Those crazy barnstormers

[urocyon]

News from my mother, this time: Fighter jet crashes in Franklin County (VA)

No matter what the military want to say, it's pretty clear why this happened. Flying extremely low in mountainous terrain is moronic, but the pilots seem to feel a need to hotdog it through an area one claimed to think uninhabited, every single day. The way the flights have picked up the past couple of years--ostensibly for training, more likely in an attempt to keep the peasantry properly cowed†--it's amazing that something similar didn't happen before this. The worst they'd run into, to my knowledge, is farmers loudly complaining about their frightening the cattle so that they don't give decent milk, zooming up and down the valleys at low altitude as they do, and/or taking potshots at them. My dad speculated that this plane was brought down by a .22. *g*

I'm certainly not pleased some idiots crashed an F-15 and knocked a hole in someone's house, but do take some satisfaction in seeing their irresponsible behavior finally rewarded--without harming anyone, thank goodness.

One thing I definitely don't miss: the unique sensation of fighter planes threatening to clip the chimney off, multiple times a day. *shiver*


† Not that this works particularly well.

Comments

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

I've actually been knocked off my bike by a Tornado fighter jet - it was in the Great Glen in Scotland, and I was cycling along a forestry path that was roughly at the height the jet was flying at... either the shock of the sound or the jetwash did for me.

[urocyon-c.livejournal.com]

Ack. That beats the guy in Bedford Co. who was knocked off his barn roof. :)

[astrogeek.livejournal.com]

There's a farm near where I grew up whose owner became something of a local celebrity after claiming his chickens had started producing square eggs because of low flying military jets.