Okay, the most recent thing I saw the got the endorphins rolling. It was hazy going dark at our local Air Show, and it’s a small pic, but you’ve got to blow it up to give you a sense of proportion.
An F18E, flying in formation (NOT screaming past) a couple of WW2-era P-47 “Jugs”. They did this twice; somebody bumped me on the first pass and I lost the shot. Second time took me by surprise and I was almost bent over backwards by the time I got my phone out, set it to camera and took the picture.
Wanted to get shots of the hammerheads and tailslides the Hornet was doing; but it was too dark; this was the only shot in which you could distinguish an airframe, not just a dust-speck on the lens. The flyby with the Jugs was the end of their part of the show.
The only thing this impressive I’ve seen was last year, during their Friday practice. Would have loved to get a shot of the F4 Phantom II flying formation with two more F4-U Corsairs; quite similar to my second picture, except the Phantom pilot had flaps airbrakes, gear, everything except his arms hanging out of the cockpit to be dirty enough to hang with the Corsairs while still maintaining enough lift to keep that Brick in the air.
Last minute addition: found a YouTube video shot at the NAS Miramar show last year; pretty much the same script as what we got to see at MCAS-Yuma last weekend. The big difference was that the Jug pilot from this (Miramar) show brought along a wingman for our show.
Oh yeah, A few Air Force Reservists from Louisiana brought out one of the last still-flying B-52’s. Big, ugly, greasey, hulking aircraft (I bet a few of you thought I was gonna spell out the acronym “BUFF”)… very very cool. It wasn’t the first time in my lifetime that I got to crawl around a BUFF; hope it’s not the last.
Very cool photo! I’m glad you said to blow it up, at first glance it looked like all three aircrafts were the same. But on closer look f-18 is awesome. Here at Shaw AFB they used to have the F4 Phantoms and I laughed at the brick comment. A friend of mine said one better after he was given a incentive flight in a F4. He said it was as aerodynamic as a refrigerator but a fast as hell refrigerator.
Steven
I thought it was some senior military pilot who said “The F4 Phantom is McDonnell-Douglass’ and GE’s proof to the world that, given enough engine, even a brick can fly”
Or something like that… because of my Dad’s job as Airspace Officer at YPG in the 60’s-70’s; I got to meet a bunch of mil pilots; mostly Army Aviators*** flying eggbeaters and Marine Brick pilots, with the occasional Marine Scooter pilot now and then. These days, I find that I keep being introduced to Scarrier pilots.
***I was taught that it was a violation of Holy Writ to not capitalize both words in the term “Army Aviator”. Dad was an Army Aviator; he pulled a lot of gliders and carried a lot of paratroopers to the war in “his” 3 C-47’s - yes THREE, one at a time until each lost too much square footage of skin to create and maintain adequate lift; then the Army would give him another one.
Dad always said that his time in uniform was spent as a “BUS DRIVER” - but he made me captialize “Army Aviator” even in my figures of speech. Guess it was to mollify the “new kids”; which he described as any Army pilot who got his wings after 1948 and any Air Force type who never wore Army Green.
Good friend of mine flew F4’s in Nam. He spent a lot of time flying escort for %@ raids and genraly providing the SAM crews with target practice. He said he logged about half of his hours flying the F4 sideways. He didn’t trust the radar at all and he liked being able to see the SAMs as they came up to try to kill him. He said they looked like flying telephone poles. The secret was to let the SAM get close enough that it could not turn inside of you. If you tried to bug out too soon the SAM would just fly right up your exhaust pipe. Let if get close enough and it couldn’t turn hard enough to catch you. He got shot down twice once by a missile he never saw that had gone straight up past him, and then turned and came straight down on top of him. He said it went right through the wing but never exploded. He made it to the coast before ejecting. Both times he was shot down he was picked up by search and rescue.
OUCH, Bill! Pop maintained that he was never TRULY “shot down”; if only because his first two 'birds more-or-less landed on British soil.
First time he got all the way back to his airfield on the port engine (chunks were missing out of the starboard engine), and waited around for everybody else to land. Then, with his squadron’s ground crew in the tower with binoculars, he buzzed said tower for three passes until the assembled ‘experts’ took a WAG that his starboard gear was indeed locked; “Yeah, it’s locked… probably just the switch for the lock light got shot off, too”. While he was ground-looping and scattering DC-3 parts all over the strip; it occurred to him that he should’ve trusted the no-light, rather than the guys in the tower.
Second time, with a bunch of fuel leaks and missing about 5-6’ of port wingtip; he belly-flopped it right off the north shore of the English Channel and slid up onto a small beach.
The third one he last saw at what is now Griffith AFB; having gone hippity-hopping England-Ireland-Gander-La Guardia-and then “upstate”. Had some patches on the wings, mostly small-arms fire, most collected while hauling a bunch of Congressmen around to garden spots like Dachau and Buchenwold. That bird was 2 months old on V-E Day, 7 months old when he last parked it in New York; said he’d have gladly belly-slid it along the runway if he’d known that doing so meant he could go home with the rest of the squadron. On the other hand, when he landed and grabbed his gear; he found that ‘somehow’ a Czech-built '98 Mauser with a slick action and pristine barrel had ended up on the plane. Apparently, it turned out to be great “deer medicine” when he didn’t have any calves ready to butcher for the family, so it wasn’t ALL bad.
My '89 Crown Vic at the track… 89 octane pump-gas 9.4:1 393W, AOD w/2600 converter, and 3.55 gears Best ET 13.06 @ 106.55
Still drives on the street, and has a Class III trailer hitch to tow 16’ open trailer with buddy’s car to the track!
It is getting a different converter before this racing season starts. Maybe ditching the dual power split bench leather front seat for a couple of lighter buckets. I gotta get this thing into the 12s!
Here’s what I think of when someone mentions the F4:
Growing up on a farm about 50 miles north of Oklahoma City, it wasn’t terribly unusual to get buzzed by jets from Tinker AFB when out on a tractor. I saw this perspective of the F4, complete with smoke (but gear up) more than once. Tree-top level B52 passes were my favorite, but here must have been complaints from folks who didn’t share my adolescent enthusiasm for such things, because by the early '80s they stopped all the low-level stuff.
In the UK the air force has been stopped from flying at many bases at certain hours because of complaints from locals.
Locally to me there’s RAF Leuchars, it’s been there since WW1 if I remember correctly. Therefore it probably precedes 99% of residents of the town in terms of longevity.
Most of the townsfolk are service personnel.
Therefore we can presume that the complainants are people who have bought posh new houses in the town.
I don’t get why someone would move to a town knowing there’s an air force base, then complain about the noise of the planes !!
Funny you mention the “buzzed on a tractor”…used to work for an uncle in S.W. Oklahoma, near Altus AFB…out on the big green machine one day, F4 buzzes in front of me, 1/2 mile or so, making a helluva racket…but not NEAR the racket the wingman made when he came from behind the tractor, and much closer, yanking and banking, to join back up on the other! Awesome sight. Think I was 13-14 at the time, so mid-eighties.
