Watch This B-1B Make A Crazy Steep Banking Climb After A Touch And Go At RAF Fairford

The swing-wing bomber made a triumphant touch and go before coming in to land after a local mission.

byTyler Rogoway|
United Kingdom photo
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B-1B "Bone" bombers are currently forward deployed to RAF Fairford in England as part of Bomber Task Force-Europe, which sees B-1s, B-52s, and B-2s rotate into the theater fairly regularly for operations with NATO and other allies and to 'deter' Russia. For instance, just a couple of days ago, a pair of the B-1Bs flew from RAF Fairford to Lithuania to train with forward air controllers on the ground there, before making an unprecedented stop at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany to refuel and then heading back to RAF Fairford. Today the big swing-wing bombers headed out on more local missions and upon returning from one of these sorties, a Bone executed a touch and go followed by a touch of afterburner and the execution of an incredible banking climb—almost a wing-over—before landing. 

As you can see in the video below, the whole sequence was downright triumphant (turn your audio on!):

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The video comes to us from our friend Saint1 (@Saint1Mil on Twitter), who shared some details about the unique experience with us:

DARK flight of two B-1s left Fairford this morning and flew a local loop up to Scotland and returned to Fairford. One of the two aircraft then hot pitted [refueled without shutting down its engines] and went out again as DARK33 around mid-day, again on a local loop (probably the same)... DARK33 then returned late in the afternoon and did an over-the-top left-hand break, then a touch and go with the tight turn and then landed. Note that he hit the brakes hard at the end of the runway in the clip.

It must have looked incredible and sounded even better in person, but at least we can get the next best thing thanks to Saint1's sweet video. The Bone can be a nimble aircraft for its size at slow speeds and light gross-weights with its wings spread. You can see its massive control surfaces working at full deflection in the video. In fact, that maneuver looks a lot like what you would see in this B-1B air show demo.

And just as a bonus, he shot another video of the detachment of B-1's going out on their first in-theater mission a couple of days ago. This included low-light launches, which are notoriously awesome for B-1B (I have written about them multiple times!). Check it out (once again sound on!):

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A big thanks to Saint1 for sharing his videos with us. Make sure to follow him over on Twitter here and YouTube here!

Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.com

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