Intercept

We watched the horizon change from pitch-black to gray to a dozen shades of color from violet and blue to red and orange before the sun finally split the horizon with a fiery flash. I lowered my seat and moved my sun visor forward, trying to spare my retinas from the solar assault. It did little good. Until the sun rose higher into the sky, we were essentially flying blind.

I glanced at the mottled panorama passing by beneath us, sullen gray clouds tinged with red from the sun and muted fields of green visible through scattered cloud breaks. England. With the Atlantic behind us, there were less than two hours remaining before we’d touchdown in Germany. We were cleared to a point above East Anglia, then out over the Channel, where we said goodbye to London Military Control and switched to Dutch Mil.

“Good morning, Reach,” the controller answered. “Would you care to participate in a practice air interception?”

There is really only one answer to that question. With our affirmative reply, he cleared us for a descent and began vectoring a flight of two Dutch F-16s toward us. We picked them up on TCAS first, noting their excessive rate of closure. Soon we picked them one of them visually, rapidly approaching from our eight o’clock position. We never saw his wingman, yet our TCAS informed us that he was in our six o’clock position – the kill position. Had we been a hostile aircraft, we never would have made the Dutch coastline.

The F-16 off our wing settled into a wingtip formation with us, perhaps 50 feet off our winglet. We waved and took a few pictures before he waved back, turned up his afterburners, and surged ahead. It sounded like thunder, even over the sound of the airstream, our engines, and the electronic hum of our cockpit. We watched as the fighter broke left and dove downward toward the Channel, quickly lost to our eyes.