Warbird Information Exchange

... your saying "What is a Beetle Bomb?" ... well everybody knows it was the US Navy Blue Angels yellow #0 F8F-1 Bearcat of course. lol

Below is a nice profile of 'Beetle Bomb' in it's hayday. Just think 'yellow' with blue lettering.


US Navy Grumman F8F-1 95187 Beetle Bomb

and below is the currently airworthy example with the colors flipped. (Last I heard this one was still for sale?)



They both looked something like this rendering below.

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Zero Surprise!!...

A couple of not so wonderful photos of 'Beetle Bomb' ...

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Zero Surprise!!...

The 'blue' version.

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Zero Surprise!!...

and some random photos of the Blue Angel Bearcats. They basically flew from around 1946 to 1949.

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Zero Surprise!!...

Those are very wonderful photo's of 'Beetle Bomb'

So, what's the story here? Painted in opposite colors with a "0" tail number?
I'd never seen nor heard of this before now, but then again I'm not very well-read on Blue Angels history...

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Life member, 91st BG Memorial Association
Owner, 1944 Willys MB #366014
Former REMF (US Army, O3)

The first "Beetle Bomb" was a SNJ;



And it flew against the Blue's when they were flying the F6F Hellcat's



And they were serviced by a Connie!

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remember the Oogahonk!
old school enthusiast of Civiltary Warbirds and Air Racers

Correct indeed

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Zero Surprise!!...

As Lon posted, "Beetle Bomb" was originally an SNJ. Compared to the F6F Hellcats of the original Angels, the SNJ was slow...an also-ran.

Listen to Spike Jones' musical parody of "William Tell Overture", and you might get part of the joke about "Beetle Bomb".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aupQysNpMzk


"...And Beetle Bomb..."

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It was a good idea, it just didn't work.

More "Bearcat Blues" ...

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Zero Surprise!!...

As I recall, I think the Beetle Bomb started off representing Japanese/enemy aircraft during the immediate post-WWII shows that the Blues would "shoot" down. I believe they even had a dummy with parachute rigged up in the T-6's back seat they would drop as part of the shoot down routine (I'm not sure how that worked mechanically?).

I think when the Blue's switched to the F8Fs they felt they needed a faster Beetle Bomb for safety reasons and used a F8F-1? At some point I think a pilot of one of the F8F-1 Beetle Bombs attempted a roll on take-off at a show that ended very badly.

May I suggest this:

http://www.amazon.com/Reflections-blue- ... 0933424248

It is a little dated, but I enjoyed reading it when I bought mine, 20 plus years ago.

Saludos,


Tulio

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Why take the best part of life out of your life, when you can have life with the best part of your life in your life?

I am one of them 'futbol' people.

Will the previous owner has pics of this double cabin sample

GOOD MORNING, WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Press "1" for English.
Press "2" to disconnect until you have learned to speak English.

Sooooo, how am I going to know to press 1 or 2, if I do not speak English????

And just as an FYI, there really is a color "Blue Angels Blue".

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remember the Oogahonk!
old school enthusiast of Civiltary Warbirds and Air Racers

The Hellcats and Bearcats? The cars in this picture are at least '68s, and I think they're a '69 Chevy wagon and a '69 or '70 Ford. (Others might know more.)

According to Wikipedia at least, they had the Connie from 69-73.Replacing the R5D Skymaster, and being replaced by the C-130

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.