Frank Hardy Made My Photographs Two

The date on the back of the photo is 6-29-59.  Not sure that this is the date that my father made this photo or just a random date assigned by the Navy.  I only have prints of these images.  The Navy purchased the negatives and they in turn made press releases and publicity photos for autographs.  That is the reason for no lettering on the prints or that is what my father told me.  Back then the Blue Angels did not have a staff photographer or publicity officer for the team.  In fact, from what I have learned, those two jobs were not added until many years later.  It would be interesting if anyone seeing this post might be able to enlightened us with any details on any of this.   Below is one other group photo of the Blue Angels that my father took at this same time …

The third man kneeling from the left is Lt.  Robert ” Bob ” Rasmussen who is a Pensacola resident and it is his jet in the background.  I guess that this group includes the two alternate pilots that fly with the group, but that is just a guess by me.  If I am wrong I apologize in advance and like I mentioned before, if anyone has any stories to share about this group from 1959, please feel free to comment.  I probably should have done some ” googling ” on the 1959 Blue Angels before I created this post, but as usual I did not.  Like I have said before, I am just a photographer and not a historian and I leave the important information gathering to others.  Thanks again for looking and please check back.

PS – I will most likely be adding to this post when I do some ” googling ” … Thanks – Frank

PPS – OK, I went to the official Blue Angel’s web site and their official photo is not one of these images.  The image that they show is one of the pilots wearing their leather flight jackets and not just in their flight suites as the photos here that my father took.  Maybe these were just too informal or something along that line.  But for whatever reason, these were not used.  I did google around and neither of these images popped up on the internet anywhere, which to me is something of a surprise.  At least I feel that I am adding something relevant that people have not seen before when I post to this blog.  Again, please feel free to comment and share any of your Blue Angel stories …