Making this movie was a pure joy. I got to fly as a passenger in one of these gladiator airplanes. It was back the early 1980s. The Cold War was in full swing. Bitburg Germany where this was filmed, was a frontline town on the border with East Germany and beyond that, the Soviet Union. These men saw themselves likely (although they hoped it would not be the case) to go into battle against fighter jets from Russia should a war begin. And during the Cold War, we were being told that a war could begin at any moment.

They practiced almost every day. There mock fights in the air felt real and although I never went up for those aerial combat exercises (instead my team and I put cameras & audio recorders in the fighter jets so we could capture what they were experiencing up there) but in this clip and in others from the film I made, which is titled The Wing that I have posted on my channel you can get you can get you can get the feeling for what flying an F15 using its power to go straight up in the air when you want to, is like.

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It was wonderful of them to take me into their group and show me what they were up to. And they were not alone. They were supported by a group of men and women who took it on as a serious job to make certain that they were as safe as they possibly could be every time they got in an F15. #fighterpilot #aviation #airforce