Blue Angels on High : Aerobatics: The Navy flying team thrills a record crowd of 107,000 at the Point Mugu Air Show.

Grounded by clouds and fog a day earlier, the U.S. Navy Blue Angels roared into their starring role at the Point Mugu Air Show Sunday, delighting a record crowd of 107,000 people with heart-stopping formations at screaming speeds.

“It looks like they’re going to drop right on you and they zip away somehow,” said Tanesha Byars, 11, of Oxnard. “I just wish I had some earplugs.”

After weeks of buildup for their first Ventura County performance since 1988, the Blue Angels’ sleek F/A-18 Hornets were grounded after a brief practice run Saturday because of low clouds and fog.

On Sunday, the sun broke through the clouds, clearing the Flight Demonstration Team to maneuver four jets in famously close formations with two others, carving up the skies in precise choreography.

“I’ve wanted to see them for years,” said Jane Pollock, 70, a retired high school teacher from Arcadia. “After all the buildup of the Gulf War, to see the stuff we heard about, it’s something impressive to see.”

The air show drew a record 185,000 spectators over its two days, said Harry Lee, a spokesman for the Navy’s Pacific Missile Test Center. Lee attributed the turnout to heightened patriotism after the Gulf War, the first appearance by the Blue Angels in three years and scheduling the show over the Fourth of July weekend.

Petty Officer 1st Class Dave Taylor, who was at a recruitment stand, took the occasion to sell passersby on a Navy career. “The Blue Angels are the biggest advertising tool we have,” said Taylor, who normally works in the Navy’s recruitment office in Ventura.

The crowd was squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder on the bleachers as the air show began with three members of a parachute team breaking off from a pack, unfurling American flags and trailing purple smoke as they wafted earthward to the accompaniment of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

Performances included races between planes and a semi-truck driven by a 36,000-horsepower jet engine trailing 50-foot flames. In addition, a wing walker parachuted into a wading pool on the runway. Other aerobatic teams flew planes straight upward into a dead stall and then flipped them repeatedly while hurtling toward the ground--only to pull out of the tumble at the last moment.

But the show belonged to the Blue Angels, which captivated crowds and kept thousands of necks crimped backward for 45 minutes watching their aerial theatrics. The crowd didn’t seem put off when the announcer said the Blue Angels actually perform standard maneuvers taught to all Navy fighter pilots, only in tighter formations.

Craig Lauterman, who took his 4-year-old son Eric to the show, said he went to appease the child in himself as well.

“He’d been asking me a lot about what Desert Storm was about and wanted to see a jet close up,” said Lauterman, 35, a private investigator from Thousand Oaks who said he has attended every Point Mugu Air Show since 1978. “He saw an ad on TV for this and he begged me to take him.”

The cloud ceiling remained high enough through the early afternoon to let the Blue Angels perform their “high show,” which includes ascents up to 9,000 feet. Clouds and fog were so thick on Saturday that the team was unable to even perform its “flat” show, which requires a minimum cloud ceiling of 1,500 feet, said Marine Capt. John Skinner, who pilots the Blue Angels cargo plane.

Yet the conditions were not optimal, Skinner said, because clouds ringed nearby mountains in the far reaches of the flight patterns. “Today was a definite workout for these guys,” he said.

Lt. Cmdr. Mary Backman, a nurse at the Naval Construction Battalion Center’s medical clinic, said she took cover when she heard the roar of the passing high-performance jets.

“The first time I heard it, I hid behind someone,” Backman said. “It scared the bejesus out of me.”

Fred Babington, a 38-year-old aerospace machinist from Ventura, marveled at the sophistication of the Blue Angels--aircraft which he last saw perform 15 years ago.

“What a difference there is these days in the aircraft and the things they can do with them,” Babington said. “Too bad everyone lost out yesterday.”