Journeys›Photograph

Fleet Week Air Show over San Francisco Bay

·San Francisco, California·#bay area#san-francisco#golden-gate-bridge#fleet-week#air-show
Four black jet planes fly in formation against a clear blue sky, leaving blue, white, and red smoke trails.

Drove into the city for the Fleet Week air show and ended up on the grass at the Marina with what felt like half the Bay Area. The place was packed — lawn chairs, strollers, a red tent selling hot dogs and pretzels, recruiting trucks lined up along the edge of the green, and the Golden Gate Bridge sitting right there behind all of it.

The warm-up acts were good on their own. A team of four black jets kept making passes trailing red, white, and blue smoke, some of the runs low enough over the water that the whole crowd along the fence turned in unison to follow them out. Fat Albert, the Blue Angels' C-130, did a lap that took it right past the bridge tower, which was strange to watch — a plane that big banking that close to the cables.

Then the Blue Angels themselves. They came in tight past the south tower, four of them nearly wingtip to wingtip, and later all six in formation with the smoke trails curving behind them. Every pass the sound arrived a beat after the planes did. By the end the smoke from the earlier runs was still hanging in a long ribbon over the bay.

A crowd enjoys a sunny day on a grassy field with the Golden Gate Bridge, mountains, and four planes in the sky.Four planes fly over the Golden Gate Bridge and a red food tent with many people on a clear day.Four planes fly over the Golden Gate Bridge, with people and food tents in the foreground.Three jets fly in a clear blue sky, leaving red and white trails above a crowd watching by a bay.Three jets leave red and white contrails across a blue sky above a crowd of spectators.A large plane with smoke and fire flies in front of a red suspension bridge tower.Four fighter jets fly in formation above the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge.Five blue and yellow jet planes fly in diagonal formation, leaving white contrails across a clear blue sky.

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