According to an unnamed USA official who confirmed to the Associated Press, Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss, 32, was killed in the 3 p.m. crash.
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Captain Kuss had served in Afghanistan before joining the Blue Angels.
Admiral John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations said Thursday, “My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the Blue Angels after this tragic loss”. None of the five other Blue Angels jets was involved in the incident.
The military’s elite fighter jet performance teams suffered crashes on Thursday. He was commissioned the same year as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps. The most recent fatal crash came in 2007 in SC, when a 32-year-old Blue Angels pilot crashed into a residential neighborhood in one of his first shows with the team.
The Blue Angels flight team was supposed to perform in the Great Tennessee Airshow this Saturday and Sunday but made a decision to pull out of the event after Capt. Kuss died. That crash was on the same day of the crash of an Air Force Thunderbirds jet near Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.
CyclingTips offers its deepest sympathies to the Kuss family, and to the Blue Angels community, during this hard time.
McGiff said they could feel the heat from the explosion.
Navy officials have not released details of the incident or a possible cause of the crash, but an investigation is ongoing.
Kuss was married with two young children, his grandfather, Dolph Kuss, said from his home in Durango, Colorado.
His decorations include the Strike Flight Air Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, and various personal and unit awards.
The elite acrobatics team was scheduled to perform at an air show this weekend. He was selected for the Blue Angels from Beaufort in 2014.
Early Thursday, the Blue Angels had a successful practice flight over Nashville, but just hours later, tragedy.
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“It was the biggest explosion I’ve ever seen in my life”, Holomon said. But Kuss reportedly maneuvered his stricken aircraft away from populated areas before his death – a topic frequently mentioned in tweets about him.
