It is an interesting story, Jim. The Wiki entry has as the reason that the
F104 pilot was formating on the fuselage, unable to see the wing properly (over
his shoulder). This implies that the wing was behind him and so that he would
not have been affected by vortices from the wing; perhaps it meant vortices
from the canard, unless there are serious vortices on the leading edge of the
wing.
I should have thought that a test pilot would have been well aware of the risk
of being too close in formation.
Chris
> On 2 Jun 15, at 18:28, Jim Nichols <jhnichols@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:jhnichols@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
> Ed - I just found the Discovery Channel video on-line, and watched it.
> Thanks for the reminder of this piece of history. As to the accident, one
> comment on a different coverage of the event shed some light on the reason
> that Joe Walker got in so close to the XB-70 tip. The commenter said his
> father worked in telemetry at Edwards at the time, and that the photo plane
> had asked him to move in closer for another shot. It seems they
> underestimated the strength of the wing tip vortices, which flipped the F-104
> on its back and over the top of the XB-70, damaging the vertical fins and the
> left wing tip, leading to its loss of control.
--
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