German F-104 flys below tree tops down roads

[rjmt]

I read this on an old aviation blog
ether this guy and I were at the same base in west Germany on the same day, or German pilots did this on a regular basis

"However the German Starfighters flew ground-attack training sorties without external fuel tanks too as Gregory Rush, former US Air Force Veteran, remembers on Quora. ' walking with a buddy down a snowy icy road to work at an American air base in West Germany during a major military exercise, noticing a telltale whisper in the sky, and then both of us stopped dead with our mouths wide open as we were approached very swiftly by a German Air Force F-104 jet, flying down the road so low that he was below the span of the power lines."

'In the couple of seconds before he passed overhead I saw the power lines bowing upwards on either side of the road, from the pressure wave he was pushing in front of him. We snapped our heads towards each other, thinking; "You Gotta be bubblegumtin' Me!". Then I was airborne as we both dived into a dirty & icy ditch.

'German pilots are very good, and very crazy.

Rush concludes;

'People will still tell me that this plane would never, ever, ever be flown in the way I've described. Well I just say; "That's what happens in your life, this is what happened in mine!"

1971 - we were on alert and as Radiation Safety NCO, I was sitting outside the door to our bomb shelter, reading a book
snowy day, but I was dressed in an AF Artic Parka, just didn't want to sit in the confines of the shelter
a shadow passed overhead, then an F-104 pulled up into a vertical climb, did a barrel roll to simulate throwing his weapon off, flipped on it's back and hit afterburner
we were then notified that WE WERE DEAD
I heard from one of the MPs at the base gate, this guy came down the access road to Ramstein from the East at about 150'

the valley leading into Ramstein had an anti aircraft defense system with Vulcan anti-aircraft guns on a radar trigger, with a designated kill zone, with no civilian structures in it
this German pilot was flying so low, in fact below the tree tops, he never triggered the radar system of the Vulcans

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[Provincial]

Lockheed test pilot (and air racer) Daryl Greenameyer set a world speed record in a F-104 for flight over a closed course. I believe it was at a very low altitude. They parked cars on Edwards Dry Lake bed to mark the ends of the course. When he passed over one car, the shock wave blew out the windows, blew open the trunk, and rolled the car over several times.

Germany had a horrible safety record with F-104's. The airplane had enough problems, but the Germans were famous for flying them VERY low, which didn't help safety at all. They still fly low. My son is in the glider club at the Free University of Berlin, and a Eurofighter passed over their airfield early one morning last year at about 75 feet altitude and high subsonic speed. Fortunately, glider flights had not yet started, but they were hooking up the first one to the tow winch at that moment.