportunity coming up here for a lot of fans
who are not air show fans to see the team.
Daytona's a big deal for us.
The Thunderbirds have flown the Daytona 500 flyover
12 consecutive years in a row, 13 times total.
It's technically mid-training season,
so there's actually been a lot of controversy
on whether or not we should even be doing it.
Do we interrupt our training to go do this massive national public event?
There's a week of press. It's huge for the team.
So it is very positive on the one hand,
but it interrupts the middle of our training season.
And all of it's before we're certified.
This is a big deal for them to do the flyover
during the national anthem of the Daytona 500.
And before certification. It's not an air show.
And unlike an air show where you have your local audience,
the whole world
-is watching the Daytona 500. -Is watching.
No pressure.
And we're expected to hit the national anthem at the "B" in "brave,"
at exactly that microsecond.
And we're supposed to split the "C" and the "E" in "world center."
We're expected to hit within inches and microseconds
for our first ever public appearance.
Here to perform today's national anthem,
please welcome platinum artist and songwriter Breland.
As soon as that guy's established,
give Boss a warm fuzzy and reiterate the TOT.
O say can you see
By the dawn's early light
What so proud…
Let's start it at 10.
This is five seconds less 40.
On time, boss.
330 and holding.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars
TOT Bravo, one nine four eight four five.
-Copy that. -Little power back.
300.
And the rocket's red glare
Five second slip.
It'll turn a bit.
Five nine one five new TOT. One minute.
Push it up, Boss. Five seconds late.
Easing forward just a bit, 340.
O say, does…
Smoke on, ready now.
Banner yet wave
He's off his splits.
Push it up, Boss.
Ten seconds late.
Of the free
We're gonna miss it. It's too late.
Of the brave
Let's hear it for Breland's performance…
-Show center. -…of our national anthem.
Along with the United States Air Force Thunderbirds for today's flyover.
I missed the time when he started at 47 because I was trying to freaking add.
-Nobody likes that. -No.
The organizers don't like it and the teams don't like it.
You cringe going,
"Oh, dear God, the race'll be over by the time they get here."
The Thunderbirds have been training to hit maneuvers
with fractions of seconds.
And today we missed the national anthem by 10 seconds.
We got some things to work on.
Boss is pissed. The team is pissed.
Yeah.
You feel that burden of the huge mistake for the flyover.
You fail as a team,
and it is tough to do when certification is right around the corner.
And, you know, I still feel like I'm behind.
Stand by the break. Let's break. Ready now.
Smoke on.
And rejoin.
Roll. Power.
Three's gotcha.
Mill. Roll. Pull.
Boss up there.
Rudder in. Forwards as required.
And we're in.
All right, well, you know who we have on the show today?
We have the new number 3.
You're learning the ropes as a member of the diamond.
I mean, what's going through your head right now?
It's… I'll tell you, demonstration flying is humbling.
Imagination
Where have you gone?
Or has the train left the station?
Here it's just strictly repetition. You have to keep making the same mistake
until it clicks.
Traveling down.
Wing tips facing.
We're only as strong as our weakest link.
Everybody's gonna struggle.
But it's how do you handle the difficult times.
It's really hard to see progress
when you're double turning six times a week.
You're just grinding, trying to fly your best.
A little bit early. And then being fast also doesn't help. So…
You're waiting for the breakthrough.
Went through three or four planes
before I learned to put the wheels down.
Holy shit. He's looking at Boss. He's, like, he's doing it. He's doing it.
I like it.
Pretty decent.
Certification's coming, it's a team effort.
So is that adding pressure to this?
It's a lot of pressure.
Welcome back, everybody. Objectives were…
Yeah, I think we did a little bit better than first go.
It never gets easy enough to be confident about where you're at.
It's gonna be easy at this point to want to rest on how hard we've worked so far.
But that's not what we're gonna do.
Because that's not what the Thunderbirds do.
This brand is what it's all about.
We are always concerned that we won't get across the finish line
by the time we get to COMACC certification.
I'm dying right now.
There's a bit of a game going on here.
You try to grab the person next to you's hand right at the salute pop.
