F-4 Phantom Jet Slams into Wall with its Afterburner On

[Music] in april of 1988 in a joint effort between the san diego laboratories the united states government and the japanese muto institute of structural mechanics a fully functioning f-4 phantom jet crashed into a reinforced concrete wall at 480 miles per hour [Music] nuclear wars ever since the first nuclear power plant was built in june of 1954 in openins russia the ever looming fear of a devastating wipeout that could impact the world has been present but although there have been a few significant incidents involving nuclear reactions such as the chernobyl and kissstrom disasters or the windscale fire these episodes have never originated from planned terrorist activity [Music] this is mainly because dozens of government agencies from around the world have taken precautionary measures to prevent a disastrous nuclear event building heavily guarded nuclear facilities protected by thick walls [Music] but in 1988 the united states government wanted to test the effectiveness of the reinforced concrete used in the construction of their nuclear facilities the sandia national laboratories founded in 1949 are among the national nuclear security administration's research and development laboratories their primary objectives are developing engineering and testing the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons and high technology in the late 1980s sandia laboratories came up with an idea to explore the concrete strength through a highly unusual test [Music] the test to explore the strength of the concrete structures sandia laboratories came up with the idea of launching a mcdonald douglas f4 phantom 2 supersonic jet at full speed into a rectangular wall of reinforced 12-foot thick concrete the wall would weigh 469 tons 25 times heavier than the aircraft and be placed on an air bearing platform that enabled free movement in the direction of the impact in april of 1988 the test was performed at the sandia laboratory's premises in california under the terms of a contract signed the japanese mutu institute of structural mechanics the engineers installed 16 high-speed framing cameras to record the crash shooting up to 2000 frames per second the fully functional f4 phantom weighed 42 000 pounds and was filled with water to simulate its fuel weight the jet interceptor was loaded under a rocket sled and accelerated to a speed of about 480 miles per hour with the help of rocket boosters it then impacted the reinforced concrete wall head-on and the footage shows the crash from several angles results [Music] the impact atomized the aircraft's tail fuselage and canopy into billions of minute pieces disappearing in a cloud of smoke and fire parts of the destroyed aircraft and bits of crushed engines landed on adjoining terrains the only section of the phantom that remained intact was a small piece from a wing that missed the wall entirely the concrete block only suffered minor structural damage with perforations no more than 2.4 inches deep the target was supported by airbags which enabled it to move with the objective of measuring the force of impact the crash's potency pulled the block back a mere 1.82 meters [Music] it still was a high energy impact as the aircraft's engine exploded into small pieces and experienced an acceleration force of over seven hundred g-forces a year after the test walter van riesemann sandia's containment technology division supervisor spoke at the international conference on structural mechanics in reactor technology about the test's importance quote the crash data are going to give us an unprecedented ability to predict the impact force when an aircraft crashes into a building we'd previously done some fairly accurate computer analysis but the computer models were untried on the real thing not anymore sandia officials later added that although these kind of tests might seem superfluous they are in fact highly critical quote researchers need to estimate the structural response of a building in such an accident to do that they must know how the impact force changes throughout the brief time the crashes in progress in the end the 1988 experiment proved that the reinforced concrete walls to protect the us's nuclear reactors could stop a standard jet from reflecting grave damage on their contained atomic weapons averting a local atomic disaster [Music] you

Channel: Dark Footage

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Keywords: photo, footage, video, crash, caught on camera, caught on tape, caught on video, test, experiment, dark docs

Id: P5IymYOeiSc

Length: 5min 20sec (320 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021