--- Begin Message ---
- From: "Mark" <imo66@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lisadavefoun10@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 18:18:33 -0600
----- Original Message -----
From: jimnkelli
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 5:10 PM
Subject: Fw: Supersonic F/A-18C Hornet
----- Original Message -----
From: Schlosser, Brendan F
To: 'hippewins@xxxxxxx' ; 'Voth Nancy' ; 'Schlosser, Mom/Dad' ; 'Johnson,
Danie' ; 'McClanahan's'
Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 4:27 PM
Subject: FW: Supersonic F/A-18C Hornet
Brendan Schlosser
Team Lead, Structural Integrity Branch
Structures & Materials Division, AED
US Army AMCOM
256-705-9665
Subject: FW: Supersonic F/A-18C Hornet
Through the viewfinder of his camera, Ensign John Gay saw the fighter plane
drop from the sky heading toward the port side of his aircraft carrier
Constellation. At 1,000 feet, the pilot had dropped the F/A-18C Hornet to
increase his speed to 750 mph, vapor flickering off the curved surfaces of the
plane.
In the precise moment a cloud in the shape of a farm-fresh egg formed around
the Hornet 200 yards from the carrier, its engines rippling the Pacific Ocean
just 75 feet below, Gay heard an explosion and snapped his camera shutter once.
"I clicked the same time I heard the boom, and I knew I had it," Gay said.
What he had was a technically meticulous depiction of the sound barrier being
broken July 7, 1999, somewhere on the Pacific between Hawaii and Japan. Sports
Illustrated, Brills Content and Life ran the photo. The photo recently took
first prize in the science and technology division in the World Press Photo
2000 contest, which drew more than 42,000 entries worldwide.
"All of a sudden, in the last few days, I've been getting calls from everywhere
about it again. It's kind of neat," he said, in a telephone interview from his
station in Virginia Beach, Va.
A naval veteran of 12 years, Gay, 38, manages a crew of eight assigned to take
intelligence photographs from the high-tech belly of an F-14 Tomcat, the
fastest fighter in the U.S. Navy. In July, Gay had been part of a Joint Task
Force Exercise as the Constellation made its way to Japan. Gay selected his
Nikon 90 S, one of the five 35 mm cameras he owns. He set his 80-300 mm zoom
lens on 300 mm, set his shutter speed at 1/1000 of second with an aperture
setting of F5.6.
"I put it on full manual, focus and exposure," Gay said. "I tell young
photographers who are into automatic everything, you aren't going to get that
shot on auto. The plane is too fast. The camera can't keep up."
At sea level a plane must exceed 741 mph to break the sound barrier, or the
speed at which sound travels. The change in pressure as the plane outruns all
of the pressure and sound waves in front of it is heard on the ground as an
explosion or sonic boom. The pressure change condenses the water in the air as
the jet passes these waves. Altitude, wind speed, humidity, the shape and
trajectory of the plane; all of these affect the breaking of this barrier. The
slightest drag or atmospheric pull on the plane shatters the vapor oval like
fireworks as the plane passes through. Everything on July 7 was perfect, he
said. "You see this vapor flicker around the plane that gets bigger and bigger.
You get this loud boom, and it's instantaneous. The vapor cloud is there, and
then it's not there. It's the coolest thing you have ever seen."
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
--- End Message ---