Okay, let's, uh… Let's play it through one time.
Missed!
Oh man. Zeke, though. This is amazing.
You're our 2023 Thunderbird.
Hey, Tamayo! Come here.
Can you hold that far side of the ISA? Help him stay to stable.
This week's been pretty rough so far. We had a, uh, right stab servo fail.
Tamayo, you wanna give me some snippers or dykes or something?
So right now it's wind chill probably about 10 to 15 degrees.
Tonight's gonna be a long night. They could be here one, two a.m.
It got dark real quick.
And it got cold real quick.
You're tired, you're cold,
you're hungry.
You just want to go home and go to bed.
But if we want that jet to fly tomorrow, it's gonna fly tomorrow.
280.
300.
330.
340.
350.
360.
So he's about, like, 130 slice back.
Yeah.
That's a function of how far laterally offset you are.
'Cause now that you've seen Boss do that,
like, maneuver a few times, you know where he's going, right?
-Yeah. -That's why I always ask Boss, like,
"Hey, what line are you gonna be on?"
So I know what line he's taking, so that
when I'm rejoining here, I can, like, see where he's going.
Yeah, we're a few days away from certification,
and I feel like, you know,
I'm still not at the point where I need to be for the high BB.
And you don't want to be the guy that is the reason the team fails.
I just don't think I have enough altitude.
Don't think about it too much, you know?
-I'm not thinking about it. -You're doing too much.
As long as you don't hit the ground, it helps a little.
Or do.
It'd be a quick way to fix it.
It's all numbers.
We're at the end of winter training.
So tomorrow we have our certification from the commander of Air Combat Command
who will decide whether we are good enough to represent the United States Air Force.
All the training that we've put into this comes together starting tomorrow.
Okay. Pull set.
There. Put that there.
You want to see ducky?
-Mm-hmm. -Mm-hmm.
If I'm being really honest,
this time has brought us closer in some ways,
but further apart in other ways too.
It is very exhausting.
But that is why service in the military
is truly a family service.
We have engine start in four minutes.
So eat what you have down there…
No, I made the one that has the…
Your burrito is the one that doesn't have…
Whatever it is, engine start in four minutes…
Things fall apart a lot.
And we put one foot in front of another and we get to the next point.
Revan, stop it!
-No, DeeDee, can you just… -Boys, come down and eat.
Okay, go ahead and talk, but…
Give Dad a hug. Dada has to go.
Come on.
I think anyone in this position would question,
am I doing damage here that I can't recover from?
-That's okay. Dad… -Your soldiers are gonna fight…
Dada will fight it off. Come here.
Dada loves you very much.
And I hope I'm right, when I say, "No, we're gonna be just fine."
Ten.
Five, four, three point six…
-Launch us. -…two,
one.
-Hack, Boss. -All right, hack. Welcome everybody.
We are stepping at 9:40. We'll march at 9:50.
We're on Delta 62 today for COMACC certification.
We'll take off at 18:10.
Our objectives today are to put on an outstanding high show
for our leadership to show what this team is capable of.
We have one opportunity to now go from being really, really good
to perfect, have the best game of your life.
I've put so much work into this, and you have one shot at it.
It's just a different amount of pressure.
The most important thing to all of us
is we wanna make this team the best it can be.
Everyone just wants each individual on the team to do their best.
Start one, ready now. Canopy tower to ready now.
Well, today's the big day. It is certification day for the Thunderbirds.
We've come down to that big moment, you've checked all the boxes,
you're good to go on the road or not.
All eyes today are gonna be on our buddy, Primo.
The past two to three months of training season,
living through blood, sweat and tears as a team,
comes down to today.
Standby, smoke, smoke everything now.
Thunderbirds, release everything now. Burners now.
Little power back.
Diamond is approaching from the right. For your 2023 Diamond Pass in Review.
It's a signature Thunderbird maneuver. The optics are key.
I'm most concerned about the safety aspects.
Smoke on ready now.
Pull set.
From your right, Major Katz, and from your left, Major Tise.
Inbound for show center at a closing speed of over 1,000 miles per hour.
