Daily Photo

If anything can go wrong, it will. Sometimes, that will be at an air show with sixty thousand spectators that you’d rather not plough a jet into. This is USAF Captain Christopher Stricklin, of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration team, ejecting less than a second before his $20 million F-16C Falcon fighter jet hit the ground at an air show at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho on 14 September 2003. He’d miscalculated a half reverse Cuban eight manoeuvre.

At least the ACES II ejection seat performed flawlessly, and Stricklin was uninjured.

Photo: “Split-second shot” by U.S. Staff Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III, taken on a Nikon D1X at 1/1000 second on 14 September 2003. US Government public domain.