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WEIRD

This page was last updated on 08/28/2007

Info from Peter Destoop:

"This film was made at Ursel Air Base, in Belgium, while filming a police TV series called "Flikken" (Cops).  It was a pursuit between a car and a plane and it almost went horribly wrong -- there was never any plan to land the plane on the car."

Comments from viewers about these ads: 

"Hi, I love your site, I've been a photographer and plane watcher for 60 years. However your site needs some correcting, as I've told you before:  The car advert clips you have are not British, and have not been shown on British TV. I've watched them a few times and I think they are from Holland   All the best for the future."

"The person who 'corrected you' about the Ford Ka ads is incorrect about them being from Holland. They were indeed British ads but they never got off the ground due to obvious reasons. They relate very well to UK car owners, the point being that when you arrive at your car in the morning it always seems to have cat paw prints or bird crap all over it. However the do-gooders killed the ad before Ka could kill any more animals! I'm quite sure that these ads were intended for cinema screening because manufacturers do seem to exercise more "artistic" means of promotion in UK cinemas and create ads that do not, or would not get shown on normal television."

Info from viewer Jim Harris:

FYI – the footage “Blown into the Water” takes place at the international airport on the island of St. Maartin / St. Martin. (I’ve been there, recognize the place, the “hoop” in the background belongs to a resort right there at the end of the runway.)

1. There are signs on the road that runs parallel to the beach warning of jet-blast. I don’t know this, but I would, at the very least, hope that there were similar signs on the beach. (those poor people, I can just imagine the friction burns from being blown down the beach like that!)

2. What you *DON’T* see in this picture is what it looks like when some behemoth of an airplane comes in over that beach – seemingly 50’ over your head!

St Maartin/St. Martin is roughly triangular in shape – if you imagine a 30/60/90 right triangle set so that the short side is on the bottom, the long side going up the right, and the hypotenuse going from lower-left to upper right – that is roughly the shape of the island. The “long side” is fairly mountainous, with the short side and the hypotenuse being (by comparison) little more than long established sand-bar barrier beaches with a lagoon inside them.

What makes it relevant to the story, is that the airport is located along the “short side” on the bottom and within a mile, maybe less, of the end of the runway on the eastern side (toward the “long” side”) is a fairly high mountain – say about 2000’ or so. For whatever reason, airplanes taking off from the airport at St. Maartin (It’s on the Dutch side) usually take off toward the mountain. This requires them to use as little of the runway as possible, and then do a very steep, right-banking climb-out, to avoid impacting the ridge.

What many airplanes do is to position themselves as far down toward the other end of the runway as possible, (I’ve actually seen airplanes hang their tails over the road there!), lock their brakes, run their engines up to what sounds like “full emergency power” and once the wheels begin to drag, drop the brakes and climb the heck out of there as quickly as possible. Having left St. Maartin/St. Martin that way – let me tell you, it’s an experience! My resort was right across the lagoon from the airport on the French side and I used to watch the planes leave. (and yes, I wish I had videos of this!) Even the smaller airliners seemed to miss the mountain-side by mere feet.

One day, I heard a roar like I’d never heard before and, (Lord have Mercy!), there was a bloody great Air-France 747 getting ready to take off. I was hypnotized – “this is gonna be a disaster!” I’m thinking as I watch this unfold. The 747 taxied to the end of the runway, waited for a moment or two, then (from the sound of it) buried all four throttles in the forward bulkhead, letting all four engines spool up to full power (and then some!), and after about 10 or 20 seconds (maybe longer) at full power, they dropped the brakes and headed down the runway. That plane used more runway than I had ever seen used before, and finally climbed out. He did the steep climb and right-bank maneuver and, by God and by golly, missed the mountain.

I don’t know if he clipped any trees, but I bet he scared the you-know-what out of the locals there. He sure as hell scared me, just watching it. I saw only one 747 leave the entire time I was there – and it was a sight to behold. If I ever go back, I’m taking a camcorder with me. One other comment – watching planes land there is also an experience. They usually come in “low and slow” over that beach. So low at times I am convinced that if I was there with a surf-casting rod, I could have snagged myself more than one airplane as it came in to land.

Some added information about this video, sent in by a viewer:

"Just as added information, I remember the incident from my youth, and what I
do remember follows:  It would have been sometime during the (mid?) 1970s, when a local television news reporter by the name of Richard Wyatt was preparing an item for the forthcoming Weston-super-mare airshow (Weston is in Somerset, UK).  One of the attractions was to be a "flour bombing" exhibition, where the
Piper Cub was to drop bags of flower on a target somewhere on the airfield. It was thought to be a good idea if Richard was to become the target for the news report. The result was as per the video, Richard was taken to hospital, where the injuries were found to be not life threatening.  The Piper Cub landed without incident and was found to have a small dent in the wing tip where it had hit Richard's Head."

Commentary from Daniel Streckfuss:  "Regarding the video "Sucked into an Engine", on your website, you write that you are uncertain about the authenticity of the video. I can attest that it is true as I was on the ship when it happened."

"What you see in the video is a trainee checking the position of the launch bar in the shuttle and then moving away from the aircraft. The guy that gets sucked in his trainer and goes in to double check the launch bar position. He made a mistake by walking straight toward the nose gear which put him in front of the intake. He should have gone behind the intake and looked forward into the shuttle. All of this is happening with the engines at full throttle, by the way."

"I was attached to VFA-15 onboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt during that deployment in 1991. This occurred just after Desert Storm. He did survive and I'm surprised the editors of that video didn't include him climbing out. What allowed him to survive was the design of the A-6 engine (the J-52). It has a long protruding 'bullet' or cone that extends in front of the first stage fans. When he was sucked in, his arm extended above his head which caused his body to wedge between the bullet and inside wall of the intake. Lucky for him, his cranial and float coat were sucked in first causing the FOD'd engine which prompted the pilot to cut the throttle (commanded by the Shooter who moves into the frame kneeling and moving his wand up and down). It took almost 3 minutes for him to push his way out of the intake after being sucked in. Needless to say, I don't think he was seen on the flight deck for the rest of the cruise."

Commentary on this video from "Skids":   "At the time of this incident I was an intel officer in Attack Squadron 65, the squadron which the A-6E in this video was attached to.  Dan Streckfuss’ account is accurate, except that this incident actually occurred during Operation Desert Storm as the date on the video 02-20-91 shows.  The aircraft was fully loaded for a night combat mission into Iraq -- if you look carefully at second 00:24, you can see 2 Mk-84 2000lb bombs under the port wing." 

"The pilot, 'Gilly', immediately knew that he got FOD’d and shut down the engine.  What nobody new was that the FOD was the trainer who was sucked in, until he crawled out, dazed, confused, and without all his gear a couple of minutes later.  He suffered minor head injuries and a broken collar bone."

"I don’t recall the crewman’s name but the other individuals at the end of video are CPT Charles Abbot, the CO of CVN-71 (center) and CDR Herb Coon (right), the skipper of VA-65 the Fighting Tigers."

Contributor James Axelrad put it well:  "The number of factors involved (in freezing those rotor blades) boggle my mind.  The shutter speed of the camera, the native frequency of the format of the camera (pal or ntsc), the throttle setting of the helo, the engines and gearbox condition, how good the helo is at maintaining rpm's of the drivetrain against varying torque settings that are happening during an airshow exhibition -- and that's just what I can think of."