The times have changed in the USA about where military jets can practice their aerial maneuvers, but when I first joined the Air Force back in 1966, after basic and Tech School, I was stationed at Tyndall AFB in Fla, and we had two accidents that took the lives of the pilots. One was flying a F-106 and had his wife visiting at a local beach house, and he buzzed the beach with the F-106, just a few feet off the water and did a circle around to get even lower as he flew over his wife standing on the berm at the seashore. This time around, he was so low the ducting ingested the sea water, and the jet did a nose dive into the water leaving only a few pieces large enough to identify. He was not recovered. Another was a dog fight with F-106s, and coming out of a nose dive upside down a pilot flew into the swamp at supersonic speed and did not have time to eject. The plane went so far down into the swamp, they were never able to recover any part of the jet or the pilot. Those two incidents had a bearing on future dog fights over civilian areas. On brighter note, recently I was travelling up TX 130 toll road at 80 mph, and a huge shadow slowly covered my truck, and very slowly moved to my left like slow motion. I turned to see what was making such a huge shadow, and why it was so slow, only to see Air Force One descending into Austin/Bergstrom airport. AF-1 was on final, and was absolutely beautiful as it slowly settled down, not much faster than my road speed. It was almost surreal, but beautiful. I will never forget that image. Joe-JDC
