Fighter jets over St. Louis

[plutherus]

It scared the hell out of me for a second yesterday: this sudden roar and all the windows rattling. I thought it was a sudden massive thunderstorm or something, but it was just long continuous roar. The second time it happened, I went out on my balcony to take a look: a figher jet was circling around over the Mississippi. I assumed it was part of an air show for the fourth of July or something. But there were no other planes, just the one jet (or maybe two, it's hard to tell, it keeps going south behind my building where I can't see it).

Then, today, there's been one circling around for the last hour or so. I dunno if it's there as a show, or if it's security. Was there a terrorist threat against the arch or something? I'll have to ask some of my pilot friends next week. I know at least one guy was planning on flying over the Arch this weekend, so he would have been told not too if there was an issue...

Anyway, I stepped out onto my balcony and snapped a

From yesterday:



From this afternoon:



Sorry about the crappy photo: the best view was when it was heading North, as it was on my side the river then, but the problem with taking the picture then is that by the time I could hear it coming, it was already past :)

Comments

[casfic.livejournal.com]

I'd be careful posting pictures of anything military - you might find yourself disappeared for sharing state secrets. Or is that too close to the truth to be funny?

The RAF practice low flying over where I work. The planes come over the hill above my office, in tandem, 200 feet up, flying at mach 1. Now that's scary.

[poezamattik.livejournal.com]

That's a Thunderbird practicing their special "Thunderbird Sneek Pass" part of the show routine.

The other planes fly across the show airfield really slow in formation and you get sucked into looking at all the pretty detail on the F-16s. I've even seen the pilots waving at the croud, then...

Boom!

An F-16 traveling just under the speed of sound, flys over from behind the crowd and scares the bajebus out of you. I always try to figure out when it'll happen, but they fool me every time. It's probably my favorite part of the show.

It's also a demonstration of "real world" tactics. Since the jet is flying so close to the speed of sound, you don’t hear it coming. By the time you hear the “boom,” you have a bomb in your lap.

For interesting trivia, the speed of sound is changes with elevation and air conditions. They have to calculate just what speed the jet can fly at before crossing the sonic boom line so they don’t cross it. The speed changes every day and every show.