I have seen a couple of photos/clips of RAF Jaguars deployed in middle
east (Oman?) doing some dare-devil stuff like flying fast with wheels up only about 10 feet off the ground, coming into land with wheels up then taking off at last monent……apparently their
“supervision” was quite loose 🙂 and they had a lot of fun.
anyone has photos of such stunts?
Being an Indian you might find it interesting that many IAF (pre-partition) and later IAF/ RPAF pilots also did a very similar stunt. On take-offs in fighters (and sometimes other planes), the pilot would retract the undercarriage before the wheels left the ground. To do this, the pilot would make sure that he had at least ten knots on the clock above normal lift-off speeds. Then, keeping the plane at exactly the same height as when it was rolling on its wheels, he would continue level down the runway till the wheels were tucked in, before pulling up. Of course this manoeuvre (called ‘Brush take-off’) had no operational value but looked very impressive. The ‘Brush take-offs’ also resulted in some serious accidents. A PAF pilot who had flown during the WWII (while serving in IAF) as a fighter pilot and later joined the PAF and than PIA crashed his F-27 Fokker while trying this stunt (no fatalities nor any serious injuries).
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