This is a shot of the Sukhoi 27 that crashed at the air show last weekend in the Ukraine. A few seconds after this picture was taken, almost everyone you see in it was severely injured...or dead. At least seventy people died in the worst air show accident in history.

The crew ejected and survived, but they may have trouble sleeping for the rest of their lives.

Hmmmm....
I had an immediate reaction to this photo: horror, and an odd identification with the spectators.

However, I'm not certain this wasn't Photoshopped; look at the scale of the Sukhoi, beyond the cargo plane in the foreground, and esp as compared with the people on the ground. A cargo plane is big, and I would hazard a guess that even this one is as large as, or bigger than a fighter, and the Sukhoi would appear to be at least as large.

Look behind the people and the fighter; there's already a pretty big smoke plume coming up; looks to me like that's what the people are reacting to.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe this is a pic of a heavily damaged fighter, probably crashing into the ground, but is just seems, well, wrong.

Can someone educate me on this?

the plane in the pic is coming towards the photographer. It's already hit the ground once, causing all the damage you see to the wing and the underbelly.

check out:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/07/27/ukraine.airshow/index.html
that sequence.

it's got a picture taken a split-second before this one, from about the same angle. the fighter digs its wing into the ground, plants it's nose into the dirt, and sort of vaults over backwards, then explodes. imagine the nose of the plane stuck in the ground, and the tail rotating around from the right side to the left side of the photo, coming _down_ onto the people in the picture, rather than crashing away from them. the dust cloud is from the initial impact, and the flames from the dying engines will also attest to the plane actually moving right to left in the photo, rather than the seeming obvious left-right.

and no, that's a small twin-turboprop transport, nothing large, though it is, and looks, bigger than the fighter. the human scale is about right for the fighter being right on top of the people. so, in my opinion, i'd weigh in that it's a legit photo, or perhaps a still from the event film.

Although I have very limited knowledge of airplanes, I also believe that this is a photoshop cut and paste.

One of the theories for the cause of the crash is that the engines failed for some reason. The video footage appears to support this theory. However, in the photo above, the engines appear to be going full blast.

I would also have expected to see pieces of metal flying up from around the nose of the plane, which appears to have already touched the ground.

In the video footage that was shown on television here, the actual crash was obscured by a building of some time. I don't see the building in this picture.

Therefore, I think it's a fake.

Andy,
Thanks for the feedback. I have reviewed the referenced photos, and agree that this is a pic of a fighter hitting the ground; also, as in one of the CNN photos, there is indeed a dust cloud "behind" (in the crash path of) the fighter before this point in the crash sequence. The engines look, to me, like they're dying and I agree with your R-L rotation given the direction of the exhaust flume, engines dying but fuel rich.

Don't get me wrong, I believe this is the plane, but I still have a problem with the scale; whether the a/c is approaching or receding the scale problem of the people in the foreground and the fighter still seems odd. I have casually looked for a launch-rail length of an SU27 without success, and this might help me to get a grip on the scale of the SU27.

Thanks for writing back.

Bear in mind, you're accusing Time, Inc. of doctoring news photos (note the URL of the image).

If you're right, this is a major scoop. I don't have a high opinion of Time in general, as far as news credibility, but even I wouldn't accuse them of that. If you're going to do so, you'd better marshal better arguments.

Well,
I am not accusing anybody of anything, and I am not an expert in crash photography. Your source of the photo was uncited, and no slight toward TimeLife or their no-doubt ravenous legal staff is implied.

I feel for the families of thosed pictured; they probably didn't enjoy the next few seconds. If you say it's real then it's real, it just boggles the mind to think of an agile fighter as being that large.

BigAl

PS: What URL?

If you right-click over the picture, you'll get an option to copy the URL of the link, which you can copy into another file (like notepad, or a browser).

You'd be surprised at how large modern jet fighters are. They're bigger than most WWII bombers...

OK, I'm done.
Thanks for the pic and the info.

Boeing B-17 (biggish WWII bomber): Length 79ft9in, Wing span 103ft9in, 65,000lbs fully loaded.

Sukhoi SU-27: Length 72ft., Wing span 48ft, 66,000lbs fully loaded.

pretty big, yes. also, it seems to me that it appears to be about the correct size in the photo.

(and Doug - engines at "full blast" look more like this [http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/Apr1999/990407-N-5906L-001.jpg], not the wafting flames in the airshow photo. since jet exhaust moves at thousands of miles an hour, it's unlikely to be affected by a little [relatively] side-to-side motion. just an observation on my part.) Also, since it _was_ an airshow, there will exist film and stills recorded from hundreds if not thousands of vantage points, so it doesn't surprise me that in some shots there's a building, and in some there's not.

I choose to think it's legit because i prefer the idea of a lucky photographer to the notion that someone's that good with photoshop.

I wonder how "lucky" the photographer was. Unless (s)he had a long lens, it looks too close for comfort to me...

