While Captain Roy “Butch” Voris was training with other naval aviators for the Blue Angels’ public performance, the young aerobatic team gave a demonstration to a senior member of Admiral Chester Nimitz’s staff. He wanted to see firsthand how their training went and was very impressed and shook his head.
“‘You crazy sons of bitches are going to kill yourselves,'” Voris recalled the senior leader saying in an interview with the Museum of Flight near Seattle in 2003, “but he said, ‘I like it. I want the admiral to see it.'”
Almost eight decades after the Blue Angels’ first flight on June 15, 1946, at Jacksonville Airfield in Florida, around 500 million people have now seen the US military’s most enduring and popular flight demonstration group with their own eyes. The pilots race through the air in extremely tight formations, sometimes at speeds of almost 1,100 km/h, their fighter jets flying in unison just a few meters apart, to the applause and amazement of spectators on the ground.
This level of precision requires hours of intense training, and no one knew this better than Voris, whom Nimitz personally selected to be the first commander of the Blue Angels. Voris, who died in 2005 at the age of 85, came to this historic assignment with impeccable credentials, having enjoyed success as a flying ace in World War II.
“I got shot down once,” Voris once recalled. “These things happen, but I shot down eight, so I call it a net of seven.”
Voris was a lifelong aviation enthusiast. He hung model airplanes from his bedroom ceiling, devoured stories about the exploits of famous military pilots like Eddie Rickenbacker, and sometimes rode his bicycle several miles to an airport just to watch planes land. While working in a San Francisco morgue in early 1941, Voris noticed a Navy recruitment poster and enlisted, wanting to learn to fly.
Months after starting the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in Corpus Christi, Texas, Voris and other cadets were leaving a movie theater on December 7, 1941, when they learned of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that plunged the United States into World War II.
“Everyone wanted to get their hands on a war machine,” Voris recalled. “We started flying over the sea to see if there were any Japanese submarines in the Gulf (of Mexico). That was pretty unsuccessful, but we had to do something.”
Voris was commissioned as an ensign in February 1942 and flew F4F Wildcats and F6F Hellcats from two aircraft carriers, the USS Enterprise and the USS Hornet, and participated in the battles for Guadalcanal and Tarawa during the war.
He was also present during the Battle of the Philippine Sea on June 19-20, 1944, when Allied pilots, realizing they would likely run out of fuel before they could safely return, ignored that possibility and departed toward evening to pursue the Japanese fleet. During what became known as the “Mission Beyond Darkness,” Voris flew under cover of night using dead reckoning. After destroying a Japanese Zero fighter, he returned to his carrier. When Voris touched down, he had only 10 gallons of gasoline left in his fuel tank.
“It was almost mass hysteria,” Voris told the Museum of Flight. “I don’t like to talk about it — people crashing on the ship, trying to get down, trying to land on cruisers and destroyers. We spent the next day getting pilots out of the water, so we did a pretty good job of saving a lot of those crews.”
When Voris was tasked with founding the Blue Angels, he looked for pilots like him, those who would always try a little bit harder, “persevere 10% longer,” as he told author Robert K. Wilcox in the 2004 book “First Blue: The Story of World War II Ace Butch Voris and the Creation of the Blue Angels.”
Voris was also instrumental in selecting the type of aircraft they would fly – the Blue Angels initially flew the F6F-5 Hellcat before switching to the F8F Bearcat shortly thereafter – as well as selecting the personnel who would help maintain those aircraft. He even insisted that the planes be painted blue and gold, the official colors of the Navy.
The Blue Angels – named after a New York nightclub – underwent intensive training and their mission was top secret. They even practiced maneuvers in the Everglades in South Florida so that in the event of a crash only the alligators would know.
“He was very technically minded and very knowledgeable about aviation,” Voris’ son-in-law Hank Nothhaft told the Washington Post. “When you talk to him, you’d think he was an engineer. In fact, that’s probably why he survived some of the accidents.”
No accident was more dangerous than during a show in 1952. During Voris’ second tour as leader of the Blue Angels – the group briefly disbanded at the start of the Korean War – he was involved in a mid-air collision. A pilot was killed and Voris landed with a badly damaged jet, its controls barely functioning and its tail nearly torn off.
Two weeks later, the Blue Angels returned to the air.
Voris left the Blue Angels in December 1952 but remained in the Navy until his retirement from the military in 1963. He left the service as a highly decorated pilot with three Distinguished Flying Crosses, 11 Air Medals, three Presidential Unit Citations and a Purple Heart..
For the rest of his life, the Blue Angel pilots who came after him looked at Voris with awe – and for good reason.
“I can’t remember a bad day that I’ve had, what you would really call a bad day,” Voris said in an interview with the Museum of Flight. “Everything that’s bad is an opportunity to change it and get better.”
For information on upcoming Blue Angels shows, including their 2025 schedule, visit their website.
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