What Jet Has Twin Square Exhaust?....

Hi all,
Saw something recently that had me stumped. I live approx. 25 miles west of Mildenhall and Lakenheath in the UK. I often see F15 overhead on-route to and from RAF Lakenheath, either F15C & D's or F15E's and as I've been following aircraft for over 30 years I know an F15 engine when I hear one.


A month or so ago around 10pm (so faily dark) but a moonlit evening heard the sound of what I though was a pair of F15 going west to east around 3000ft, when I looked up I saw what sounded and looked like 2 F15's flanking something else. Now where this gets interesting is the aircraft in the centre appeared 50% larger than an F15 similar in as much as it had twin almost vertical tail fins....BUT the exhausts were square and appears to be glowing but much wider than an F15!! F-22 or possibly something else. The engine exhaust outlets appeared to be quite large and square and wider apart than an F15. Thought please...

a reply to: Black Watcher

F-22 is the same size as F-15.

YF-23 is larger, but has no vertical fins.

The Concorde purchased by Club Concorde and tentatively scheduled for a flight this year ?

a reply to: Black Watcher

What were you observing with? Any kind of binoculars, or just the naked eye?

a reply to: Zaphod58


Naked eye, directly over my head no more than 3000ft, the exhausts looked very wide apart!!

Hmmm I wonder if the UK has had a visit from something special

originally posted by: ThePeaceMaker
Hmmm I wonder if the UK has had a visit from something special

Certainly a reasonable speculation. The fact that there was a single aircraft being escorted by two fighters, quite possibly on landing approach to Lakenheath, says that whatever was being escorted was considered more valuable than average. The fact that the escort aircraft were F-15s says that the special aircraft was probably of US origin. A twin engine fighter-looking aircraft 50% larger than an F-15 doesn’t really correspond to anything that is known to be produced in large quantities.

a reply to: 1947boomer
Would they use Lakenheath though as it's a regular spotters place albeit the sighting being at night, spotters are usually glued to anything happening at lakenheath plus the surrounding area is quite populated

I did see on I think it was a RAF Fairford spotters page that someone spotted and strange green glow in the sky but this was the time of a meteor shower

What kind of aircraft is larger than an F-15 and has square exhaust nozzles that are far apart? That's strange.

Do you know what runway they landed on?

If the USAF had a medium bomber, maybe based on a scaled up YF sexy something that is admired by many......nah, no medium bombers.

Could it be what Zaph has stated was a picture of an Eagle in the distance over on the “Weird California Sighting” thread...that looks like an Eagle on steroids....?!?a reply to: Masisoar

a reply to: Silentvulcan

You mean the F15 that looks like a normal F15

Yep....that’s the one...😇a reply to: Woody510

originally posted by: ThePeaceMaker
a reply to: 1947boomer
Would they use Lakenheath though as it's a regular spotters place albeit the sighting being at night, spotters are usually glued to anything happening at lakenheath plus the surrounding area is quite populated

I did see on I think it was a RAF Fairford spotters page that someone spotted and strange green glow in the sky but this was the time of a meteor shower

I don’t know anything in particular about Lakenheath and what it is and isn’t used for. I’m simply going on the fact that the aircraft were at 3000 feet and 25 miles from a military airfield and heading toward it in close formation. That suggests an escorted, straight in landing approach, to me.

I have some difficulty with this.

At night, 3,000ft above the ground, three aircraft in close formation.

Who is flying off of who? So NVGs, close on some strange aircraft with another F-15 on the other side. Why? No reason I can think of. Too disorientating. Too task saturating looking left or right and not in front of you. Same problem if Strike Eagles. Pilot still has to look at aircraft through soda straws and that’s not a thing at 3,000ft.

Anyways some piece of information in this is slightly off. Not saying it didn’t happen. Altitude could be really off. Type of aircraft might be really off.

originally posted by: Masisoar
What kind of aircraft is larger than an F-15 and has square exhaust nozzles that are far apart? That's strange.

Do you know what runway they landed on?

The rectangular exhaust nozzles are an interesting puzzle. I can think of 2 reasons why an aircraft might have 2-D nozzles. One reason would be to make thrust vectoring on the pitch axis easier. That’s only of use for fighter aircraft and the F-22 manages to do it with circular nozzles. This aircraft sounds too big to be a fighter.

The other reason you might go to a 2-D nozzle is for supercruise. This aircraft is starting to sound like a high speed, penetrating attack platform.

I'm thinking a B-1. From the right perspective the twin exhausts could look rectangular.

a reply to: 1947boomer

The F-22 nozzles are rectangular.

a reply to: Zaphod58

How does an F-22 match up size wise with the Eagle? I've never seen a picture of them together to get an idea.

a reply to: JIMC5499

Pretty damn close. An Eagle is 64 feet with a 48 foot wingspan, compared to 62 and 45 on the Raptor.