When I was a kid, Airfix released a kit in 1:48 scale of the Grumman EA-6B Prowler. When it was released, I didn’t even know what it was. However, the unusual shape fascinated me and it continues to do so although they are now long retired and replaced by the EA-18G. I got to see them on a variety of occasions including not long before their retirement but this visit to Red Flag got me some close-up time with them departing.
The last returns at the end of the Red Flag evolutions are usually the larger aircraft. The tankers and the AWACS will be near the end as might be the larger bombers if they are involved. You do also get some transport activity on the missions, and the Royal Australian Air Force had one of their Hercs included during one of my visits. I was off base for this return, and the light was beginning to get low which made for far better conditions than the high sun in the middle of the day. The Herc picked up the late light really nicely.
As a kid, I was a big fan of the F-15 Eagle. It was the fighter of the 70s and 80s and its size and power were so impressive to me as a kid. It could also go faster than almost anything else (although it wouldn’t in real life). The big wing (causing the nickname flying tennis court) and the nodding inlets looked excellent. Aerobraking and the speedbrake are just a bonus. Being able to see them so close up when at Red Flag was a big treat for me. I am so glad that the EX model means that they will be around for a while yet. Here are some shots of the jets that, I assure you, resulted in a big grin on my face at the time.
This US Navy Hornet was rolling out at Nellis AFB during a Red Flag exercise. Looking at it now, it doesn’t have the antenna locations that the C model had so this must be an old A model. The US Navy has now retired all of its original Hornets (although the Marines haven’t relinquished all of theirs yet). However, when it took this, I think that the Navy was mainly using C models so this must have been on its last legs. I do love the look with the speedbrake deployed. There was a Charlie as well so I shall include that for fun.
I have been looking back through a variety of shots from old visits to Red Flag exercises. Therefore, there is going to be a steady steam of Red Flag photos in the near future. Sorry if that gets a bit repetitive but I assure you that they will be different types on the whole. I start with the B-1B Lancer. This example was taxiing along the runway as it backtracked for departure. The pre-take off routine includes exercising the full range of travel for the tailplane and it really can move a long way. This shot showed it in the full nose up position.
I was digging through the catalogue recently. Every once in a while, I will just randomly move the slider in grid view and see what pops up. Having been taking images for a long time, there are often things that I have completely forgotten about that show up in the collection. While doing this, I came across some shots of B-1Bs launching out of Nellis when I was between the runways for a Red Flag media day. I hadn’t really done much with these images. They were a touched underexposed and I had not processed most of them.
I ended up working through a few of them as they reminded me of the amazing experience being alongside a runway when four F101 engines in full burner come by. It really does get your attention. The B-1 fleet has been shrinking in recent years, and the plan is that the remaining airframes will be retired when the B-21 fleet comes online. It won’t be too long before this sight is confined to history.
Go back a long time and I find myself at Red Flag at Nellis AFB and in the fortunate position of being able to take a tanker ride to refuel some of the participants. I won’t go into the details of the flight itself since that is a tale of its own. Instead, I will focus on some F-16s. Most Red Flag exercises seem to include participation by Shaw AFB F-16s. They operate in the Wild Weasel role, and I guess there aren’t many SEAD units, so they get to come most of the time.
Red Flag media events were always a guessing game as to what would be allowable to photograph. Sometimes the Shaw jets were in and sometimes they were out. Sometimes you would only find out afterwards that they were out. On our tanker trip we had F-22s and Shaw F-16s. It wasn’t clear whether they would be allowed or not.
In the end, we shot the planes as they came up for fuel and the USAF team then took all of our cards to decide what we could have and what we couldn’t. This could involve things on the ground that couldn’t be photographed that we had accidentally caught as well as the planes themselves. In this case, the Shaw Vipers were okay, so our cards came back with them included (or at least most of them with some deletions along the way. Here are some of the shots from that day.
Red Flag 22-2 included a detachment of B-1B Lancers. The Bone is a cracking jet as it combines the size of a bomber with the shaping and engines of a fighter. It is an elegant shape whether the wings are fully swept or not. I have shot them at Nellis a few times over the years but I was still keen to get some shots of them on this trip. Unfortunately, things did not quite go to plan.
They didn’t fly on the day that I arrived. I had gone out in the evening for the night launch but they were not part of it. The following morning, they launched a lot earlier than I expected so I was still at Cheyenne when they went. My last day, they again didn’t launch. That meant the recoveries from the early launch were my only chance.
Weather was not helping too much. This was not just for the Bones. It was pretty overcast for a good chunk of the afternoon. The two jets came back in formation and broke into the pattern. Thankfully, the arrivals were using the 21s and they were allocated to the right runway. A pretty sporty pattern for a big jet combined with me having chosen a good spot by the Speedway meant that they were almost filling the frame as they turned on to final. Some nicer light would have been great but, since this was all I was getting in daylight, it would have to do.
When the arrivals at Nellis on on the 03 runways, it means a trip to Cheyenne. This is not the greatest part of the world to visit but it is a feature of a Nellis trip. The sun angles were still quite low while I was there so I decided to try shooting from further around the road than I have done previously. For the planes coming in on the left runway, I had a reasonable sun angle on them. For planes on the right, they were coming right over my head.
I quite liked shooting like this. The planes have a surprising amount of variety in their line up angles when this far from the threshold so, while they are all coming close to you, it is not a repeat of the same shot every time. Each pilot takes a slightly different line and some variation in elevation too. You get something akin to head on shots and then it is a case of rapidly swiveling around to get a shot from behind.
There is a lot of fencing and trees along that part of the road so getting a clean shot of everything is hard to achieve. However, it is still possible to get something a little different. With the light angles being less than ideal, rather than worry about shots that aren’t going to be very usable due to either glare or shadow, why not get something a little different. It does require some quick adjustments and it can get a touch noisy but it is still fun to try something a little different.
It had been quite a while since I made a trip purely for aviation photography. I may have managed to sneak some photo elements in to other trips but nothing just for planes. I decided to go to Nellis for Red Flag 22-2. I had skipped 22-1 because it clashed with some other stuff despite having some things I was quite keen to shoot. German Tornados were supposed to be at 22-2 which I was keen to shoot but they sadly canceled before the event even kicked off.
Despite this, I still wanted to go. A couple of days off work seemed like a good plan and it was a chance to explore the capabilities of the R3 on aviation subjects. While the Germans were not attending, there were some foreign operators taking part. Singapore had brought its jets – admittedly, they didn’t have far to come with Singapore having units at Luke and Mountain home – and Saudi Arabia had brought some F-15SAs.
Things were not as active as they have been on some previous Red Flags. Not everything seemed to be flying in each wave. The B-1s only flew on one of the evening and one of the day sorties of the two I was there. Also, things seemed to happen earlier than is sometimes the case. There were some long gaps in flying when I wondered whether something was up. It was just a slow Flag I guess. However, it was a good chance to hang around and photograph some jets. I guess I can’t complain about that.
