As a young B-52 copilot, the first time I saw this on the cockpit windshield wipers while refueling it scared the crap out of me. The a/c just laughed at me when I expressed my concern and said “…you’ll get used to it”.
It’s from dust in the air and clouds kinda like how quartz can spark in electric lighters. The extremes of this is volcanic ash which is dangerous for engines and pitot tubes it can also sandblast your windscreen and paint off . This is likely desert dust but who knows really.
Anyone else notice the horror movie lines that are painted in red, just behind the the cockpit, between the wing's? One says "You'll float too" and the other says"Do you wanna play a game" Just wondering if anyone knows what squadron these eagles are from?
Was able to get a ride on a refueling mission. Flew out of Zaragoza Spain, around Mt Etna and headed north. This is where 4 F4’s came up to be refueled. We watched from the boomer operators position. What a great experience it was.
Splitting hairs here, but that's just static discharge. St Elmo's Fire is more of a glow. "St. Elmo's fire appears as a continuous glow or corona discharge around a pointed object, often with a bluish hue, whereas a static discharge is a quick spark or shock when the built-up charge is released."
Jet fuel is not flammable like gasoline, it is more like kerosene or diesel fuel. You can throw a lit match in it, and it is likely to extinguish the match.
Most folks don't know it is the VAPOR of more volatile gasoline that goes 💥.. IF the gasoline were cold enough & not emanating as much vapor, the vapor/oxygen ratio would be too lean to burn explosively or in a sustainable fashion..and would put a match out like oil or water..
@@francisconti9085 This is correct, even though jet fuel might seem harder to ignite that petrol, or other gases, it will still ignite. Potentially when the disconnection happens, fuel is often vaporised, making it an aerosol that is much easier to ignite than when fluid, so with the right combo of fuel (jet fuel), Oxygen (the air), and heat (static sparks) you could get some kind of burn...
@Случайноерусскоеимя Yes, but I wonder if cold thin air at altitude would deny propagation of a flame front, as fuel droplets would not be vapor, or likely to emanate as much vapor even at the lower pressure..also a spark wouldn't have ENOUGH energy to bring to ignition temperature..🤔
There's nothing there to be worried about. Aircraft are constantly charged with static whether there is visible corona or not. Probably the last thing to be worried about during AAR operations.
Ponder this. I’m flying my drone, at night, about 200 feet cloud cover, in an open field…just beneath so I can visualize. As I circle about a radius of 1/8 mile, I start to notice this faint blue light in the clouds following my drone and keeping its distance. I was just dumbfounded. On one of the passes, the light resembled a rectangular configuration as the broad side faced front to back…there I saw it, a wing pattern of a huge owl that exhibited St. Elmo’s fire off his wings as he flew through the lower cloud cover. He must have been doing recon on my drone.
Hope those guys keep in mind they're in a tiny club of people in the whole world A2A refueling up in the murk at that time... What an elite and wonderful group of men and women we have serving in our .Mil!
Quite common inside the aircraft too. Experienced while flying through a typhoon and thunderstorms. Great Fun! Kind of like burning sagebrush rolling from the cockpit to the aft bulkhead. Then it splatters into a gazillion sparks.
🎶I can see a new horizon underneath the blazin' sky I'll be where the *eagle's* flying higher and higher Gonna be your man in motion, all I need's this pair of wheels Take me where my future's lyin', St. Elmo's fire 🎶
It’s a unique quandary. We are 22 years old, fully capable and fully in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of extremely high tech military hardware. We execute flawlessly for years. Get out and apply for, oh, I don’t know, rental car job…..nope. It’s a very strange position to find oneself.
Question for the F-15 pilot and his -Talking Map- WSO (sorry, little joke I heard a long time ago. No disrespect intended, just humour), does St Elmo's Fire affect your night vision any? The guy in front looks like he has his visor down hence my question. Thanks to anyone who can answer that. Sort of got vertigo at night once but not due to this. It's nice when you can transition from outside to inside and use the AH. (Training civilian aircraft)
Seen it many times. Conditions like that. Can't always get over the wx in a KC-130. Navy P-3 guys get it all the time given their mission. Heard stories of basketball sized SE fire moving down the aisle of the P-3. Maybe hype? Don't know about P-8 guys-maybe.
I was a F/E and we used to see it in many different forms in the P-3's. Faint little lightning displays around the cockpit windscreen edges, circles formed by the rotating prop tips, and a cone protruding from the radome.
