page_title: United States Air Force Thunderbirds
section_title: F-84 Thunderjet/Thunderstreak era
hierarchical_section_title: United States Air Force Thunderbirds / History / USAF Thunderbirds history / F-84 Thunderjet/Thunderstreak era
caption_attribution_description: English: Republic F-84G-26-RE Thunderjet 51-16719 while assigned to the 3600th Air Demonstration Team (USAF Thunderbirds), 1954.
context_page_description: The USAF Air Demonstration Squadron is the air demonstration squadron of the United States Air Force. The Thunderbirds are assigned to the 57th Wing, and are based at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. Created 67 years ago in 1953, the USAF Thunderbirds are the third-oldest formal flying aerobatic team in the world, after the French Air Force Patrouille de France formed in 1931 and the United States Navy Blue Angels formed in 1946.
  The Thunderbirds Squadron tours the United States and much of the world, performing aerobatic formation and solo flying in specially marked aircraft. The squadron's name is taken from the legendary creature that appears in the mythologies of several indigenous North American cultures.
context_section_description: After six months training in an unofficial status, the Thunderbirds were activated on 25 May 1953 as the 3600th Air Demonstration Team at Luke AFB, just west of Phoenix.
  The team had flown 26 shows by that August. The first team leader was Major Richard C. Catledge (1953–1954), and the first plane used by the unit was the straight-wing F-84G Thunderjet. Because the Thunderjet was a single-seat fighter, a two-seat T-33 Shooting Star served as the narrator's aircraft and was used as the VIP/Press ride aircraft. The T-33 served with the Thunderbirds in this capacity in the 1950s and 1960s.
  The next year the Thunderbirds performed their first overseas air shows, in a tour of South and Central America, and added a permanent solo routine to the demonstration. In the spring of 1955, under their second commander/leader (September 1954 – February 1957), Captain Jacksel M. Broughton, they moved to the swept-wing F-84F Thunderstreak aircraft, in which they performed 91 air shows, and received their first assigned support aircraft, a C-119 Flying Boxcar.
caption: Republic F-84G Thunderjet 51-16719, flown by the Thunderbirds in 1954
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