Sunday, 12 August 2007

It don't get more awesome than an F15E

An eye-straining wait and then a faint glint in the distant valley, closing fast it towers on scorched air into the blue, trailing white ribbons from its wing-tips as it bullies the sky to give up its moisture. A shock-wave shimmers fog around the F15E as it dives around into the next crease in the landscape.
I try hard to track it but the Auto focus gives up and I drop the camera from my eye, this time maybe I should just experience this without the barrier of the viewfinder, I’ve got the shots anyway.
Thunder roaring and skin tingling I watch as this formation of finely machined components working as one squeeze the air again and shed another skin of white cloud; the pilots fixed stare on the gap in the valley is almost visible through his visor.
I am deafened and yet can hear with every atom of my being, I feel its movement and heat, I smell its fire breath, heaven and earth shake around me, and I can nearly touch this beast.
In seconds it is gone; the hole it made in the sky closes around me, hot, then cold damp confused air jostles for order and all is calm again, over too quick I long for the next one.
I can only contemplate what it must be like to be the receiver of its wrath.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

A great picture (of course), but I'm rather impressed by the prose that accompanies it...

I remember an an encounter with a couple of these things when pike fishing Bassenthwaite in the Lake District a few years back - they came down the valley so low and so close that I could see the water on the lake rippling underneath the planes, and they made so much noise that they shook the rods off the rod rests!

Terrifying, but hugely impressive.

Unknown said...

Sir, I have seen many pictures of our jets, but yours have to be the best. Hope you do not mind, but I forwarded your site to a friend of mine in the 493d, you took a great shot of him in the cockpit of a c model.