They're working on a razor's edge.
Does it happen 100 feet left? Does it happen 100 feet right?
The 100,000 people watching will notice.
Ready, set.
All set, diamond…
Look to your left as the diamond approaches
for the high bomb burst.
This is the one, team. Go get it!
Easy forward.
Little power up.
They've gotta show up at the exact same place at the exact same time.
Standby, about break. Let's break ready now.
Two miles action.
Looking good, looking good. Saddle it.
One mile.
There you go. Great stuff.
All right, Primo, all eyes on you.
Show me your talent.
One's on top. Five, two, two, three.
Fight, fight, fight.
Finish strong, baby. Get in there. Come on.
Come on, Primo. Get on that line.
Line's at 300. 310.
His line is off.
330, 340…
Close the gap.
350, 360, 370.
380.
Get there. Go on.
Show center.
-Hold the balance. -You got this.
Yes! Awesome.
Three steps forward, one step back,
three steps forward, one step back.
Primo dealt with learning the high BB rejoin.
Absolutely, I was proud of him.
I love Primo.
A three-floor elevator version of how it went today,
and I think folks would say,
best we've ever done.
Really, really impressive show.
I think I've seen more Thunderbird tapes than any human alive.
And so in 40 years, I've seen, uh, the team at its best and at its worst.
You are the best version of yourselves right now.
Never been better.
Sorry.
All good.
America needs more of you.
We're at the top of our game.
Go out and present yourself as you are, and you will make more people like you.
Okay, with that, um, you guys are certified for 23, and you'll do great.
You'll do great.
Team 23's certification was the best I'd seen
during my time as the ACC commander.
A lot of the work that had gone in not just months, but years prior,
came to fruition.
I'm proud that we were able to connect the past with the present,
but also to tie it to the future.
I'm just one of the contributors that's gonna take us
to where I want the team to be,
which is perfection, which is an elite team,
which is the golden era of the Thunderbirds is out there.
It's in front of us, we've got to keep driving towards it.
Somehow he answered our call again.
Yes.
-Hi, Primo, how are you? -Can't believe it.
We know the team was certified, which must mean
you got it done or they did it without you.
I'm fantastic, and no, Rick, I didn't ground abort.
I flew the certification.
For the record, I never doubted you for a minute.
Rob and Rick did.
But listen, Team Primo right here.
From Nellis Air Force Base in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada,
America's ambassadors in blue.
Thunderbirds!
Are you all ready for the Thunderbirds?
Every day I look at you
-Makes me cry to see you blue -See you blue
Only thing for me to do
To make you believe all I want is…
We see a lot of these teams. This team in particular…
The chemistry and the camaraderie that has come together with this team
is just really, really special.
And it's carried right into the performances.
That's right. That all translates.
Fight the good fight, yeah
Remember I'll be next to you
When you push on through
Across America, anywhere from the Pacific Show in Huntington Beach
to the East Coast, and all the crisscrossing that went on…
What I like about the Thunderbirds show is the showmanship,
the inspiration to the youngsters that they spend the time to connect with
at the fence line.
Take my hand and follow me
Oh, I, I wanna…
Dudes, that was awesome.
I'm confident that was the best show we've ever flown.
They all love what they do.
But being on the road 250 plus days a year,
after the second year, they are ready to come back to a more normal life.
Live a little
Fight the good fight, yeah
You know, the demonstration that you see
may look like six pilots flying loops with smoke on.
The reality is, what it takes is moving 130 people across the country
to two different cities every week.
I wanna give a huge round of applause to my team for everything they've done.
I'll be next to you
When you push on through
You got to push on through
Welcome, everybody. Team 23, last show.
This is crazy. I put a picture up there for you
that I knew I'd use someday.
I took this picture on Monday of training season,
the very first flight that we all were in the same room together.
It's kind of amazing to look back at that day
and then fast-forward a year
to how unbelievably good we are at this demonstration right now.
So I want you all to just take a step back and process what's about to happen.
Uh, you are the best
in the world
at what you do.
It's just amazing.
So, keep that in mind and have fun with this one, all right?
