It’s October in San Francisco, which means it has to be Fleet Week.  Since 1981 Fleet Week has been a fixture in the City by the Bay.  It’s a weeklong event with disaster preparedness drills, military displays, ship open houses and 3 days of flying.

The flying started on Thursday with the Blue Angels performing their orientation flights and a practice show. 

Friday opened with the parade of ships led by the USS Essex LHD-2, a Wasp class amphibious assault ship, and the USS Champion MCM-4, a mine countermeasures ship.  Following them was the USCGC Stratton Coast Guard National Security Cutter and the Canadian HMCS Winnipeg FFH-338.

This year’s Fleetweek had some amazing weather across all practice and show days for the weekend, which is rather rare for San Francisco. There was no humidity in the air which meant that the F-22 Raptor produced only a minimum amount of vapor in its high G maneuvers.

The parade of ships took place on Friday which was led in by the San Francisco fireboat and included the USS San Diego LPD 22, USS Mobile Bay CG 53, USCGC Mellon WHEC 717, and HMCS Calgary FFH 335. The four ships were open for tours for the remainder of the weekend.

The USN Leapfrogs started the show with two separate jumps out of a C-130 Hercules. The first one included two jumpers that held the American Flag between them as the National Anthem played. On the second pass five jumpers leaped out of the C-130 and performed various precision skydiving maneuvers including a few stacked formations and two jumpers locked together while spiraling down toward the ground for a low level release.