Jet fuel is like diesel or kerosene. You can throw a match in a bucket of it and it won't ignite. In the marines, we put jp8 in the old humvees for this reason
@@kevint1911 It (F-15A) started out as an air superiority fighter, and the Mud Chicken has proven itself to still be an air superiority fighter. 9Gs is 9Gs. (I was in the USAF when the F-15A/B began integration, transitioned from F-4s to F-15s, and worked all models F-15A-Es before retiring.)
@@kevint1911 You have it backward. The F-15 was never supposed to be an attack aircraft, but of course they just couldn't help themselves and started slapping a bunch of extra shit on it. The fact that it's effective in that role is a testament to the design of the base aircraft.
When he said you took 15.2, what is the amount? Can someone answer that for me please. Pounds or gallons doesn’t sound right to me. Too little of an amount to do a re-fuel.
If those engines, or the passing air, didn't make any noise, that fighter jet would sound like a fvcking Tesla Tower. Anyone reading this comment who's run an array of spark plugs on a plug tester, you know exactly what sound I'm talking about. _TtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtT_
"I can climb the highest mountain, cross the wildest sea I can feel St. Elmo's fire burnin' in me, burnin' in me" St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion) Song by John Parr
as seen on this video even the war in the east europe is going-on, a thousand miles away from home our air force is still conducting combat air patrol those mudhen are arm to the teeth for air to air interdiction makes you wonder why?
Bit more than that, boomer said "you took 15.2'. That means 15,200 lbs of fuel. Jet fuel weighs about 6.75 lbs per gallon, so that's about 2,252 gallons.
Dumbo the flying elephant 🐘 in his punk years. Why would people like honest Bob jenerik want to paint over Disney characters that tried to make vulnerable children feel more safe 👍 and secure in a foreign land. 🤔 But was Walt Disney really a saint. Let's stick with a Bambi with no eyes and no legs for now and have a still no I 🦌☮️
Now if only the average civilian knew what the “Plasma” was really for lol. That plasma sheath allows that bird to haul some serious ass. Not only absorb all known radar
@@1tactundra140 I have no idea what the VMO of a field effect B-2 is but surely it's at least within the supersonic regime. Sheep that disparage you think it's just an odd looking 737 with weird geometry and special RAM coatings.
@@1tactundra140 I have no idea what the VMO of a field effect B-2 is but surely it's at least within the supersonic regime. Sheep that disparage you think it's just an odd looking 737 with weird geometry and special RAM coatings.
@1tactundra140 I, too, can confirm hearing from 2 different sources 'hinting as straight disclosure would break their security clearances' One, perhaps an ONI counter intel op, Richard Doty (who may be fos in counter intel disinformation > WOULD ACTUALLY BE IN A POSITION TO KNOW) claimed he the legacy recovery program had reverse engineered some off planet tech... He only referred to it as a crystal like piece of hardware, rumored to be one of B2's major stealth contributing technologies. On the highly reputable side I've heard MIT physicists discuss using plasma devices for everything from stealth to FTL travel. Plasma is a highly novel part of physics which has had relatively and shockingly little DoD funded programs > which means they're black SAP's So, big mouth- shut up, would ya!?
Refueling in those conditions is mental.
It looks cool but there's no fire hazard if that's what you're thinking of.
@@skunkjobbpretty sure he is referring to the 200 ft visibility😂
@@skunkjobb why not?
As a young B-52 copilot, the first time I saw this on the cockpit windshield wipers while refueling it scared the crap out of me. The a/c just laughed at me when I expressed my concern and said “…you’ll get used to it”.
St. El·mo's fire is a phenomenon in which a luminous electrical discharge appears on a ship or aircraft during a storm. youre welcome.
Naaahhhh……it was a movie!😂
@@TMckenny59 but also the phenomenon i just mention. google it
So it’s not a disaster on Sesame Street?
I doesn't just appear during a storm. Flying through high altitude clouds that are comprised of ice crystals will cause it.
It’s from dust in the air and clouds kinda like how quartz can spark in electric lighters.
The extremes of this is volcanic ash which is dangerous for engines and pitot tubes it can also sandblast your windscreen and paint off .
This is likely desert dust but who knows really.
Anyone else notice the horror movie lines that are painted in red, just behind the the cockpit, between the wing's? One says "You'll float too" and the other says"Do you wanna play a game" Just wondering if anyone knows what squadron these eagles are from?
Looks like 389th or 391st Fighter Squadron. You can see it on the last few seconds on the tail.
