Blue Angels - Vidalia Onion Festival - Now in Question???

The 30th Vidalia Onion Festival is this coming week. The Airshow has always been a huge draw. Last year, we had a steak cookout at work on Friday, while the airshow participants when through the practice program. The Blue Angels put on a fine show. Enough to make the heart of any American skip a beat.

The Blue Angels are scheduled to come to south Georgia again. While watching the NASCAR race from Phoenix this evening, I was looking for the Blue Angel website. A news website popped up:

BY BRUCE SMITH
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, April 21st 2007, 7:34 PM

BEAUFORT, S.C. - A Navy Blue Angel jet crashed during an air show Saturday, plunging into a neighborhood of small homes and trailers and killing the pilot, the county coroner said.

Witnesses said the planes were flying in formation during the show at the Marine Corps Air Station and one dropped below the trees and crashed, sending up clouds of smoke. At least one home was on fire.

Raymond Voegeli, a plumber, was backing out of a driveway when the plane ripped through a grove of pine trees, dousing his truck in flames and debris. He said wreckage hit "plenty of houses and mobile homes."

"It was just a big fireball coming at me," said Voegeli, 37. "It was just taking pine trees and just clipping them."

County Coroner Curt Copeland said the pilot was killed, but did not release an identification. Copeland said there was a lot of debris at the crash site and described the scene as horrific.

John Sauls, who lives near the crash site, said the planes were banking back and forth before one disappeared, and a plume of smoke shot up.

"It's one of those surreal moments when you go, 'No, I didn't just see what I saw,"' Sauls said.

At the Blue Angels command headquarters at Pensacola Naval Air Station the petty officer on duty said he "had no comment at this time."

The phone rang unanswered at the Marine base.

More than 100,000 were expected to attend the air show and the Blue Angels were the main attraction. The elite aerial-demonstration team, which is based at Pensacola Naval Air Station, recently celebrated its 60th anniversary.

Beaufort is about 35 miles northwest of Hilton Head Island.

I read on another news site that it was the Number 6 Aircraft that crashed.

Navy Blue Angel Number 6 minutes before it crashed during an air show in South Carolina.

Smoke rises after the F-18 fell to the earth.

Missing Man Formation by the Blue Angels*

*Official U.S. Navy Photo