The Air Force Thunderbirds might be the most heavily photographed airplanes in the U.S. military. The Pentagon’s official photography archive lists over 20,000 photos and 500 videos of the team’s pilots and F-16 jets.
But some of the most remarkable images ever released of the demonstration team were made public Monday inside the pages of a formal accident investigation report on the cause of a crash of one of the team’s jets last December.
As the Thunderbird pilot ejected from that crash, less than 500 feet in the air, the plane’s canopy was jettisoned upward by small explosive charges.
Attached to the canopy was a 360-degree video camera. As the canopy rocketed upward from the doomed jet, the camera kept filming.
The images it captured are remarkable.
In a span of just five seconds, the camera captured the pilot rocketing free of the jet from just a few dozen feet away. A second image, looking up through the clear canopy, shows the pilot’s parachute billowing open in midair.
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