Really? That's what happened?

Then howcome in the two images with the plane being "really up close", the size of the plane is the same in relation to the people's legs as it is in the first two pics? And how come the perspective appears to be more flattened, indicating a seriously long-focal length lens (zoomed WAY in)? And how come the color fringing and the white unsharpen-mask halo around the people's silhouette is thicker, indicating editing (namely resampling and cropping) in Photoshop? And howcome the camera crew isn't sucked into the air-intakes despite being just a few meters away from jet engines at high RPM? And howcome the cold-headed pilot with years of military discipline and training would suddenly just forget about all of that and endanger his career and peoples lives with a stupid stunt?

Perhaps the truth is actually somewhat different than what the story suggests?

I would like to see what the final shot looks like.

Great pic, thanx Jesus

I'd believe and awe if one of the cargo cref reached out and touched the nose of the plane... that would have been a great photo and a great grounds for FAA dismissal!

That's not any more dangerous than a typical in flight refueling maneuver.

the camera man could have been shooting from the far end of the cargo area with a long lense, which would make it look even closer.

Ya that was probably a fake picture.

The turbulence created by flying 100 feet behind a C-130 makes it difficult to fly controlled, let alone 10 ft.

To add to that the c-130 would have to be flying close to its maximum speed to avoid collision and the typhoon would have to be flying at its stall speed. That does not lend itself to gracefully pinpoint flying.

Do not claim it is similar to an air to air refueling because during such process the boom actually helps to aerodynamically stabilize both aircraft.

So while there is always a chance, such a move is incredibly suicidal.

Galls is right. The Typhoon would be almost impossible to control like that at that distance. One other thing. He would most likely have a flame out or two since he would cease to be getting "clean air". The body of air he is in is from the cargobay, and the air surrounding the C-130. Not exactly the best area to be. And flying at stall speed would not help that situation either.

Probably a fake, but anything is possible, you know?

wouldn't those 2 huge (presumably) intakes need huge amounts of air blowing into them to keep the jets going? shit would get sucked out of the bay and through the jets which just may ruin someones day...

Great pics!

As far as the possibility of the plane "flying into the cargo bay", look at the size of the videographer's leg - it gets bigger in every shot. Somebody zoomed and cropped the photos to make it look like the plane was getting closer...

This can be done, GALLS mentioned that the C130 is flying below the stall speed of the Typhoon, wich is false, the C-130 cruise at 285knots with a VNE of 340knots. The Typhoon has a stall speed of 225 knots and keep perfect controls down to 250 knots. And for the turbulence, as long as the Typhoon is between 0 and 150 feet behind the c-130, there is no turbulence. (search youtube for c-130 turbulence video)

I tend to agree with JACQUESASS, I think it's lens zoom (and possible image cropping) we are seeing rather than the Typhone getting that close to the C130.

However it was done, it was at least a little more than just zooming in on part of the image, since if you look at the image where it's far away and the other image where its supposedly "close" you DO notice that one of the intakes in the far shot is almost half the width of the guy's leg, and in the close shot, that one intake is almost twice as wide as his leg...

Though I still think its a fake...

Sorry Giz, but we're going to need a tad more context on this one. In addition to the points raised above the overall lack of background information in this post is what really nudges this into bullshit territory.
For example, who is Jorge Mozo? How did he come by these images? When did this take place? Where?
Or here's another good question: Why is this being posted on a gadget/tech web page?

I hope he at least used this oppertunity to sling a "Big Mac and large fries" joke.

Okay, if you look at the intake of the typhoon on the last picture you can see that its almost touching the cargo door.
Also if you read, it said the pilot was mad. People do dumb things when there mad.
Last is objects that are closer appears bigger then objects that are far away.
wow you people think that if you guys can't do it, then it's fake.
Well why don't you guys except the truth for once.

Highly suspect...

All aircraft have to be careful of getting too close to the rear of other aircraft. First, as we all know, Goose died b/c Mav got into the wake of another F-16 (bad idea). Goddamn it, Mav!!

Second, even if the jet isn't directly in the wake of another jet engine, it still needs good airflow so that it's engines don't stall (like they did when Mav killed Goose). This is why jets (and other aircraft) have a ceiling, an altitude beyond which there isn't enough air to support their aircraft's flight)

I wonder how much air those intake ports are going to be getting from the C-130's cargo bay?

My $0.02...happy to stand corrected if wrong.

Goooooooooose!!! NOOOOOO!!!!

@Mfumbi: You're still not over Goose's death, are you Mfumbi.

As a former U.S. Air Force 647 I have had more than one occasion to be on the rear ramp of a C-130.These photos are not what they seem. The turbulence outside that opening is impossible to fly in. The Fighter would have to be much further away than it appears.Besides as soon as the ramp starts to open everything not tied down flies out the door,that would have included that unsecured person apparently standing on the edge.

