When the team selected the F11 to replace the F9F-8 Grumman, at our request, Grumman came up with about a half dozen paint schemes that they proposed for the aircraft. They were all pretty garish and a major departure from the fairly conservative design that had been on the Blues aircraft from the beginning.

On our first visit to Grumman to fly the aircraft (which were still unpainted anodized aluminum), I proposed a design that retained most of the elements of the design on the F9. The only real changes were the addition of the yellow striping on top of the fuselage around the canopy, the addition of the arrow on the fuselage underside, the slanting of the letters of US NAVY under the wing, the numbers on the tail, and the rearrangement of the lettering on the fuselage sides. This proposal was approved by Cdr. Ed Holley and given to Grumman and they implemented. The design was modified the second year with the F11 using block letters instead of the Blue Angels script, and again when we went to the long nose F11 the third year, when the stripe around the canopy was stopped at the canopy rather than going all the way to the nose as it had with the short nose. Also we went back to the script for Blue Angels.