The following video and audio were recorded by the U.S. Air Force F-16CG #88-0550 belonging to the 31st Fighter Wing from Aviano airbase, Italy, which was shot down during a combat mission over Serbia during Allied Force.
The F-16, callsign “Hammer 34” was egressing from the target area located near Novi Sad, at 02.00 AM LT on May 2, 1999, when a Serbian surface-to-air missile exploded close to the plane, causing heavy damage to its engine.
Pilot Lt. Col. David Goldfein was eventually able to eject safely from the plane that lost the engine thrust and began to glide towards the ground and was later rescued by a Combat SAR team (on two MH-53J Pave Low and a MH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter) who picked him up before dawn. But this video will let you hear and feel those last few minutes of a fighter pilot on a damaged plane who knows is about to eject behind the enemy lines.
Another detail worth noticing is that the Hammer flight, made of 4 F-16s was talking interplane on a low VHF frequency, 123.450 MHz that is commonly used by General Aviation planes (because it’s easy to remember 1-2-3-4-5), and did not use encrypted comms, something that made their conversation easily intercepted by the Serbians (as occurred also more than a decade later in Libya proving that COMSEC doesn’t imply the use of Have Quick radios in war).
Update:
17 years after the incident (and three years after this article was originally written), in 2016, David Goldfein was appointed the 21st chief of staff of the Air Force. He retired in 2020 as a four star general.
