Unfortunatly, being a Brit, I havent seen either either display teams. So I have no ability to chose either based on performance, however, gun to my head, I would chose the thunderbirds due to their F16s. I prefer the F16 over the F18 anyday, I think its a characteristic and interesting looking plane whereas the F18 looks, dare i say, generic?

Plus I have a dislike for the F18 for being one of the bigger nails in the F14's coffin.

I miss you tomcat!

JB

Ah but the hawk is a fighter jet. it is an aeroplane which has a jet engine that is used operationally around the world, just because it isn't as prominent as the Eurofighter.

The hawk is actually better fo a display team, in the same way that the Alphajet is for the French and the Aeromacci for the italians.....they are lightweight and very agile.....the perfect criterii for team aerobatics.

I'd pay more to see a Red Arrows display than a Thunderbirds or Blue Angels display any day, but out of the two I would choose the Blue angels due to the tightness of their formations.

Anyhow, you can't really compare the two as the Thunderbirds demonstrate Power, whereas the Blue Angels demonstrate close formation holding and agility.

.Mic

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There were a lot of nails in there. It was mostly outdated. Some designs though, like the B-52 and C-130 just stick.

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Isn't there a squadron of them that are essentially a last line of defense for the air to air role, or something like that?

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Then you  are gonna hate the danish display team, Baby Blue!

But just because we are one of the few prop displayers, it doesn't mean that we can't fly formation!!
   

And we can do good stuff too!
   

And all performed by some Instructors in T-17s, that only does this as a hobby (Thats right, we don't do this full time! )

I've never seen the Blue Angels as I don't think they display much outside the US. I did see the Thunderbirds once, many years ago, when they had the F-100 Super Sabre if memory serves right. They were very noisy & flew tight formations but my main impression was that they were out of sight for half the display. This was when they were allowed to fly over the crowd & it was quite deafening. I remember another team at the same show used the F-104 on full afterburner. Impressively noisy but hardly entertaining.

I've seen most of the European national teams at one time or another & to be honest I prefer the ones that use slower aircraft more suited to formation aerobatics. My favourites were the Frecce Tricolore before the Ramstein tragedy.

PS. The F-16 is very manoeuvrable. The Belgian Air Force solo display pilot could do his whole display routine within the boundary of Shoreham Airport. Now that was impressive.

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Not as such, but 100 Sqn would come pretty close...

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LOL!!!  You got me there.  I've seen a U.S. Marine Harrier fly, but never a formation demonstration.

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There's nothing like witnessing the demonstration of raw power in performance!