..During the low-level rejoin, the traditional and classic threat is that of the concentration and focused gaze of the rejoining pilot on the low (inside) side of the leader's turn towards him being upward (i.e. upon the lead aircraft and the aircraft that he is supposed to follow in the rejoin)...
....yup, sure looks like loss of situational-awareness during a critical low-altitude rejoin maneuver. However, the mishap pilot was performing a tight, fast
'descending turn' to join with his Blue Angels formation.
TV News today broadcast a brief amateur video of this F-18 crash -- I recorded it on DVR... and reviewed it frame by frame.
The main Blue Angels formation (5 aircraft) was straight & level at about 500 ft AGL (tree tops in the frame); two of those aircraft were just rejoining to close formation with the leader. The 6th aircraft suddenly enters the field-of-camera-view very high & left of the leader (9 o'clock high on the leader with a large heading differential).
This 6th {mishap} aircraft is in a steep (~60 degrees) left bank with a high descent rate (...like a dive-bomb pass). Looks like he's trying to make a 120 degree left, descending turn to align with the leader's heading & rejoin. He gets thru ~90 degrees of turn, below the leader's altitude & about 1500 ft behind-- and vanishes into the treetops. The whole thing happens in just a few seconds.
I've commented previously here about the high mishap rate in 'airshows', worldwide. This incident reinforces my opinion.
