How low can you go?

[PR19_Kit]

Yeah, THAT'S low! 

[Knightflyer]

Posted on Twitter by Chris Bolton (ex FAA Phantom jock who's well worth following):

Post: https://twitter.com/CcibChris/status/1316313768184479746?s=20

I wonder if this was an accidental "Oh Boy!* I really didn't mean to be down here" moment
* Other Expletives are available!

[Weaver]

Posted on Twitter by Trev Clark here: https://twitter.com/clark_aviation/status/1319292431540441089?s=20

"P-47D Thunderbolt 'Dixie Gal', seen safely back at base.
Pilot, Capt. P.M. Hall, struck the ground during a strafing attack near Milan, Italy.
He successfully flew the badly vibrating aircraft 150 miles,
back to his airfield at Grosseto, Italy."

[Rheged]

In Keswick yesterday, I was chatting to one of the launch crews on Derwentwater (the boats run like a bus service around the lake)   She reckoned that "a few weeks ago"  a pair of Typhoons had come over the lake so low that they'd had to pull up to avoid one of the launches, whose highest point above lake surface is about 15 feet to the tip of the radio antenna.  Probably not actually that low, but certainly low enough to leave a wake on the lake surface!!  This is a scheduled low flying area.

[scooter]

Posted on Twitter by Trev Clark here: https://twitter.com/clark_aviation/status/1319292431540441089?s=20

"P-47D Thunderbolt 'Dixie Gal', seen safely back at base.
Pilot, Capt. P.M. Hall, struck the ground during a strafing attack near Milan, Italy.
He successfully flew the badly vibrating aircraft 150 miles,
back to his airfield at Grosseto, Italy."

I don't think you can get much lower than that, unless you're doing nape of the earth flying in Death Valley.

[Rick Lowe]

Reminds me of the bit in George Preddy's memoirs when he was banking very low over their new Normandy landing strip and felt the aircraft start to yaw - he piled on the throttle and landed safely.
To discover he had damaged the wingtip, and then the ground crew showed him a furrow in the ground...

He then realized he'd been within a fraction of a second before cartwheeling into the deck.

[NARSES2]

That P-47 would make a good display model alongside a copy of that photo.

[rickshaw]

Posted on Twitter by Trev Clark here: https://twitter.com/clark_aviation/status/1319292431540441089?s=20

"P-47D Thunderbolt 'Dixie Gal', seen safely back at base.
Pilot, Capt. P.M. Hall, struck the ground during a strafing attack near Milan, Italy.
He successfully flew the badly vibrating aircraft 150 miles,
back to his airfield at Grosseto, Italy."

I don't think you can get much lower than that, unless you're doing nape of the earth flying in Death Valley.

The Dead Sea.  I have a photo of a pre-war passenger carrying Zeppelin several hundred feet below sea level in the Dead Sea... 

[kerick]

Reminds me of the bit in George Preddy's memoirs when he was banking very low over their new Normandy landing strip and felt the aircraft start to yaw - he piled on the throttle and landed safely.
To discover he had damaged the wingtip, and then the ground crew showed him a furrow in the ground...

He then realized he'd been within a fraction of a second before cartwheeling into the deck.

During my days as an ETAC there was the story of the A-10 pilot who landed without one of the fiberglass down turned wingtips. It's still laying out in the Arizona desert I suppose. Numerous stories of aircraft hitting the HF antenna mounted on our jeeps.

Then there was the air race pilot who touched the Detroit River with one wheel and a wing tip. You don't usually walk away from that!
http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=1302476a-66c1-4605-a4ed-5f4260b01aee

[Dizzyfugu]

Posted on Twitter by Chris Bolton (ex FAA Phantom jock who's well worth following):

Post: https://twitter.com/CcibChris/status/1316313768184479746?s=20

I wonder if this was an accidental "Oh Boy!* I really didn't mean to be down here" moment
* Other Expletives are available!

I read that the Argentinian Skyhawks that flew low altitude attacks during the Falkslands conflict went that low, too - and that it was a VERY tricky affair, because the sea surface blurred at the high speed so that effective altitude over the water was hard to tell - esp. when faced with the danger of occasional higher waves. More than once an A-4 touched the water with its wing tip when banking. Therefore, the Harrier pic appears realistic and "intentional" to me, since the sea looks calm.

[Dizzyfugu]

 



AFAIK an RAF Tornado during training in Canada (Cold Lake?).

...and:





A Gabonese Texan, "testing waters".

[Weaver]

I read that the Argentinian Skyhawks that flew low altitude attacks during the Falkslands conflict went that low, too - and that it was a VERY tricky affair, because the sea surface blurred at the high speed so that effective altitude over the water was hard to tell - esp. when faced with the danger of occasional higher waves. More than once an A-4 touched the water with its wing tip when banking. Therefore, the Harrier pic appears realistic and "intentional" to me, since the sea looks calm.

During the attack that sank HMS Coventry, one of the ship's Type 909 fire-control radars momentarily got a lock on one of the Skyhawks and a Sea Dart was launched, but the radar broke lock almost as soon as the missile left the rail and it went ballistic. There's a documentary on Youtube (think it's one of the "Seconds From Disaster" series) where Coventry's captain, the guy on the Sea Dart console, and the pilot of the Skyhawk are all interviewed. The latter reveals the reason for the momentary lock: he was flying so low that salt spray was caking up on his windscreen, making it impossible to see straight forwards, so he was sitting sideways and peering through the quarterlight! Despite this, he still got disorientated and had to climb slightly to re-acquire the ship, and that's presumably when the 909 locked him up, then lost him again as he dropped back down to sea-skimming height. He wasn't aware of the lock-on because he didn't have a forwards-facing RWR, but he was certainly aware of the damned great white "telegraph pole" that flew over his head a few seconds later! 

Think it was Dave Morgan who recalled firing his guns at a Skyhawk at low level and watching it fly through the splashes from the 'overs'...

[PR19_Kit]

Wasn't there a tale of a Skyhawk or Mirage clipping the stern rails of one the ships in San Carlos Water?

My workmate who was a CPO aboard the Alacrity tells of watching that happen and they thought both ship and aircraft were about to combine!

[Old Wombat]

RAN VF-724 Skyhawks used to skim the wave-tops regularly, as they were frequently called on to act as Harpoon missile surrogates during naval exercises.

Whilst I was at Nowra, as the RAAF began cycling in to take over that role when the RAN was winding down its Skyhawk operations leading to the de-commissioning of the fixed-wing squadrons, a Mirage nosed into the sea off Jervis Bay doing the same thing, with the loss of both the aircraft &, unfortunately, the pilot. The inquest found that the incident was a result of pilot error; the pilot had dipped down too low & past the point where control inversion effects occurred on the Mirage's delta wing, so, as he tried to pull up a bit, he nosed down into the water instead.

[Mossie]

I've got a picture in a book of an A-26 firebomber that has a large cut in the wing that had a chunk of wood embedded and a cowling is missing from one of the engines that is full of pine needles.

Apparently the pilot hit the only tree for miles in a clear-cut area (left as seed tree).  He flew through smoke and saw the tree at last minute and hit it while pulling up.  He managed to limp to safety on the remaining engine.