Blue Angels Pilot Amanda Lee

High above the earth where only the brave dare to soar, a new chapter in aviation history is being written. Lieutenant Commander Amanda Lee has made her mark as the first female demonstration pilot for the U.S. Navy's elite Blue Angels. Her story is one of resilience, determination, and breaking boundaries, proving that the journey to greatness often begins in the most unexpected places. I'm Lieutenant Amanda Lee. I am number three, the left wing for the U.S. Navy Blue Angels. I grew up in Moundsview, Minnesota, and I've been in the military for over 16 years now. When I enlisted back in 2007, my initial goal was to go back to school for medical school, and when I picked up a commissioning source, all I knew was aviation. I was like, let's give pilot a shot. So I picked up pilot, and then my goal was to get back to the F-18 platform, and that's kind of how I found myself in Aviation for me happened much farther into my career than I think a lot of people. I was born and raised just north of Minneapolis and Minnesota. Air shows just weren't very prominent up there. The closest that the Blue Angels get up in that area are either in Wisconsin or up in Duluth, Minnesota, so it's quite a ways for us. So I was really exposed to aviation or air shows. I didn't even fly commercially until I was in middle school. I was actually really interested in the medical field, so I was going to school up at the University of Minnesota in Duluth for pre-med, and it just wasn't working out for me, and I needed to kind of pivot in a different direction. So I actually enlisted in the Navy in 2007 out of Duluth, and I picked up an aviation rating. So I was an aviation electronics technician, or AT, and when I checked into my first command, my chief, my division chief, or my supervisor, he basically pulled me aside and said, hey, it doesn't seem like you're very challenged here. I think you should apply to this commissioning program. It would be really good for you, and that is kind of how I pivoted into the officer world. So I applied for Seaman to Admiral 21 or Stay 21, and I wanted to try to do the pilot option. I was currently working on the F-18 Super Hornet. I wanted to try to get back to fly the aircraft that I was working on, so that's kind of how my aviation career progressed, and it was just a total pivot from where I thought I would end up in life, and it's been an incredible journey. Proof that you can do anything that you want as long as you put your mind to it and you believe in yourself. The law of attraction is always working for you. Going through flight school was very nerve-wracking. For somebody who had zero aviation experience, I had never piloted in an airplane, I had only been a passenger a handful of times on a commercial aircraft, so going into that aviation world, when I tell you, it's like learning how to speak a different language. I think that is one of the most challenging things, not only learning the skill to fly, but learning the language behind it so you can understand and interpret while you're executing the flying. So I thought that was very challenging, but with that, I just felt very familiar walking around the F-18, coming back into that platform. I was in VFA-81, the Sunliners, and we did two combat deployments while I was there from 2017 through 2020. Very, very cool experiences. Always taking off and landing on an aircraft carrier is, there's nothing that you can do to describe the adrenaline rush and how cool of an opportunity it is to get to do something like that. I'm looking forward to going back to do that after the Blue Angels for a department head tour. And then I actually left deployment a few weeks early to check into VFA-106 for my instructor tour. So we were kind of dealing with how do we navigate around COVID when I was checking into VFA-106, and I thought we did a great job figuring out ways to safely work around COVID and continue to get training. And with that, I was able to get qualified in my instructor tour very quickly. It allowed me to continue to travel, go on detachments, force drug debt, fighter debt. And I also, while I was there, picked up the VFA-106 East Coast Rhino Demo Team, which is what ultimately exposed me to the air show industry and the Blue Angels. While I was doing the Rhino Demo Team, that is really what inspired me to want to apply to the team so that I could continue that outreach while active duty and hopefully just be inspirational. Definitely the most stressful interview I've ever taken a part of. I mean, it's very intimidating walking into a room with every single officer in there just asking you questions, and you're just kind of sitting there hoping not to say something wrong. But after seeing this from the other side, very important when we're on the road with each other over 300 days a year. And we quite literally see each other and are on the road six days a week with one day off each week. And even on that day off, we hang out with each other. So it's important not only for the people that we are accepting onto the team, for them to be qualified, but for them to be a good fit for that current team. To get that phone call and hear that I made the team, first of all, I was in shock. I don't even know when I could say that it finally set in and felt real. I think it was probably well into my season last year before I was like, OK, I'm still here. But it's incredible. I am humbled. I am honored. It's been amazing. Winter training is tough. You were talking doing 15 flights a week, about 140 training sorties in the span of about four months, which is absolutely insane in the F-18 community. So we are just flying, flying, flying. So on top of that, we obviously fly with a stick spring. We start at 10 pounds. We end at 40 pounds. So on top of learning how to fly, your body is kind of being physically beaten, beaten down, trying to gain the strength in your right arm to fly. And then also on top of that, we don't fly with a G-suit. So trying to relearn how to G-strain appropriately. My whole first year, it was just kind of figuring out how to learn