Mounds View native named first female Blue Angels pilot

Lt. Amanda Lee, a Mounds View native and 2013 graduate of Old Dominion University, has been named the first female demonstration pilot in the 76-year history of the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, better known as the Blue Angels.

Lee, an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, is currently assigned to the Gladiators of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106 onboard Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia. Her call sign is "Stalin."

While attending the University of Minnesota Duluth and working at UPS, Lee enlisted in the Navy, then graduated from Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Ill., in 2007, according to a Navy news release. She was an aviation electronics technician before graduating from Old Dominion University in biochemistry and being commissioned in 2013. She became a naval aviator in 2016.

Hundreds of women have served in other roles with the Blue Angels for more than a half century, but Lee is the first female demonstration pilot.

The Navy did not make Lee available for interviews.

Lee will report to the squadron in September along with other new team members for a two-month turnover period, which concludes at the end of the Blue Angels show season in November. After that, Lee and the rest of the team will begin a five-month training program in Florida and California.