Best known for his 1948-50 leadership of the Blues, during which he helped perfect their trademark maneuver, the four-plane diamond barrel roll, and engineered their transition from prop-driven Grumman Bearcats to Grumman Panther jets, Dusty also served four years (1957-1961) as the Navy's representative on the Airways Modernization Board, which became the Federal Aviation Administration.

Earlier in his twenty-year Navy career, he was a fighter pilot flying off the USS Enterprise in World War II and the USS Philippine Sea in the Korean War. After a year as Operations Officer at the Naval Aviation Facility at China Lake, California, he commanded a jet squadron on a western Pacific tour of duty aboard the USS Hancock. He retired as a Commander.

Dusty's most grueling three years were spent as a prisoner of war in Japan. Following his Navy duty, he was a project planner for thirty years at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in San Jose.

Dusty was honored in 2006 at a Blue Angels performance in Midland, Texas, where he was inducted into the American Combat Airman Hall of Fame, as well as at other Blue Angels performances at Jacksonville, Florida and Corpus Christi, Texas.

From POW to Blue Angel: The Story of Commander Dusty Rhodes by Jim Armstrong was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2006.