Ok, that looks pretty close…
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Scary…
Another “Balls of Steel” award on the way…
Holee Bejeezus. That made most of my body to tense up.
cold sweat
Sweet !
The EGPWS module had a hearth attack that day.
Yeah, that’s pretty impressive. That pilot does a great job.
Nice!
omg 
Looks like he’s hammerheading out of that valley.
That thing was counting down…50 - 40 - 30…
I think being that low was not intentional and some retraining might have to be done.
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I’m not so sure that his flight path was unintended. Regardless, impressive flying from the 10 bomber crew.
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Meanwhile, in the cockpit;
I had the dubious good fortune of being able to watch one of the CDF 10s work the Cocos fire a few years ago in San Marcos…they did some runs that were nearly that impressive. Its pretty surreal, seeing something that big coming in and seeing the tops of trees and hills behind and above it. Action movie material.
Wish I’d had my camera with me on those days.
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It’s so surreal seeing these bigs planes outside of their normal flying regime!
I’ve got 202 hours in the right seat of the DC-10. Even in boring airline flying the airplane always reminds you that it was designed to be nimble and responsive. Nothing else is quite like it. Douglas built a masterpiece. It’s great to see it show her colors in the hands of a crew that know what they are doing.
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BTW, I think every inch was intended. If you fly smaller airplanes it is hard to imagine something big like that being manueverable. But it is. Just reimagine that video with yourself at the controls of a Mosquito or Me-110 and you have a better idea of the energy and control that was available to them.
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Oh absolutely, it’s wonderful to realize that the airplanes filled with passengers go through outmost lengths to pretend that they not exist and have the passengers think they are gliding on a happy cloud. If you’d put any Airbus or Boeing in Direct Law you would be able to have a lot of fun with them!
I always think that when watching two kinds of videos
- Plane test videos, when they stall a new Airbus or so, and do other stuff you NEVER do when flying passengers, just to test the plane (I think at one point they rolled a 707 or something)
- Military planes derived from passenger planes doing stuff showing what is possible, like those KC-10 tanker takeoff videos. You just think WHAAAAT???
Example:
KC-10A Extender Insane Takeoff-SJAFB Airshow - YouTube
EDIT: Bad quality, but here’s the rolling one:
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Indeed - plus, that video doesn’t really show you the sight picture from the cockpit. Relative motion is everything and you can (usually) very easily judge both your closure and clearance based on the relative motion in the cockpit. They no doubt had a very good sight picture of that ridge falling under them and had plenty of energy, control authority, and just plain seat of the pants flying knowledge to know they were OK. Of course, it isn’t always the case (take the B-52 airshow practice crash for example)…but those guys flying the tankers strike me as consummate professionals…
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The easiest trick I’ve learned whilst skydiving was that the part of your view that isn’t moving is going to be where you will land(given all conditions remain equal). That has never failed me to judge if I would pass over a ridgeline or not. I presume these guys have a very good idea about their own size and proportions.