how to fly the left wing. And I felt like that all the way up until drop a in November. And then it's kind of overnight. You put on that four spot uniform, the slot pilot, and you're expected to know everything and be able to train an entire Delta. But from a mental perspective, I felt great this year. Last year, I just felt like I was trying to keep my head above water, trying to be the best left wingman I could be for the 2023 team. So the first air show we have is actually in El Centro. So it feels very familiar. The only difference for us is that there's a crowd there. So I definitely had a little bit of nerves hearing and seeing the crowd out of the corner of my eye. But once that canopy closes, you're kind of in your safe space. You're back into training mode. It feels very much like a winter training flight. And then moving on to our first air show outside of El Centro, I think getting that first one under your belt kind of gets the nerves out of the way. And then it's just kind of business as usual. Every single practice that we have is exactly how we would execute an air show. And because of that, nothing changes for us on air show days versus practice days. And that's kind of what helps us keep things consistent. I think every three pilot will have a maneuver that is very challenging for them. For me, learning how to do rolls was very challenging. And that took me a significant amount of time, a significant number of reps to try to figure out and kind of decrease those deviations to what we ultimately started to see by the beginning of the air show season. Even from last year in the three spot into this year in the four spot. And probably part of the demonstration for the Diamond that will continue to be challenging for all of time is what we call the gauntlet. And it starts with our fan break or right echelon parade. So we'll start that maneuver off. That's very challenging for the Diamond doing a four ship echelon turn into the changeover roll, which goes from right echelon into left echelon. And then we move to Diamond in the middle of a roll into the line of breast loop, which is another very challenging maneuver. So it's like this triplet of maneuvers that is very, very challenging. And typically once we get done with those three maneuvers or for me last year, I was just kind of like, okay, let's finish this demo. There are a couple of show sites that I look forward to going to every year. So that is our West Coast Long Show, which typically includes San Francisco Fleet Week. And that is a very memorable show site to me. Seattle is a show that we do every single year, which is incredible. The flying is beautiful and the city is beautiful up there as well. Some show sites that surprised me last year that I really enjoyed going to one was Milwaukee and one was Indianapolis. Just beautiful cities that I had never been to before that the hospitality was incredible. The city was beautiful and it was just really fun, family friendly. And I think it's the show sites that you don't really expect to surprise you and surprise you. And they turn out being really, really fun. Man, the maintainers on this team are absolutely incredible. A lot of that is the energy that they carry. So we are a very unique squadron in the both the number of aircraft that we have assigned to our squadron, which is about two more aircraft than a typical fleet squadron. And then the number of maintainers that we have assigned to our squadron, which is about half of what a normal fleet squadron has. So half of the maintainers, more aircraft to maintain. And we are constantly taking seven to eight aircraft on the road every single weekend. So how do we make that happen? We need to have exceptional maintainers that are motivated and are excited to be here and really want to do well at their job. And that's what we have on this team. Last year, we were having maintenance issues with Fat Owl BERT during one of our shows and we had to take what we call Ernie or an alternate BERT to a different show site. And it kind of allowed us to take a step back and appreciate how important BERT is to our mission because they are our logistics platform. It's how we get all of our equipment to and from air shows and our personnel to and from air shows. So without BERT, we can't make this happen or it makes our lives very, very challenging. And having the Marines on the team and kind of their viewpoint and their camaraderie on the team, it's a great family, a great dynamic. I don't know what we would do without them. Being a Blue Angel, I think it is really easy to get lost in the flight demonstration and you kind of get that in the nuances of practice every day. We are constantly striving for perfection. I think we need to take a step back every once in a while, which what allows us to do that is doing things like going to crowd line. When we go to crowd line and we see the young kids coming up to us with tears in their eyes, just so excited to meet this person in a blue flight suit that was so inspirational. And they're like, I just saw you flying up there. That was absolutely incredible. And you might not even know that person's name, but maybe that person was inspired to go on a career path or inspired to do something great in their life because of you. And you didn't even know that you inspired them. So taking a step back and stop looking through a soda straw and recognize that you're inspiring so many people by just putting this blue flight suit on. This blue flight suit means more than just me as a person. And I don't take that for granted. I think it's incredibly important. It's inspirational to me just as much as it's inspirational to the public. And I think that's what's so important about this team is to inspire that next generation to do great things. And it's been an incredible experience, and I'm incredibly honored to be a part of the team. As we close this chapter of her story, one thing is certain. Lieutenant Commander Amanda Lee is not just making history. She's shaping the future. And with every flight, she continues to inspire us all to reach the skies.