Top 10 really low jet fly byes

[RIHMFIRE]

this is ******* awesome...
#5 happened to me at an air show once!
http://biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=19448%2a

[Loke]

My #1 was at an EPW camp somewhere in Saudi Arabia in 1991. I was sitting in my gun tower, just minding my own business (reading a book and listening to my Walkman), when an A-10 Thunderbolt II came out of the valley just west of me. He was fully loaded, and they can really sneak up on you quietly. He came by at my eye level, we saluted each other, and then he dropped down and buzzed the camp at tent top level. Half of the Iraqi prisoners stood with their hands in the air, and the others hit the sand and tried to find a hole to crawl into.

#2 was on a training exercise. I was sitting on a ridge, waiting to ambush a bunch of NCO academy students. I could see the troops coming up the trail into the kill zone, when I heard a racket behind me. I turned around to see an Apache helicopter come up from behind the ridge. The pilot smiled at me, then ran his index finger across his throat under his chin. That 30mm chain gun is something to behold from about 30 feet away. I decided that I was no longer in the game and got to take a nap that afternoon.

[Marvin S]

I got one that will blow your socks off. KC-135E fully loaded with pacs and cargo leaving for desert storm. Pass between two hangers about fifty feet. Pilot was pulled from aircraft upon landing in middle east. I was on the plane at the time and was given a video of it.

[Terry Murbach]

WE WERE UP IN CANADA IN '81[?] NORTH OF LORING AFB DRIVING ALONG A RIVER AND MAYBE FIFTY FEET ABOVE IT. I LOOKED IN THE LEFT MIRROR AND SAW A BUFF FLYING JUST ABOVE THE WATER AND BENEATH OUR LEVEL. IT ROARED BY US BY MAYBE 200' TO OUR LEFT DOING AT LEAST 500K AND SCARED THE DICKENS OUTTA THE EX AND ALL THE KIDS. I LET OUT A YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA [ THANK YOU MAJOR KONG...] THOSE FROGS UP THERE ARE STILL WONDERING WHAT ALL THE RACKET WAS ABOUT. WHEN WE GOT TO LORING I WAS SCARED TO ASK ANYONE ABOUT IT AS I DID NOT WANT TO GET THE CRAZY BASTARD IN TROUBLE.
I'VE HEARD OF A BUFF PILOT WHO WAS ACCUSED OF DOING BARREL ROLLS AND AN IMMELMANN IN A BUFF AND I DO NOT DOUBT AS AN OLD PAL OF MINE, KENNY JORDAN, WAS A B52 FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR AND TOLD ME ALL SORTS OF CRAZY STUFF YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE IF I TOLD YOU.

[jeepnik]

Fastest low pass I ever saw was a Blackbird. It was there and just gone. Best I ever saw was a demo red, white, and blue F-16 that literally flew a circle around a Phantom. Of course they weren't going flat out, but it was a cool demonstration of the Falcons manuverability.

[RIHMFIRE]

just off the coast of jacksonville florida, an aircraft carrier was doing their thing...
and my buddy was out in his long line fishing boat...Once the carrier is off shore
all civilian boats need to be x miles away....so...he working on the boat, pulling
in sharks and one of the tomcats snuck in behind him, right on the deck, and pulled up
right above the boat....he about fell out of the boat.

[claybob86]

...AN OLD PAL OF MINE, KENNY JORDAN, WAS A B52 FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR AND TOLD ME ALL SORTS OF CRAZY STUFF YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE IF I TOLD YOU.

Go ahead! I'll listen!!!

[piller]

War games with M.I.L.E.S. gear on on Ft. Bragg, we were humping rucks through the woods and came to a clearing, suddenly an A10 came over at tree top level, lit up our sensors. The pilot flipped the plane sideways and spun back the way he came from as if he were on a pivot, and brushed a couple of pine tree tops as he UnA__ed the AO. We didn't even have time to react. We found out later that we were being watched for a while by one of the helicopters with that radar dish sticking above the rotor shaft. I'm glad those things are on our side.

[rock-steady]

Back during the Viet Nam War era, my Grandpa was plowing a cornfield on his old International farm tractor. My brother and I were sitting in the back of the pick-up in the shade at the northern edge of the field. Suddenly to the south over the treeline a bubble with a smoke trail popped up. It was an F-4 that dropped down to about 50ft over the field and roared from behind right over my dear old Grandpa. He thought the tractor exploded. He dove off the tractor and dust rolled a few times. That was funny right there.

