The Blue Angels flyover at the Air Force Memorial – Arlington, VA.

We heard about a possible flyover of the US Navy’s Blue Angels on the radio this afternoon and decided to try and find a nice place on the river to catch the show and take some pictures. They don’t normally advertise when they plan on flying over the Washington Metro area and I guess you can probably understand why that is, but this time they did. As a mater of fact, they gave so much advance warning that when we got to the Air Force Memorial, which is where we decided to try and watch the show, it was pretty much already packed with would-be spectators.

The information on the radio was that they where going to be doing flyovers at Reagan National Airport for a photo shoot and that one of the trainer planes would be taking photos as they flew over Washington, DC. I think it was for a “Fly Navy” advertising campaign or something like that, but who really knows. Instead of flying down the river in line with the DCA landing flight path they actually flew across the river from Washington into Arlington… through the DCA flight path and almost directly over the Air Force Memorial where we were set up to watch. WOW, what a great sight! They only made two passes, but it was enough time for me to snap off some awesome photos with my Nikon D7100 and 70-200mm f/2.8G FX VRII Zoom Lens. Enjoy the photos!

(View the complete photo gallery here»)