Quora What would happen if a fighter jet flying at a speed of Mach 2 ....

What would happen if a fighter jet flying at a speed of Mach 2 or more passes over house roofs at low altitude?


I was flying my FB-111 about Mach 1.2 at 200 feet above ground on a combat simulation mission at Red Flag in the Nellis Ranges through a gap in a small mountain range. There happened to be a road running through the same gap. A couple of seconds (about a third of a mile) before I crossed over it, I saw a large Winnebago type RV.

I completed my mission and went on with life but got called in to my squadron commander's office about a month later. It seems that somebody was a little lost and “inadvertently" drove his RV into a restricted area — even though it was clearly marked with a warning of low flying supersonic aircraft. Seems like something they couldn't see had caused a big boom and blew out several of their windows and a door. When a damage chaim was reported the Air Force investigated and found an AWACS track match to my aircraft for the time and date. The Air Force paid the claim of about $5500 even though the RV was where it shouldn't have been and I was in an authorized supersonic flight area.

The interesting thing to me was that I flew directly at and over him at 200 feet and they didn't see a thing. My crew chief asked if I wanted him to paint a Winnebago sillouette on the fuselage to record my “kill".







Update & Additional Info:

   For the few who notice, yes the picture is of an Australian F-111 C. The Aussie F-111 C is basically an FB-111 without the astro-tracker {which would be visible a bit in front of the cockpit). I just love that picture. The nose cowl is a little shorter also. We even recovered a F-111 C that had been damaged and sent it to General Dynamics for refit back to an FB.
   It was actually a test called Global Shield but basically a Red Flag environment and location in the Nellis Ranges.
   The mission where this incident occurred was a rare actual release of a B-61 “nuke" from the internal weapon bay. This simulated the final run into a heavily defended enemy (Moscow, Leningrad, etc) target where low altitude and speed were critical. My target was an airfield and my B-61 (ballast instead of warhead) landed at the X of the crossing runways.
   I had an F-105 illegally chasing me to the initial point trying mightily to get a missile lock or gun camera “kill."
   I had to climb to 100 feet and slow down to below 1.1 Mach because that was the minimum altitude for the weapon to release and maximum speed not to tear the weapons bay doors off.