The more I viewed it, pausing here and there, the more discrepancies became visible. The tape was evidently a composite of footage of a real airplane and footage of a radio-controlled model rigged to jettison a wing. It just looks like a model, the way ships being tossed by storms at sea in old movies look like toy ships. The airplane seems to have almost no momentum, but just bounces sharply once and stops. The airplane lands right in front of the camera - already a suspicious detail, since unexpected and freakish occurrences seldom allow for ideal camera placement - and the dynamics of its landing are unrealistic. The exclamations of onlookers, heard in the background, don’t have quite the tone of fascinated dismay that the spectacle of the imminent death of a human being usually evokes. The wing broke at the wrong time, during a low-G maneuver. My own first reaction on seeing the video was that it was a fake, not only because I strongly doubted that the maneuver was even possible, but also because of internal evidence. The next wave, which came from nonpilot friends, displayed a more robust skepticism: Is this really possible?

Many people in many countries sent me this video the subject lines of the first few e-mails, which came from pilots, tended to marvel at the display of coolness and flying skill. A few months ago, the talk of the internet was a YouTube video of a stunt plane that lost a wing in flight and nevertheless managed to land safely.

Aircraft missing half wing