...and we discovered we had a mutual friend. He told me the most amazing story. This may sound a bit like an "I met a bloke down the pub" anecdote, but I have a feeling this is so crazy it's true and will endeavour to put it down as accurately as I heard it.
Our Antipodean friend was a fighter pilot in Oman. Serving at the same time was a fellow Australian RAAF pilot who's service had reached its' eventless end. He flew his Jaguar out on the last illustrious (but quite dull) patrol across the desert.
Apparently, to those in the know, there’s a bit of a scrotal-sized differential between them that can fly low-level across the benign, sheep-covered Brecon Beacons at 200 ft and them that do the same over bleak hot Gulf sands at 5-10 ft!
On that day this 'gifted' pilot saw a colleague driving his Jaguar (the four-wheeled version) along a highway in the same desert. The pilot dropped altitude and hurtled towards the tootling car from behind. The nonchalant driver horrifyingly spotted a quickly-emerging shape in his rear-view mirror –a speeding Jaguar getting closer, lower, closer, lower, closer…
At the last moment thinking himself about to be mangled by the fighter he ducked down in the car onto his passenger seat and pulled off the road into the desert dust.
The Jaguar flattened the car's roof! The pilot merrily flew off to land at the base, undoubtedly chortling to himself.
This is, as far as I can tell, the only Jaguar-on-Jaguar collision in history (in which no planes were downed)!
I suppose it's this sort of thing, or this...
I've looked for confirmation about this on http://www.targetlock.org.uk/jaguar/service_uk.html, but that’s only for the RAF.
Anyone heard this before? Any other similar aviation stories out there?
I have since had a chat with a certain Mr John Pym, erstwhile with the RAF and about the best Flight Sim Training Instructor in HK (and once awarded Flying Prize for Applied Flying/Aerobatics, to boot). He knew the circumstances of the incident above and corrected a few details. It was, perhaps, not quite as flamboyant an incident as I portrayed and the car involved was a boring old blue Toyota.
Ah well, never let the truth get in the way of a good story, that's what I say!
Posted by: Richard Peters | Thursday, 18 August 2011 at 12:32 PM