[Photo] Fighter jet flies between sea twisters

Each time we receive a weird photo we always wonder whether the image is genuine or photoshopped. Some images are so accurately edited that it is extremely difficult to prove that they were doctored by post-processing softwares.

But, this is not the case.

The image (whose quality is poor because it’s a scan of a print) in this post has been taken well before Photoshop became so famous (we have had a printed copy of this photograph since the mid 1990s). It was taken at Giglio Island, by a photographer who then sold prints of it to aviation enthusiasts who happened to visit his store.

It depicts an Italian Air Force F-104 Starfighter flying over the Tyrrhenian Sea while two sea twisters (tornado) have formed near Giglio Island.

Since the island is quite close to Grosseto airbase, most probably the plane belonged to the local based 4° Stormo (Wing).

It must have been a tense couple of minutes for the badass pilot aboard the missile-with-a-man-in-it.

Image credit: Author’s archive

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About David Cenciotti
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.