F-16 Ejection (Confirmed to be authentic)

AVweb has confirmed that the image last Thursday posted to our Picture Of The Week section of Capt. Christopher Stricklin's Sept. 14, 2003, ejection from Thunderbirds jet number 6 -- roughly eight-tenths of a second before aircraft impact -- is in fact authentic. It was shot by Staff Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III, Still Photographer, U.S. Air Force, from the catwalk atop the tower at Mountain Home AFB, and was not officially released by the Air Force until last Friday afternoon.

For the photographically inclined, Staff Sgt. Davis said he shot images with a Nikon DX1 camera using a 300-mm lens with an aperture setting of 2.8 and shutter speeds of 1/1000 and 1/2000. For the now famous (and now official) shot, Davis "waited for the aircraft to level and clicked the shutter." And yes, he did experience some concern that the jet, which the Air Force says Stricklin turned away from the crowd, appeared instead to be directed at the tower. By his own account, the wreckage stopped just 100 feet shy of the tower's base. The nature of the lenses involved offer explanation for the automobiles so clearly visible in Davis' still image, but absent from the in-cockpit video. The picture and story have generated a great deal of material, rumors and interest. So we invite you to enjoy:

I got this in a email last week. I can't vouch for it's authenticity. It needs some formatting help...

> Below is an article written by Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. He
> details his experiences when given the opportunity to fly in a F-14
> Tomcat. If you aren't laughing out loud by the time you get to "Milk
> Duds," your sense of humor is broken.
>
> "Now this message is for America's most famous athletes:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of you
> country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have ... John
> Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this
> opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity... Move to
> Guam. Change your name. Fake your own death! Whatever you do ... Do Not
> Go!!!
>
>
> I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was
> pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot would
> be Chip
> (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station Oceana in
> Virginia Beach.
>
> Whatever you're thinking a Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like,
> triple it. He's about six-foot, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair,
> finger -crippling handshake -- the kind of man who wrestles dysleptic
> alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way.
> Fast.
>
> Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was for years the
> voice of NASA missions. ("T-minus 15 seconds and counting ..."
> Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear
> his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds
> waiting for him to say, "We have a liftoff"
>
> Biff was to fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60
> million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin
> Montgomerie. I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before
> the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next
> morning.
>
> "Bananas," he said.
>
> "For the potassium?" I asked.
>
> "No," Biff said, "because they taste about the same coming up as they do
> going down."
>
> The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my
> name sewn over the left breast. (No call sign -- like Crash or Sticky
> or Leadfoot ... but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the
> crook of my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a
> chance to nail Nicole Kidman, this was it.
>
> A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened
> me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would "egress" me out of
> the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked
> unconscious.
>
> Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed over
> me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up. In minutes we were
> firing nose up at 600 mph. We leveled out and then canopy-rolled over
> another F-14.
>
>
> Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride
> lasted 80. It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over
> Hell. Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, snap rolls, loops,
> yanks and banks. We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a
> vertical velocity of 10,000 feet per minute. We chased another F-14,
> and it chased us.
>
>
>
> We broke the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200
> feet we did 90- degree turns at 550 mph, creating a G force of 6.5,
> which is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing
> against me, thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie.
>
> And I egressed the bananas. I egressed the pizza from the night before.
>
> And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth
> grade. I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G's, I was
> egressing stuff that never thought would be egressed. I went through
> not one airsick bag, but two.
>
> Biff said I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat. At one point, as
> we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target
> and the G's were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of
> consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw
> down.
>
> I used to know 'cool'. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or
> Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know 'cool'. Cool is
> guys like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and freon nerves. I
> wouldn't go up there again for Derek Jeter's black book, but I'm glad
> Biff does every day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in
> a home stand.
>
> A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said he
> and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he'd send it on
> a patch for my flight suit.
>
> What is it? I asked.
>
> "Two Bags."
>
>
>
>

By Ken Ritter
ASSOCIATED PRESS

1:37 p.m. January 21, 2004

NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. - A pilot's error caused a Thunderbirds F-16 to
crash during a September air show in Idaho, the Air Force said Wednesday.

Capt. Chris R. Stricklin, of Shelby, Ala., misjudged his altitude before
beginning a maneuver, said Col. Robert Beletic, head of the six-member Air
Force board that investigated the crash at Mountain Home Air Force Base,
southeast of Boise. Stricklin realized his error and ejected after banking
the aircraft away from spectators.

Lt. Col. Richard McSpadden, who commands the Air Force precision military
flying team, said the pilot was flying a pattern he had performed at least
200 times before. But Stricklin failed to adequately compensate for the
airfield's elevation above sea level before beginning the takeoff maneuver
known as a split-S, he said.

Instead of topping out at 2,500 feet, the jet was only 1,670 feet above the
ground when it rolled over backward to return past the crowd. By then the
aircraft was too low for Stricklin to correct the maneuver, Beletic said.

"The pilot made a 1,000-foot mistake at low altitude," Beletic said. "Once
he put his nose to the ground, he had to eject at some point."

Stricklin bailed out of the $20.4 million aircraft flying about 250 miles
per hour 140 feet above the runway. The jet hit the ground less than a
second later and exploded in a fireball. Stricklin was unhurt, and no one on
the ground was injured.

"He made an honest mistake," McSpadden told a news conference at Nellis Air
Force Base, the Thunderbirds' training home near Las Vegas.

Stricklin, 31, remains a pilot, McSpadden said, but because of the error he
was reassigned last month to the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., without
completing his two-year stint with the Thunderbirds.

"We recognize that we're stewards of $20 million airplanes, and we take that
very seriously," he said.

The team canceled four performances after the crash, before resuming flying
in October, though the number of aircraft was cut from six to five.

The Thunderbirds will again fly with six aircraft when they begin a 42-stop,
2004 season on March 27-28 at Punta Gorda, Fla. One pilot who was with the
team last year will tour for a third year in Stricklin's spot, McSpadden
said.

Beletic said that in addition to the miscalculation and a momentary loss of
focus by Stricklin, the review board said a low margin for error contributed
to the crash. Fatigue was not a factor, McSpadden said.

The split-S maneuver remains in the show, with what McSpadden called minor
adjustments to ensure pilots correctly calculate their elevation above sea
level. The maneuver also will be flown at a higher altitude to increase the
margin for errors, he said.

The September crash was the second involving a Thunderbirds jet since the
team began using F-16s in 1983.

Pilot error was blamed for a Feb. 14, 1994, training crash involving in a
maneuver called a spiral descent at the Indian Springs Auxiliary Airfield,
northwest of Las Vegas. The pilot survived, but the maneuver was
discontinued.

The worst crash in Thunderbird history, dubbed the "Diamond Crash," came
when four pilots crashed Jan. 18, 1982, during training at Indian Springs. A
malfunction in the lead plane was blamed.

The Thunderbirds marked their 50th year in November.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.