The phrase on the speed brake is in relation to the jets name while deployed. Pennywise and Jigsaw (saw).
389th FS.
Thank you for the info!
Yeah, I noticed the "You'll float too". Missed the other one though, so now I must go back.
This whole situation is otherworldly. It is so amazing these pilots do this type of stuff.
Was able to get a ride on a refueling mission. Flew out of Zaragoza Spain, around Mt Etna and headed north. This is where 4 F4’s came up to be refueled. We watched from the boomer operators position. What a great experience it was.
That's my old Jet from Mountain Home. King of the Fleet!
We.had a C-5 that had many tiny burn marks from this phenomenon. The crew landed and their eyes were wide open.
looks like plasma
Splitting hairs here, but that's just static discharge. St Elmo's Fire is more of a glow. "St. Elmo's fire appears as a continuous glow or corona discharge around a pointed object, often with a bluish hue, whereas a static discharge is a quick spark or shock when the built-up charge is released."
Jet fuel is not flammable like gasoline, it is more like kerosene or diesel fuel. You can throw a lit match in it, and it is likely to extinguish the match.
it is kerosene...high grade at that...
Most folks don't know it is the VAPOR of more volatile gasoline that goes 💥.. IF the gasoline were cold enough & not emanating as much vapor, the vapor/oxygen ratio would be too lean to burn explosively or in a sustainable fashion..and would put a match out like oil or water..
@@francisconti9085 This is correct, even though jet fuel might seem harder to ignite that petrol, or other gases, it will still ignite. Potentially when the disconnection happens, fuel is often vaporised, making it an aerosol that is much easier to ignite than when fluid, so with the right combo of fuel (jet fuel), Oxygen (the air), and heat (static sparks) you could get some kind of burn...
@Случайноерусскоеимя Yes, but I wonder if cold thin air at altitude would deny propagation of a flame front, as fuel droplets would not be vapor, or likely to emanate as much vapor even at the lower pressure..also a spark wouldn't have ENOUGH energy to bring to ignition temperature..🤔
There's nothing there to be worried about. Aircraft are constantly charged with static whether there is visible corona or not. Probably the last thing to be worried about during AAR operations.
Ponder this. I’m flying my drone, at night, about 200 feet cloud cover, in an open field…just beneath so I can visualize. As I circle about a radius of 1/8 mile, I start to notice this faint blue light in the clouds following my drone and keeping its distance. I was just dumbfounded. On one of the passes, the light resembled a rectangular configuration as the broad side faced front to back…there I saw it, a wing pattern of a huge owl that exhibited St. Elmo’s fire off his wings as he flew through the lower cloud cover. He must have been doing recon on my drone.
This really happened or am I hilariously missing something??
@@BigBeans710He'll continue the story after the acid wears off.
Needs more Emilio Estevez, but still very cool video
LOL
I got that John Parr song in my head from this video. "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion).
Hope those guys keep in mind they're in a tiny club of people in the whole world A2A refueling up in the murk at that time... What an elite and wonderful group of men and women we have serving in our .Mil!
That footage is surreal
Mesmerizing aviation.
Just means they're about to hit 88mph...
1:49 the guy she tells you not to worry about
These guys are studs!
Quite common inside the aircraft too. Experienced while flying through a typhoon and thunderstorms. Great Fun! Kind of like burning sagebrush rolling from the cockpit to the aft bulkhead. Then it splatters into a gazillion sparks.
Incredible footage! My mouth was open like a barn door after seeing the electric discharge, sparks everywhere...
I was more amazed at the lack of visibility...that is way too close for comfort
That electricity around jet fuel is scary.
Not really. Its not that flammable and static on the exterior has little chance of doing anything.
Started humming that John Parr song when I was watching this. 😂
The Electric Strike Eagle 😂
Wow i didnt know they do refueling in such dense clouds
Radar until close enough to get a visual.
F-15E for Emperor Palpatine. Just brimming with the dark side of The Force.
The last voice sound so young, I must be getting old.
🎶I can see a new horizon underneath the blazin' sky
I'll be where the *eagle's* flying higher and higher
Gonna be your man in motion, all I need's this pair of wheels
Take me where my future's lyin', St. Elmo's fire 🎶
And yet, HR will ask these guys during a civilian job interview, "But...do you have Profit and Loss experience?"
And then the pilot just dissociates and starts chewing on spreadsheets talking about his dead friends.
"Losses... 104 for the other side."