I was pointed this direction by Gut Rumbles, for the photo, which is incredible, but I thought I'd let you know, just reading the paragraphs comparing notes and knowledge was good reading for me. I really enjoy the open forum. Keep up the good work !

I tried to find out more about the photographer or what may have happened to them. Found the Time page for the picture, at :

http://www.time.com/time/potw/20020802/index.html

Tried to track the image down through Getty Images at www.newsmakers.com (no link, blah, hate sites like that), they've got the photo there accredited to one Oleksi Shinkarenko. At that point, i googled and "discovered" a second photo by him, taken a split-second after that one.

In it, apparently the jet has rotated about 180 degrees from before, has shed a lot of parts, and is beginning to seriously explode. yike.

Now, air show photography... I'd suspect that, based on the foreground/background compression, he was using a fairly long lens (300mm-ish?), and since the plane seems to be mostly moving right-left from his perspective, i'd wager that he was outside the danger area, but would definitely be feeling some intense heat. Since I can't find any casualty lists, I can't be certain, though....

This is officially giving me the creeps, though. :/

Yes the su-27 is a technical marvel. It is a large aircraft by modern fighter standards yet boasts some of the best flight characteristics you can find in a aircaft. And the Russians are currently designing an extremely maneuverable vehicle Su-27 with thrust vectoring and forward canards that allow for total stability during extreme angle of attack maneuvers.

It's already capable of some pretty extreme AOA maneuvers. I think that it's patented the "cobra," in which it does an extreme pitchup, almost rearing over on its back, and then recovers back into level flight.

I'll confess to not knowing the value of it, though, unless it's to do a rapid deceleration and confound its opponent.

Yes the Cobra maneuvar would be effective for jinking a bandit that was close in right on your tail.

The footage I saw of Su-27 with the EMV package started a Cobra but instead completly flipped backwards and actually flew backwards for several seconds and then powered back forward the opposite direction.

OK here is the opinion of a person who is very familiar with war planes, the scale is correct! the an-32 cline (the small transport plane) and the su-27 flanker are at the correct scale. infact most peopel dont know that our F-15E super eagles are actually larger than most fighters in the free world and is even larger than the flanker. but all in all the damage to the engine does not support the flame that is coming from the exhaust of the su-27. when an engine sustains that much damage one of two things normally occur it either stops working or explodes. the lack of flames, and the lack of fumes coming from the engine or the exhaust also tell me that the picture has been doctored in some way. if you go to cnn.com and view the actual crash footage you can see that after the place hits the ground the first time there is a considerable ammount of black fumes coming from the exhuast, and it trails untill the plane eventually explodes. I am not a photo analyst so I can not say that this picture is definently fake or has been doctored, but to me the picture does not seam like it follows the live film you can find on cnn.com

Okay I was incorrect about the Extremely manueverable vehicle acronym. I found out that it is really called Supermaneuverability. Pretty lengthy article about it here.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj88/siuru.html

It must have been a ;long lens as that is what is needed in air shows. You'd be suprised at how small a fighter looks, even very close, when taken with a standard 50mm lens.

One of the effects of using a long lens is that it "pulls" the image closer to you. It therefore makes and object that is further away seem larger in comparison to a closer object. A wide lens does the opposite. This is often used creatively, for example making someone's head look larger than the rest of their body.

The SU-27 is a VERY large fighter. I would not consider it fake because of the presumed enlargement of the plane. It is simply a large plane. The transport you see is not. Just a two engines that produce less than a third the power the Su does.

would not the fumes from the engines be behind the wings and stabalizers beacuse fo the angle of rotation. Perhaps this is why you see no fumes coming from the damaged engines.

I saw the whole film. I saw the resulting carnage afterwards. Absolutely sickening. I'll never forget it. The "photo" is actually a vidcap from the film - it is real.

@LOOK@

HISTORIC FOOTAGE

AZERTY

This is a very amazing photo, I can't even think what the person shooting the picure was thinking.This comes to show that danger should also be expected from the ground up, not just down from the pilots point of view.

This is a very amazing photo, I can't even think what the person shooting the picure was thinking.This comes to show that danger should also be expected from the ground up, not just down from the pilots point of view.

This is an amazing photo, I can't even thik of what was going through the mind of the person taking the photo after the incident. This comes to show that safety should be considered alot more often, even at the least expected events.

Pic looks about right-having had the privelage of flying alongside a Su27 in a Tornado F3 I can testify to its enormity, but you could not comprehend just how manouverable this thing is!
If it is rolling on its nose the exhaust smoke would be behind the tail. Also it is very probable the aircraft suffered an engine failure (on no.1 by the looks of it)as although its display is pretty extreme it is not too taxing to any of its flight control systems-meaning it was probably an engine problem which caused it to depart normal flight and get so close to the (very unfortunate) crowd

To Rand and Hefty,
Apparently the 'Cobra'is used in an attempt to negate radar signature.