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The RAAF has released an interactive in-cockpit video showing a Super Hornet flying just 70 metres from Brisbane’s skyscrapers.
The 360-degree footage, which you can view below, was recorded while the aircraft was rehearsing for this month’s Riverfire festival.
Australia originally bought the Super Hornet to act as a stopgap between the retirement of the RAAF’s Classic Hornets and F-111s and the delayed arrival of their true successor, the fifth-generation F-35.
Today, the RAAF has 24 Super Hornets and 11 Growlers, which have also participated in Exercise Pitch Black in the Northern Territory and Exercise Bersama Shield on the Malaysian Peninsula.
Both models are operated out of RAAF Base Amberley in Queensland after arriving in 2010 and achieved final operational capability in 2012.
The US navy has a fleet of more than 600 Super Hornets, and the aircraft was flown in the new Top Gun film.
RAAF aircraft appearing to ‘weave’ between Brisbane skyscrapers has become an annual event in the Queensland capital, with the videos regularly going viral.
Last year, Australian Aviation reported how a then-three-year-old video of Globemaster received more than 100,000 likes and 6,000 comments on the discussion website Reddit.
Reports at the time suggested the aircraft flew at an altitude of 100 metres and cruised at 300km/h.
Riverfire draws an estimated 500,000 attendees each year and, in 2022, opened, rather than closed, the Brisbane Festival in the city’s South Bank.
chris
says:Ok, so how do they mitigate the risk of say birdstrike at that altitude and it’s consequences, particularly above the river. Also, very many cranes (of the steel variety that is!)