Photo: USAF/Airman 1st Class Zachary Wright
After more than a year of covering the exciting photos the U.S. Air Force (USAF) releases showing its machines as the main stars, we thought we’d seen it all. But we were not expecting this pic here, undoubtedly the weirdest to have come our way during all this time.
The image shows one of the USAF’s favorite bombers, the B-52 Stratofortress, as it flew at the beginning of April over an undisclosed area in Europe. The bomber is with the 69th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron based at RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom.
Trailing it are four other aircraft, fighters this time, all deployed with the Hellenic Air Force, Greece’s equivalent of the USAF. We get two F-16 Fighting Falcons, the kind of which we keep seeing, and two much rarer F-4 Phantom IIs.
According to the Americans, the group was performing a pre-planned Bomber Task Force operation meant to “demonstrate and strengthen a shared commitment to global security and stability,” presumably somewhere over Greece.
As usual when such things happen, other aircraft were in the area, including one carrying an Airman 1st Class with a camera in his hand. He waited for the right moment and snapped the image we have here.
Impressive as any of these machines are, including the very old (it had the first flight in 1958) and very rare (only four countries still use it) F-4, we can’t help but notice the almost comical arrangement of the planes in the sky.
From this angle, it looks like the Stratofortress is relieving itself, and the droppings that come out of its abrupt rear end take the form of the mentioned aircraft. Or, if you want to really be creative, you could imagine the bomber is the mothership toward which the other machines are heading, hoping to get inside.
Either way, in the usual USAF style, an image worthy of our Photo of the Day section.
Trailing it are four other aircraft, fighters this time, all deployed with the Hellenic Air Force, Greece’s equivalent of the USAF. We get two F-16 Fighting Falcons, the kind of which we keep seeing, and two much rarer F-4 Phantom IIs.
According to the Americans, the group was performing a pre-planned Bomber Task Force operation meant to “demonstrate and strengthen a shared commitment to global security and stability,” presumably somewhere over Greece.
As usual when such things happen, other aircraft were in the area, including one carrying an Airman 1st Class with a camera in his hand. He waited for the right moment and snapped the image we have here.
Impressive as any of these machines are, including the very old (it had the first flight in 1958) and very rare (only four countries still use it) F-4, we can’t help but notice the almost comical arrangement of the planes in the sky.
From this angle, it looks like the Stratofortress is relieving itself, and the droppings that come out of its abrupt rear end take the form of the mentioned aircraft. Or, if you want to really be creative, you could imagine the bomber is the mothership toward which the other machines are heading, hoping to get inside.
Either way, in the usual USAF style, an image worthy of our Photo of the Day section.
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