The rare taxi of F-15E strike fighters at high speed and with afterburners

@DefAviation ES 5·09·2023 · 20:22 0

In the world of aviation, where one seems to have seen it all, there is still room for surprise, like the one we can see today.

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This event was recorded last Friday, May 5, at the RAF Lakenheath airbase, in England, and was published today by the YouTube channel of Ted Coningsby, the nice teddy bear that I already told you about here, who among other things has flown in a Eurofighter of the RAF and with the Red Arrows. This time, Ted was on the ground filming the taxiing at RAF Lakenheath of eight F-15E Strike Eagle strike fighters of the 494th Fighter Squadron "Panthers" of the United States Air Force (USAF), who have their base there.

Ted was able to record something very atypical: two rounds of eight high-speed taxis of the aforementioned fighters. "This has never been seen before by the Ted Coningsby Channel and was very exciting to watch", Ted says, noting that taxiing speeds are typically 16 to 19 knots (30 to 35 km/h; 18 to 22 mph), but the taxis we see in the video exceeded 52 knots (96 km/h; 60 mph). In fact, at the beginning of each high-speed taxis you see F-15Es igniting their afterburners for a few seconds, then turning them off and extending the large dorsal airbrake that all F-15Es carry (turn up the volume of the speakers, the sound is spectacular):

You can see here some screenshots of the video, which begins with little Ted Coningsby welcoming the American pilots with the "Old Glory", the nickname given to the national flag of the United States.

Then we see what in aviation is known as an "elephant walk" , with the planes taxiing one after the other. The most interesting comes right after.

Here we see one of the F-15Es activating its afterburners. It does so for a very short time, since activating the afterburner significantly increases the fuel consumption of the plane. Ted points out that this maneuver must be done with the permission of ATC (air traffic control).

In this image we see the F-15E with the afterburners already turned off and the airbrake deployed to slow the aircraft down. An atypical scene and one that I had not seen before in any of the many airplane videos that I have been watching for decades.