Prominently featured on The Aviationist web site, one of the best cockpit videos ever.
What video? This video:
I beg to differ. This video is better in every way:
Now that you've watched them both, let me explain where I'm coming from.
If by "best" you mean what'll be most popular with the YouTube yokels, the 2013 video will be a winner. It's a nonstop thrill ride with lots of high-speed low-level action. If you've never flown, this is probably what you dream it's like. And it is, but if you do become a fighter pilot, the kind of flying shown here will amount to less than one percent of what you'll ever do with an airplane.
If by "best" you mean a video that shows what flying fighters is like, the 2012 video is the one. It follows a formation of Eagle pilots on a typical training mission: flying dissimilar air combat against Navy F-18s, interpreting bullseye calls from AWACS controllers, sorting and targeting opponents from beyond visual range, taking simulated long-range missile shots, reacting defensively to radar warning receiver indications when the Navy pilots take their own long-range shots. After the DACT portion of the mission the pilots refuel on a KC-135R tanker, then fly visual combat against each other, starting from perch setups and maneuvering to get close-in Sidewinder and gun shots, followed by a return to base and landing. It's the real thing, and of the two videos, it's the one fighter pilots would choose.
Some quick background: the Raytheon Trophy is an annual award given to the top air-superiority squadron in the US Air Force. It used to be called the Hughes Trophy, and when I flew for the 32nd Tactical Fighter Squadron Wolfhounds in the Netherlands, we won back-to-back Hughes Trophies in 1979 and 1980. The 2011 Raytheon Trophy was awarded to the 67th Fighter Squadron Fighting Cocks at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan. The 2012 Raytheon Trophy was awarded to the 44th FS Vampires, also at Kadena (and by the way the squadron I flew for from 1989 to 1992). The 2013 Raytheon Trophy was awarded once again to Kadena's 67th FS Fighting Cocks.
Now it gets a little confusing. When you watch the 2012 Raytheon Award video, the second of the two videos embedded above, you'll think the 2012 award was given to the 67th Fighting Cocks, because the video features 67th FS jets and pilots. I've since learned the title is a screwup. It's actually the 2011 Raytheon Award Video, from the first year the Fighting Cocks won. There's another 2012 Raytheon Award Video (click to see it), this one correctly titled, since it's about the 44th FS Vampires, who won in 2012. The 2013 Raytheon Award Video, the first of the two videos embedded above, is at least correctly titled, in that the 67th FS Fighting Cocks won the trophy again in 2013.
Okay, then. Are these videos officially sanctioned, either by Raytheon or the USAF? The 2012 video (actually 2011) probably was, but I have my doubts about the 2013 video.
In my day, and I doubt the rules have changed, cameras and video recorders in single-seat cockpits were a no-no. A few midair collisions and ground impacts were found to be the result of pilots misjudging closure rates because they were looking through camera viewfinders rather that at the real world outside; the USAF responded by simply banning hand-held cameras from fighter cockpits. When we flew air defense missions in the F-15 we were allowed to use 35mm SLR cameras, but only for the purposes of photographing Soviet aircraft we intercepted. We could never take those cameras on normal training missions.
Today we have GoPro cameras. They can be mounted on helmets or pretty much anywhere in the cockpit to produce the kind of pilot's view action shots you see in the videos above. But they're still cameras, and I expect USAF rules haven't changed. Nevertheless, there are a ton of GoPro fighter videos on YouTube, and I have to believe the pilots involved in creating them had permission ... if they didn't, the videos would probably not be on YouTube where anyone could see them. Of course the videos could have been filmed without permission and then posted to YouTube by unauthorized persons, but if that were the case some squadron and wing commanders would have been fired over them, and I would have heard of that. So I'm taking it as a given that these two videos at least were filmed with USAF approval.
If I were the king of the Air Force, I'd be proud of the 2012 (actually 2011) video. I used it myself as part of the F-15 Eagle presentation I gave at the Pima Air & Space Museum last September. I don't think I've ever seen anyone do a better job of capturing the look, sound, and feel of what flying F-15s is actually like. Equally important, it shows the professionalism required of fighter pilots and military pilots in general. There's nothing easy about it: mastering those highly specialized skills takes years of study, training, and practice, not to mention motivation and discipline. Even though the air combat shown in that video is spectacular, with lots of turning and burning and vertical maneuvering, there's not a bit of hot-dogging.
The 2013 video? It's basically nothing but hot-dogging. Yeah, whoever filmed it would probably argue that those inverted ridge crossings and extreme low-level runs are valid tactical maneuvers, but that's not the message the video conveys. What it seems to be saying is that flying F-15s is the ultimate amusement park ride, and that screaming over the ground at tree-top level ... to no useful purpose whatever ... is all fighter pilots do. Worse yet, a couple of the low-level sequences appear to violate minimum altitude rules (watch for the shadows), indicating a serious flight discipline problem. Oh, and did you catch the X-rated lyrics in the sound track? I can see some viewers asking, "Is this what the Air Force does with my tax dollars?" The video is just overwhelmingly unprofessional. If I were king of the Air Force, I'd keep it in the drawer for private viewing, along with my stash of porn DVDs.
I can't believe either Raytheon or the USAF had anything to do with the 2013 video, the one The Aviationist calls "one of the best cockpit videos ever."
Best for the rubes, maybe, but not for the pros.