The team started calling itself “Tenryu”, due to a nearby river, but it was decided to change this name to Blue Impulse due to the difficulty to pronounce it in Western languages.
They were based at Hamamatsu Air Base from 1960 to 1982, when they switched to Matsushima at the same time they changed their aircrafts.
They made 545 aerial demonstrations with the F-86 Sabre and 175 with the T-2 until 1995. Almost all of them on Japanese soil during air shows and important events.
