Date:         Sun, 21 Oct 2007 10:54:08 -0700
Reply-To:     John Bange <jbange@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         John Bange <jbange@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: SVC: Link to T-3 Foto
In-Reply-To:  <f05100300c3402a6c82eb@218.101.117.65>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Found the pic:

http://tinyurl.com/3hv99

It's a spoof. The roof wac CUT off, and a piece of folded metal
> (possibly the roof after being folded) attached to the plane's wing.


Ehhhh..... I dunno. The metal of the roof is pretty well formed to the
outboard wing pylon on the F3 Tornado. It'd be pretty hard to bend it up
like that and then mount it.

Car roofs do not tear off when they hit low objects; leave that for
> Hollywood. And if they did manage to anyway, they wouldn't leave
> straight edges on the vehicle's undistorted pillars.


You can't see the T3 or pillar attachment points clearly enough to tell
whether they were cut or simply ripped loose at the spot welds True, vehicle
roofs don't just shear off when run against a lateral obstruction, but this
one doesn't look like that's what happened. The T3 didn't hit the wing, but
rather it looks like the low hanging outer weapons station pylon (see <
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2pf5cm>) actually hooked just under the leading
edge of the roof, through the windshield. What happens when you pull very
hard and very quickly backwards and slightly inward/upwards on a T3 roof
from the front? Seems like maybe the spot welds at the tops of the A-pillars
would pop loose, followed by the B, C, and D pillars...

If the original image could be examined, it might show that it's the
> image that's a fake, rather than go through the hassles of deroofing
> a bus and hanging a piece of metal from a plane's wing.


There's a couple good clues it's not a photoshopped, even in the lo-res
image we have. First, the reflection of the crumpled roof can be seen in the
shiny paint on the underside of the Tornado's wing. Second, the illumination
of the roofless T3 and far background behind the T3 is thoroughly
consistent. Given that, the only other way it could have been faked would be
if it was actually physically staged. Since the T3, the Tornado aircraft,
and the strip they're all parked on are all obviously German Air Force
property, it seems unlikely that anyone would be wiling to risk their
military career for a "funny" picture. I doubt the Luftwaffe would look
kindly upon someone hanging a heavy chunk of scrap metal from a wing pylon
of a multi-million Euro aircraft. Seems to me the only reasonable
explanation is that what looks like happened, did.

--
John Bange
'90 Vanagon - "Geldsauger"