It’s a unique quandary. We are 22 years old, fully capable and fully in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of extremely high tech military hardware. We execute flawlessly for years. Get out and apply for, oh, I don’t know, rental car job…..nope. It’s a very strange position to find oneself.
Question for the F-15 pilot and his -Talking Map- WSO (sorry, little joke I heard a long time ago. No disrespect intended, just humour), does St Elmo's Fire affect your night vision any? The guy in front looks like he has his visor down hence my question. Thanks to anyone who can answer that. Sort of got vertigo at night once but not due to this. It's nice when you can transition from outside to inside and use the AH. (Training civilian aircraft)
Remember and don't use a mobile phone at the petrol pump.
i believe that is a myth...getting in and out of the car is more dangerous because of static electricity...and of course smoking...
There has never been a fire due to the cell phone.
@@barfy4751 it was sarcasm since these pilots are using jet fuel while the aircraft are sparking with lightning.
@@graememckay9972 gotcha
Thats crazy dude
"WOW"
Seen it many times. Conditions like that. Can't always get over the wx in a KC-130. Navy P-3 guys get it all the time given their mission. Heard stories of basketball sized SE fire moving down the aisle of the P-3. Maybe hype? Don't know about P-8 guys-maybe.
I was a F/E and we used to see it in many different forms in the P-3's. Faint little lightning displays around the cockpit windscreen edges, circles formed by the rotating prop tips, and a cone protruding from the radome.
first pilot sounded kinda stressed. wonder if he was really low on fuel.
" clerk has receipt"
Damn.
Ever see the military movie: The Final Countdown? It almost looks like the vortex effects that happened.
"ShOcKINg"
I read recently that this is gonna be completely automated soon.
I am no expert but that seems to be a whole lot of plasma to be sparking around that much fuel.
That strike Eagle is not armed to do meet and greets
seems very dangerous, a fuel discharge and a static discharge/spark would be catastrophic.
I didn't see Rob Low or Demi Moore not once...
Hahaha!
@@mediamagikgroup Full honesty, didn't know it was a thing other than a movie thanks for that.
I see missiles... that thing is fully armed?
That's crazy.The amount of static electricityJust fuckin grounding out, you're transferring jet fuel.How did you not catch on fire?
Jet fuel is like diesel or kerosene. You can throw a match in a bucket of it and it won't ignite. In the marines, we put jp8 in the old humvees for this reason
15.2 tons of fuel? Yes!
F-15: 18.1 tons
F-15 Strike Eagle: 17.8 tons
15K (15,000 lbs) not tons.
Those missiles have yellow bands. He's ready for war. But why 3 Aim9s and 1 120?
2 ship. 6 aim 9’s and 2 aim 120’s. Redundancy.
But the Strike Eagle isn’t really meant to be a dog fighter. I would expect more AAMRAM’s then Sidewinders.
3 AIM-9s and 2 AIM-120s. at 1:55 you can see the second AMRAAM underneath the right (aircraft's right) CFT.
@@kevint1911 It (F-15A) started out as an air superiority fighter, and the Mud Chicken has proven itself to still be an air superiority fighter.
9Gs is 9Gs.
(I was in the USAF when the F-15A/B began integration, transitioned from F-4s to F-15s, and worked all models F-15A-Es before retiring.)
@@kevint1911 You have it backward. The F-15 was never supposed to be an attack aircraft, but of course they just couldn't help themselves and started slapping a bunch of extra shit on it. The fact that it's effective in that role is a testament to the design of the base aircraft.
Any chance this could cause a fire/explosion during the refueling process or as the disconnect? I sure hope not! God Bless & thanks.
Whole lot of WT experts in the comments desperate to prove how smart they are.
I don't see a single comment you refer to unless they all came back and deleted them.
@@Irishclaus He's just rage baiting. Its quite sad, honestly.
As a Janitorial technician AND TH-cam University graduate i do not condone such atrocious allegations 😅
@@motrhead69 Better than me, I don't know wtf a WT expert is😁
I don't know what a WT expert is, but I am an F-15 expert.
Isn't there danger of an explosion when this happens?
Aircrafts have discharge wicks to allow the static electricity to continue on. Same thing happens when lightning strikes an aircraft.
There is always a nonzero chance of explosion no matter what's going on.
Dont worry this is not a Michael bay movie so no explosions will be happening
Thunderstorms nearby?
Sooo,… no fire hazard in this condition then? Jet fuel and electric sparks…
Correct me if I'm wrong but Saint Elmo's fire around fuel vapors and spray, sounds like a recipe for disaster.
