Roy Voris, 85; WWII Ace Formed Blue Angels, Navy’s Precision Fliers
LA Times
Retired Navy Capt. Roy “Butch” Voris, a World War II ace who assembled the Navy’s famous Blue Angels flight demonstration team after the war and served as its first flight leader, has died. He was 85.
Voris, a former NASA spokesman during Apollo moon missions, died Aug. 9 at his home in Monterey, Calif., his family said. He had been ill for several years.
A veteran of the war in the Pacific who flew from the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Hornet, Voris shot down eight Japanese fighter planes and participated in numerous battles, including Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal, Tarawa and the Philippine Sea.
Voris was a flight officer in the Instructors Advanced Training Unit at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1946 when Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, the chief of naval operations, ordered the establishment of a flight demonstration team to showcase naval aviation.
Handpicked to form the elite team, Voris chose the pilots, the crew members and the aircraft — initially the same Grumman F-6F Hellcats he had flown in the Pacific.
