
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.
Interesting vid. I remember watching an F-16 HUD from Iraq, and the dude was maneuvering like crazy to evade incoming SAMs. In this vid it seems like there’s practically no warning at all.
That’s intense. Whew.
…and its right wing is in the alley in front of the 250. SAM Brigade unit museum in the command building at Banjica barracks, Belgrade. Shoot down by 3. battalion, commanded by Col. Zoltán Dani (S-125M Neva-M). The commander of the shift responsible was Maj. Bosko Dotlic. A much longer version of the video was out there for many years, and shown at a documentary film festival, with some dramatic music/sound effect added in the backgorund.
Unless I’m confusing it for another Serbian shootdown video, I think that longer audio is on the net somewhere…
It’s part of Aviation Museum in Belgrade now:
http://www.pbase.com/image/33081787
I guess “Magic” is the callsign of an E-3 AWACS..right?