That line on the nose wasn't a line-up indicator to the F-15 pilot?
It's the St. Elmo's Fire, not a line-up!
It is a static discharge strip. Just a strip of metal.
@ Interesting. First time I saw it (was due to this video), and I assumed it was a laser light emitting from the tanker.
Indeed, I the super symmetrical straight 'organized' path (hindsight, obviously a discharge design)
Good stuff. Air refueling at night in the weather is definitely where you earn your check 🫡🇺🇸
I'm confused, whats going on and where is the fire?
Its the static discharge you see on the window of the KC-135 and the tips of the fuel tanks on the F-15.
Is there no concern that it could ignite the fuel?
No, it's cool plasma. It's not hot enough to ignite the fuel.
It’s just kerosene not gasoline
I thought this was a Michael Bolton music video
LOL
When he said you took 15.2, what is the amount? Can someone answer that for me please. Pounds or gallons doesn’t sound right to me. Too little of an amount to do a re-fuel.
I think is 15200 pounds.
@@Rodfather72…oh okay! That makes sense. Thanks!👍🏼
Aircraft fuel is measured in pounds as it affects the aerodynamics of the plane.
@@barrygrant2907 No. It affects the weight and balance. Any aerodynamic effects stemming from that are secondary.
RAF exchange in one of them jets.
AWACS
If those engines, or the passing air, didn't make any noise, that fighter jet would sound like a fvcking Tesla Tower.
Anyone reading this comment who's run an array of spark plugs on a plug tester, you know exactly what sound I'm talking about.
_TtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtTtT_
America 🇺🇸 🫡
"I can climb the highest mountain, cross the wildest sea
I can feel St. Elmo's fire burnin' in me, burnin' in me"
St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)
Song by John Parr
Could've gone BANG!?
Shocking video……hehe.
I'm still so amazed by how our pilots do this! Thanks for protecting our skies!
as seen on this video even the war in the east europe is going-on, a thousand miles away from home our air force is still conducting combat air patrol those mudhen are arm to the teeth for air to air interdiction makes you wonder why?
50.2? Gallons I guess? Seems very little
Bit more than that, boomer said "you took 15.2'. That means 15,200 lbs of fuel. Jet fuel weighs about 6.75 lbs per gallon, so that's about 2,252 gallons.
Ist rainy storm
Dumbo the flying elephant 🐘 in his punk years. Why would people like honest Bob jenerik want to paint over Disney characters that tried to make vulnerable children feel more safe 👍 and secure in a foreign land. 🤔 But was Walt Disney really a saint. Let's stick with a Bambi with no eyes and no legs for now and have a still no I 🦌☮️
They're clearly using the conditions for training. Armchair expert comments are adorable
"But its so dangerous!?!?!?!" lol
this was not a training mission, this was an actual mission over CENTCOM.
You use controlled environments for training. Not an actual freaking disaster!!!. Wow you people are really moronic.
You use controlled environments for training. Not an actual freaking disaster!!!. Wow you people are really moronic
Look at the bands on the missiles. No training.
Kinda smexy
🙏🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲💯
The B-2 or at least some modified versions are always under St. Elmo's fire - insiders call it the "flying capacitor".
Now if only the average civilian knew what the “Plasma” was really for lol. That plasma sheath allows that bird to haul some serious ass. Not only absorb all known radar
@@1tactundra140 ok bubba
@@1tactundra140 I have no idea what the VMO of a field effect B-2 is but surely it's at least within the supersonic regime. Sheep that disparage you think it's just an odd looking 737 with weird geometry and special RAM coatings.
@@1tactundra140 I have no idea what the VMO of a field effect B-2 is but surely it's at least within the supersonic regime. Sheep that disparage you think it's just an odd looking 737 with weird geometry and special RAM coatings.
@1tactundra140 I, too, can confirm hearing from 2 different sources 'hinting as straight disclosure would break their security clearances'
One, perhaps an ONI counter intel op, Richard Doty (who may be fos in counter intel disinformation > WOULD ACTUALLY BE IN A POSITION TO KNOW) claimed he the legacy recovery program had reverse engineered some off planet tech... He only referred to it as a crystal like piece of hardware, rumored to be one of B2's major stealth contributing technologies.
On the highly reputable side I've heard MIT physicists discuss using plasma devices for everything from stealth to FTL travel.
Plasma is a highly novel part of physics which has had relatively and shockingly little DoD funded programs > which means they're black SAP's
So, big mouth- shut up, would ya!?