EXTREME FOOTAGE! TURN UP THE VOLUME!! Only now has it been deemed "safe" for this video to be shared...
Watch seven seconds of awesomeness as two photographers nearly lose their heads!
The story... That's me on the right.... We drove to Wittmund to shoot some of the "Phinal Phlights" of the F-4F Phantoms going out to be scrapped at Jever. The Channel crossing was late and we were going to miss the jet...
Kept in contact with ops and the crew and they delayed their take off! We ran straight from the car to the runway centreline and waiting for the low pass.... That runway is 2.4km long and he took 7 seconds to cover it - look at the plume of smoke and do the maths, he was shifting! Last flight of the jet, plus the pilot's last military flight = awesomeness.
The Centre of Aviation Photography (www.centreofaviationphotography.com) will be returning to Wittmund in the first week of August for an epic few days with the A-4s and EF2000s, with BBQs and tales of Phantom flying.
Су-25М1 Вооруженных сил Украины показывает высший пилотаж, пролетая на предельно низкой высоте / Su-25M1 Armed Forces of Ukraine demonstrates aerobatics, flying at extremely low altitude
In 1961, as part of the commemoration of 50 years of Naval Aviation, the Navy sponsored a project known as Sageburner.
This project was designed to set new speed records at low altitudes flying F-4A Phantoms (F4H-1).
On May 18, the initial attempt ended in tragedy when Commander J. L. Felsman was killed when pitch dampener failure led to pilot-induced oscillations (PIO), causing his Phantom to break up in flight and explode.
The second attempt to set a new low-altitude speed record succeeded on August 28, 1961, when Lt. Huntington Hardisty (pilot) and Lt. Earl De Esch (RIO) flew F4H-1F BuNo 145307 at an average speed of 902.760 mph over a 3 km low-altitude course at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The maximum altitude reached during this flight was only 125 feet , fully living up to the name of the project-Sageburner.