Okay, let's get after it. You guys ready?
There it is.
Ready, Boss.
My God, just, moment destroyed. All right.
Well, this is it.
As I say goodbye to America's team for the last time,
for me, this is very much a time of reflection
and of gratitude.
In the United States, we are able to create very real value out of inspiration,
out of ideas.
Our value, the Thunderbirds' value, lies in the inspiration of all Americans.
If you're afraid to put yourself out there,
to take risks in life, you're gonna end up doing nothing.
And he loved what he was doing.
He impacted a lot of people's lives.
I still play golf,
and, uh, I've traded my clubs for his clubs.
So every day I get to play with him,
and that's one of the ways that I've kind of coped with it.
You know, as an individual, we don't really do much.
But when we get the 130 members together, that makes up the Thunderbirds.
We leave it all on the field, and do it for nothing more than an idea,
but a very, very important idea.
Success as a squadron commander is a very different thing than
how close did you fly,
how low did you get the formations in front of the crowd.
Success for me as Thunderbird 1 will mean that
the next version of the team is better than ours.
Welcome to the Thunderbirds.
We're built around blind trust, and throughout the training season,
we're gonna earn that blind trust as a team.
We're only as strong as the weakest link.
It is an absolute miracle when a team pushes beyond the status quo.
One pilot decides not to push for inches anymore, and it's broken.
My path to getting here is probably not what you would expect.
I'm a trailer park kid from Florida.
If they could just see themselves in me at all…
You can overcome anything in life, and I'm just living proof of that.
Yeah.
I always thought that if you could shape this team right,
you would create a culture that inspires everyone in this country and beyond
to do extraordinary things for the right reasons.
You know, he built a team this year
that's flown the best demonstration that's ever been seen.
I would follow him into battle.
Before I hand this team to Sheik and the next generation of Thunderbirds,
let me reinforce for you all one more time.
The Thunderbirds are nothing if they are not extraordinary.
Okay, guys, so here's the game plan.
Declan, you're gonna stand right behind your plane.
Okay, this is Thunderbird 3's position.
You're in stripes aligned. Very safe takeoff position.
Revan, this is you.
You're behind your plane. You're Thunderbird 2.
-Stand here. -Relegated to the back.
You are the slot. You're Thunderbird 4.
When I called and removed my application from NASA,
it was effectively the end of a childhood dream, um,
one that had driven me to everything I had achieved to that point in my life.
At that moment, it was all gone.
Do you think you're looking for reassurance that it was worth it?
Maybe.
Um…
Yeah, it would be great to know if I made the right decision.
I don't know that I ever will.
The, um…
This job has been the most rewarding job I've ever done in my life, though.
And…
I actually cannot imagine my life without this job.
And I am happy with that decision,
as hard as it is to look at what could've been.
I think I'll always look at my friends that made the astronaut board
and watch them go to the moon and Mars and wonder if I could've been there.
Standby, smoke. Smoking ready now.
Thunderbirds, release brakes ready now. Burners now.
Oh! Oh!
Oh, no!
You know, we raise our children with a lot of different goals.
Service above self, so important, so hard.
I think that this next one's gonna be perfect.
And I think that Revan and Declan,
even though they may not be processing everything right now,
they will have a better understanding of what this time was
and is about when they get older
and be a better person for it.
I think the only way to fix this is for Mama to lead.
Burners ready now!
Oh no, I'm dead. Oh!
-Oh! -That was the best formation of the day.
Of everything that we've built together,
I am most proud of this team's giving posture.
I have a team of 130 people
who give more than they take.
I wish I could replicate it
through everything else we do in this country right now.
-I forgot the first part. -Standby, smoke.
Standby, smoke. Smoking ready now. Smoking ready now.
Release brakes ready now. Burners now. Yeah!
We got it. We're going. Oh, that was the best one. Oh!
-Oh! -Oh no!
I don't know how else to say this other than thanks.
You deserve closure and to close this chapter of your life out.
And you are gonna get that closure in about two years,
because you're gonna be Thunderbird 3.
-Yeah! -Oh!
Yes, dude!
Look at the team.