The 32-year-old Blue Angels pilot was killed on Thursday during practice for a weekend air show in Tennessee.
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It said that the team was preparing for the Great Tennessee Air Show set to take place at the weekend.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee noted that this week’s crashes of Air Force Thunderbird and Navy Blue Angels aircraft as well as a deadly accident at Fort Hood are “the latest in an alarming increase of significant military accidents”. Jeff joined the Blue Angels in September 2014, WTVF reported.He has accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours and 175 carrier-arrested landings.
Also Thursday, a Thunderbirds F-16 crashed outside Colorado Springs, Colorado, after a performance, but the pilot, Maj.
Smyrna City Manager Harry Gill said Sam Davis Road in Smyrna would remain closed to the public until the investigation is complete.
“The Navy and Marine Corps aviation team is grieving the loss of one of our own”.
Just a few months ago, Durango-born Blue Angels pilot Jeff Kuss got a chance to meet John Elway prior to thrilling the crowd with a flyover prior to a big Denver Broncos win at the Super Bowl.
The team routinely delights beach visitors on Sunday evenings when the jets streak past Pensacola Beach, leaving trails of smoke from their afterburners, as they return for air shows in other areas. The Thunderbirds had just performed over the open-air graduation ceremony at the nearby Air Force Academy, where President Barack Obama spoke.
“We lost an aviator that believed so deeply in the Blue Angels’ mission of inspiring others and representing the Navy and Marine Corps, our citizens and our great country”, Bernacchi told reporters Friday.
The crash was the first for the Blue Angels since April 2007, when Lt. Cmdr. WTVF reports he was married with two small children.
Last year, Kuss was the narrator for the Blue Angels show in Corpus Christi. “We, the men and women of the Snowbirds grieve with you”.
“I immediately knew they were from airshow”, said Shiva Karimy from the Smyrna Fat Mo’s restaurant she co-founded with her husband.
No civilians were injured in the crash.
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He said it takes a “unique” kind of pilot to apply even if they aren’t necessarily the top pilots in the military. The pilot was able to safely eject from the jet.