[Bigahh]

I have Packers Season Tickets, and the Stadium Fly Bye at the start of the Saints game was AWESOME. Makes the hair on your neck stand up ! You cannot hear them coming, and they are all of a sudden there and gone. I think there were 4, but could have been 5.

[Blaine]

When I'd hunt the north end of Jefferson Proving Grounds, the Warthogs would make their turn very close and very low....what a show!! Also, when the rounds started going off in the target area, the deer would come hauling butt out of there, and you could sometimes get good deer action if you were in the right spot. Lot's of unexploded Ord laying around, though...beware.

[MrMurphy]

1. On foot, standing on the press trailer rolling tape while Vladimir Putin's jet left for takeoff after visiting George W in Texas.

They turned the plane so the jetwash hit us, nearly blew about 10 photogs off the trailer since we couldn't get our gear off in time. I just wrapped myself around the ($70,000) camera and tripod, kept rolling tape and closed my non-camera eye and mouth.


2. Pulling close-in security against SAM launches at Al Udeid in an armored Humvee.

Four B-1Bs led by the wing king on afterburners lifting off with full bomb loads to spread love and goodwill in Afghanistan went right over us.

Shook the Humvee (at over a ton and a half+, it was a M1097 retrofit) so hard we were thinking it might flip, and even with plugged ears we couldn't hear for a while.

[Lawyer Daggit]

I was fishing with my father on a dam in North Wales before we moved to Australia and we were buzzed- first by a RAF Jaguar low level bomber practising ground attack up the valley- and then by a BAC lightening that was obviously been playing tag with him.

When one minute all you can hear is frogs croaking, the wind in the grass and the hiss of a fly line- and the next you are having a jet buzz you- particularly in the confines of a valley- the impact is pretty awesome. It occurred in the late 60's and I can still remember it as though it was yesterday- kind of thing you never forget.

[1894]

Back when Griffiss AFB was part of the SAC , our little 6 million acre state park made a nice place for the pilots to practice with a lot of toys.
Most memorable for me was seeing a B-52 at treetop level . It was so low that I could not see both wing tips . The bomb bay doors were open and it flew directly over our camp . It honestly looked like our whole camp would have fit in that bay. Scene was complete with a few green leaves blown off the tree tops drifting down as the giant disapeared over the small ( 60' ) hill just past camp.

[RIHMFIRE]

Jet fly bys are awesome.....but there are 2 fly bys by choppers that were pretty
awesome too....I was in my boat going down the St. Johns River here in Florida....
and I heard this hmmm over my inboard/outboard motor.....
I thought something was wrong..so I slowed down and looked up and there was
a squadron of apache helicopters flying just above the treetops coming right
at me...turned at about 30 to 40 yards away...and went to the bombing range
in the Ocala National Forest....

I was hunting in Camp Blanding and the Florida National Guard showed up with
a couple of apache helicopters.....and one of the pilots saw me walking down the logging
road to my truck and decided to buzz me at treetop level...maybe at 15 yards...
The pilot looked at me and so did the gatlin gun.....very cool

[MrMurphy]

That would have been the front-seater (gunner) on an Apache unless for some reason they flipped it to pilot control.

Usually pilot=missiles gunner=gun from what i remember. It's a 30mm chain gun (1 barrel, chain drive) not a gatling.

They do a number on pretty much any target.

[Ysabel Kid]

[adirondakjack]

I used to love em. In '76, when we were celebrating the bicentennial, a British Vulcan bomber carrying the Magna Carta came to our open house at castle AFB. Of course they put the magna carta on display with heavy securrity so ya could file past and eyeball it, but to me, the Vulcan was the best part of the deal.
When it arrived a day or two before our open House Air Show, the fog was so thick you couldn't see halfway across the flightline, yet that GIANT delta winged bomber made his practice runs for the show, including some passes lower than the tower in the pea soup fog. I was impressed.

But I got soured on bomber fly bys when one of the birds I had worked on years before, a B-52 with a tail number I recognized, botched a 60 degree low speed turn and augered in in just such a practice run. He simply laid it up on it's side with insufficient airspeed and "slid" out of the turn, killing all aboard.

Terry, my former Squadron commander as a B-52 maintenance tech was a Major nicknamed "buzz". He got his desk jockey job after "landing" a B-52 at Wright-patterson AFB with an altimeter that had been wrongly adjusted for field altitude, pancaking it in, busting it in two, and the cockpit tumbling a couple of miles beyond the field while the plane burned into the ramp. The ONLY injury was his. He about cut his thumb off with a chop-out knife (of course they didn't know the rest of the plane was gone, and feared fire). He was an intense, kinda scary dude who later went on to become ops officer for the B-1 program...