Jorge is a friend. He's a professional pilot and photographer. He flies Airbus A330 planes for Iberia (spanish national airlines) on transoceanic routes.

@Galls: [www.sargentfletcher.com]

Again, not directly behind, but if the Top Gun game for the NES taught me anything, it's that refueling is DEFINITELY a pinpoint thing. Or really, wholly impossible--has anyone actually managed to do it?

Just trying to point out that the speed matching part isn't necessarily an issue...

These pictures have been around aviation forums for a while now, they are genuine, but the Typhoon looks a lot closer than it is due to depth of field and length of zoom. It was for Typhoon promotional shots / video.

And Mav flew too close to another F-14, not F-16 (aviation geek pedant mode off)

All the photos are real as apparently is the story. While there is obviously an optics factor to take into account in the photos, making the plane appear closer than it really was, the Typhoon got really close and the pilot and filming crew got a good - although hysterical, I guess - laugh. I am trying to hunt down the video now.

look at all the pictures, when a cargo door is open in flight, there is an enormous amount of wind. In all the pictures no one's clothes is flapping, even the guy's hair is not. So we must conclude that the picture was taken then a sky background was photoshopped innnnnnn. the end. and i win.

for some reason my comment didn't show up? well i must say it all over then. if you look closely, none of the people's clothes are flapping even though the cargo doors are open in mid flight. so we must conclude that the sky background was photoshopped in later while the pic was taken on the ground. the end. i win.

@Mfumbi: F-14, not F-16.

The F-16 is a tiny (for a fighter jet) single-engine multirole fighter. The F-14 is a rather large twin-engine air superiority fighter and long-range interceptor designed in part specifically to carry the AIM-54 Phoenix fleet defense missile.

@jesusdiaz that would be very helpful as the photos look quite fake, especial the exact same perspective in terms of the fighter in every single shot. Anyone who's fired of quite a few frames in the span of a second or two understands the perspective, while hand held, it's 100% contiguous in every shot.

Look at the last picture, the bottom part. Check the scale of the Hercules' cargo bay ramp. It's not that zoomed in. That plane was fucking close to the thing, if only for just a few seconds.

It looks to me like the pilot decided to recklessly give the director and the filming crew a scare.

Pilots are saucy.

Sorry if someone already said this, but until we get a video, its fake.

@Rekno: Likewise, until we get video of you, you're fake. Probably a recycled version of ELIZA.

my response has nothing to do with zoom and everything to do with the perspective of the shots

I have had these photo's for a while. My pal is an engineer for EADS and he sent them me. These are shots are for real. The last couple of shots are not fake but have been cropped and zoomed to look even more amazing.

I am sure there are plenty of self appointed experts out there to trash these photo's. That's cool. I feel lucky I got them from someone who is part of the team and who distributed them to enthusiasts for pleasure and not on the web for profit.

Good lord people, what is with the incessant, and often wildly incorrect, image forensics on this site? Any picture that shows anything remotely remarkable, and ten supposed photoshop experts pop out of the woodwork to start proclaiming it is a doctored image.

Now, any of you who are both a pilot, and a professional spending at least three days a week doing special effects, comping, or digital matte painting, I would love to hear what you think of this. The rest of you, grow up. You are neither an aviation, nor photo manipulation expert, so your opinion as to the veracity of these images are really little more than garbage.

I get so sick of the amateur digital CSI squad talking out their ass about how every photo, screen shot, or product shot is some elaborate hoax.

Perspective has nothing do. It's about using telephoto lenses from the back of the cargo bay. That's why you get a bigger leg. But compare the leg, the ramp details and the aircraft size. Even counting the optical effect of the lenses, that plane was extremely close.

I think its pretty easy to see how much closer the Fighter got just by looking at the lighting on the aircraft compared to when it was further away.

Cool pics.

Pilot (with time in jet fighters), photographer and a good knowledge of effects, matte and compositing.

It is a real sequence of photos, if you look around the aviation forums you can find the original posting.

Now the rest of you get back to Warcraft or whatever.

Jesus:

You are missing the point. Yes, it was close. But it wasn't 2 meters away from the ramp like the two last photos make it seem. Those two photos are taken with a telephoto lens, as you say yourself, which is which is evident to anyone who knows anything about photography. Here's some points how you can see it:

1) The perspective is seriously flattened. What does that mean? Look at this photo to see what it means: [www.flickr.com] Note how even though the street goes way into the distance, the street isn't getting much narrower and cars and houses appear to be more or less the same size. With a wide angle lens, things become small rapidly. Like this: [www.flickr.com]

2) No matter what the perspective is, the relative size of objects in the background to objects in the foreground remains. I.e. if an air intake is the same width as a leg with one level of zoom, it retains that same proportion with another level of zoom. In these shots, you can see that the leg of the people inside the C130 gets REALLY huge in the last two shots, as does the Typhoon. However, the size of the Typhoon relative to the people in the plane (or the cargo ramp details) doesn't change much at all.

