A sign I saw yesterday (warning of low-flying planes near an airport) reminded me of an incident that happened to me about 20 years ago that I’ve always wondered about. I was driving on a lonely highway out of Big Bend National Park in Texas. I happened to be glancing out the driver’s window when I saw a rapidly approaching speck on the horizon. Within seconds, a B-1B bomber crossed the highway right in front of me going really low and really fast. I was glad I caught him out the side window first because seeing that just appear in the windshield might have made me drive off the highway!
On this type of training flight, just how low and how fast would a B-1B typically be going? (I think the wings were swept back, but I wouldn’t swear to it 20 years later. I do recall not hearing anything.)
Did he likely know I was there and if so, could/would he adjust course just enough to cross where he did - i.e. right in front of me - with the idea of scaring the crap out of the isolated driver? (I’m guessing not and that it was just coincidence he crossed where he did.)
Can’t really speak to the rest, but I’m surprised you don’t remember hearing anything. The B-1 is an extremely loud airplane. If it was low at all, it should have been near deafening.
Typically they’d be flying subsonic. They were probably on an OB (oil burner) low altitude route. There are also two MOAs (Military Operating Areas) about forty miles outside the National Park: one to the northwest and one to the northeast and flight restrictions are typically relaxed in those areas. Though, from my understanding, most really low-level flights are restricted to OB routes (now called a combination of IR and VR routes). They’re marked on aeronautical charts and are speckled all over the U.S. particularly over the less densely populated areas of the Midwest and West. They’re practicing, among other things, use of terrain-following radar to effect low altitude penetration of hostile airspace and can get under 300’ AGL pretty easily
Low. Fast. But subsonic, since your car windows are still intact.
If the pilot happened to spot you earlier they may have put on a bit of a show. More than likely, you just got lucky. You aren’t really going to stand out on their radar and the pilot would have been preoccupied with not hitting the ground and that hill over yonder.
The B-1B’s maximum speed at sea level is subsonic, besides restrictions on supersonic flight where it would cause damage on the ground. The quoted max is Mach .95 according to the “B-1B Fact Book” by then North American Rockwell in 1989, variously quoted other sources at M.9-something (those which aren’t confusing themselves about the plane’s supersonic max at higher altitude). The typical ‘Single Integrated Operating Plan’ nuclear mission is described in that booklet at 200’ above ground level at M.85+. A USAF safety publication from around 20 yrs ago also gives the minimum altitude for terrain following flight as 200’ above ground level.
B-1’s apparently still practice low altitude terrain following flight as a strike tactic (according to a first hand account of just a few years ago) unlike almost any other US military a/c. However in 14,000+ combat sorties since 2001 the mission profiles have almost always been medium altitude. The B-1 was officially removed from ‘SIOP’ nuclear missions 20 yrs ago this year.
Anglachel:
If he’s flying really low and really fast, wouldn’t his sonic footprint be pretty small and fleeting? So if you were in the wrong spot - like right under him - it might get really loud, but otherwise not much? (And I could simply be remembering it wrong.)
MonkeyMensch:
We heading towards Marathon, so probably on 385. So maybe near/in that northeastern MOA?
And no, I wasn’t expecting supersonic! (That would have been fun to explain to the rental car company.) But potentially as low as 200’ and as fast as Mach 0.95. Pretty cool.
I was crossing a rail road track very near Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport when a landing aircraft scarred the hell out of me. From the noise, I thought I was going to be hit by a train. Looking up, I thought that I count count the rivets on a two engine aircraft. I realized he has a very high, not just a few feet above me.
The USAF operates C-130s at Jacksonville AFB, and people complain that the aircraft are flying to low when they are hundreds of feet in the air because the C-130 is so darn large.
The routes described in post #3 get as low as 100 feet off the ground. We used to tool around that way all the time. I would be a bit surprised to see a B-1 below 300 feet, but it’s not impossible.
There was nowhere in the US we were allowed to operate supersonic except over government owned land which had no civilian roads. Other than not booming there’s no speed limits. Common speeds for low level flight are 480 and 540 knots of ground speed because that’s 8 or 9 nautical miles per minute which makes the mental math easy. That’s roughly 550 or 620 mph.
The crew almost certainly saw you, but odds are they just kept droning along.
Our air to air radar could track trucks on the highway from a long ways out and cars when we got closer. But only if they were going faster than about 80mph. Otherwise the ground clutter suppression system in the radar couldn’t separate the vehicle return from the ground return and would filter it out.
When the radar did spot vehicles on the highway it was fun to put the cursor on them and hit the “designate” button. The radar would attempt to lock on by blasting a concentrated burst of energy at the car. Which triggered the car’s fuzzbuster and a second or so later the driver will have stomped on the brakes and slowed enough that the radar lost him in the ground clutter.
Almost as good as a phaser: aim, shoot, vaporized; all in just a couple seconds. Back in the day I’ve zapped many cars & trucks on the highways around Las Vegas. Such fun.
Canoeing a lonely stretch of river near the Badlands (and thus Ellsworth AFB) back around 1990 with a Boy Scout Troop, we had a very low flyover in which the B1 felt like is was inside the river banks with us. It wasn’t going very fast, but the sound was tremendous and we know that he saw us as he did a circle and came back around even lower. If I had to guess, I would have said 200 ft. and 150 knots on the first pass and closer to 100’ on the second. I don’t remember much about the week long canoe, but I do remember the hell out of that bomber.
The USAF lets F22 and F15 pilots have some low-level fun any time they are near the Machynlleth Loop in Wales (although I note they tend not to go as low as RAF pilots )
Yeah, I was a RA at Texas A&M in the mid 1990s. One of the disadvantages of being a RA was that you had to say through the very end of the period that the school let students stay in the dorms, which was typically the Saturday following the end of finals (Wednesday).
So one year, I was in the hallway on the fourth floor of my dorm (the top floor), and the whole place started to vibrate and this super-loud rumble kept getting louder and louder, and after a few seconds, seemed to move from one end of the building to the other. So I ran over there, and looked out the window, only to see the tail end of a B-1B flying past at about maybe 300-400 feet and moving fast.
Turns out that every year back then, the Corps of Cadets would have their final review, and part of that was traditionally a fly-past of some kind of military aircraft. My dorm was more or less in the flight path for those.
It was nearly deafening INSIDE a concrete building… I can only imagine just how loud that was outside.
The next year’s Final Review fly-past was a pair of F-14 Tomcats that flew over low, and pitched up at about 30-40 degrees and hit the afterburners at the same time- directly above me- I was looking up the tailpipes when they turned on the afterburners… that was LOUD also.
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