3) Details in the background clouds become much larger. This again tells you that the photos are way zoomed in. By comparing the size of details to the first shots (which are shot with a fairly "normal" perspective (around 50mm focal length equiv. on a 35mm SLR) you can actually calculate the focal length of the two other shots. If you did, you'd notice they are probably taken using a 200 or even 300mm lens!

4) A typical edit on photos is to do an unsharpen mask. What this does is that it takes areas of high contrast and further exaggerates that contrast. This results in a bit of a white halo at the high contrast areas, e.g. at the border between the legs of the people in the plane and the sky. This is normal and looks fine unless you zoom in a photo and crop it AFTER the unsharpen mask has been applied. When you look at the last two photos and look at the area around the legs of the people you can see the unsharpen mask halo. Compare the thickness of that halo to that in the first two photos and you can see that it's thicker. All other artifacts such as color fringing are also much larger than in the two first photos. This strongly suggests that the last two photos are crops from larger photos that had already been edited for "final" publishing (e.g. color corrected, unsharpen masked, etc.).

I challenge you to provide the original shots so we can look at the EXIF metadata on the shots. I'd be willing to bet that the first two shots have a focal length around 50mm and the last two have something close to 300mm.

Having said all this, I don't doubt that the pictures are faked as such. This certainly took place and the fighter was realy close. As close as during in-flight refueling or perhaps even a little bit closer. But the point is that they weren't 2 meters apart like the last two shots try to make it seem. More like 30 meters apart or perhaps even more.

Lloyd: I agree with you. It is ridiculous to see a lot of people calling photos fake or edited that are not. E.g. the Apollo moon mission shots, where people have no clue what they are talking about (shadows line up => many lights. uh, no, many lights => several shadows from each object). However, let me assure you I know both photography and graphics like the back of my hand and there's no question about what has happened here. The two last photos are taken in a situation with the plane perhaps 50 meters from the C-130 - not 2 meters. The reason they look closer is a telephoto lens.

Kim

LOUD NOISES!!!!!!!!!!

The picture is probably real
the guy's clothes are pretty tight, and remember that it's a PHOTO!! I don't think the camera it was taken from would want to show the blur from the clothes flapping. (if they do flap)
AS giz says, optical effect.

it would also seem that the cargo hold was opened for awhile at that time and that everything is tied down or gone already. (why open up the cargo door just for expensive equipment to fly out? I think they have things bolted and netted down or whatever flew out is out.

No the plane is not landing in the cargo hold.
I'm 85-90% sure that this photo isn't fake, btw they are taking the picture on purpose (looking at the first image)

Dear Kim,
Please refer to the section in L.M. Lloyd's post where he says:

You are neither an aviation, nor photo manipulation expert, so your opinion as to the veracity of these images are really little more than garbage.

Further more, The pilot did INTENTIONALLY come EXTREMELY close to the cargo bay. You arent impressing anyone with your ohh so amazing skepticism. The reason this set of photos has made the rounds in the aviation world is because of what was done by the pilot.

-Those who can, do
those who cant, doubt

btw, to the person who remarked that the photos couldnt be real because the folks in the cargo bay arent bolted down, dont repeat such gibberish. A) Flight safety rules for loadmasters dicate that everyone must be strapped down (excepting parachutists for obvious reasons) when the cargo door alarms go off to signal their opening. B) No one who would go to such great lengths to photoshop a series of pictures such as these would be careless enough to forget that detail.

Look at the wing and air intake config on the Typhoon. They are both in low speed configuration. I think it looks real.

BTW turbulence from close formation photo shoots have led to the loss of aircraft in the past.
[area51specialprojects.com]
This site tells of the loss of the valkyrie XB-70 when an F-104 starfighter that was in extrememly close fomation was caught in wingtip turbulence. The F-104 rolled across the back of the XB-70 taking out part of the wing and the two vertical stabs.

Two pilots lost their lives.

@Kim98:

Kim,

If there's one thing I don't like, it's a person who claims to be an authority on something while not actually having the knowledge to back that claim up in reality. In doing this, you risk misleading people who believe that you actually know what you are talking about. In this comment, I am going to correct your knowledge on a crucial aspect of photography with which you should already be familiar.

Your second point is completely, utterly wrong. Objects in the foreground and background certainly DO NOT remain in the same proportions with differing zoom levels. Have you ever heard the notion that zooming in will increase the apparent "blurriness" (bokeh) of the background? People do this to substitute for a small maximum aperture. The reason this effect works the way it does is because zooming of a scene causes background details to increase in size relative to those in the foreground. When the background details increase in size, the viewer is placed under the impression that it is "blurrier."

It is difficult to describe this in text, so please refer to Figure 1 on this page for actual proof of what I have explained: