Decades-old image shows airshow collision, not 'US fighter jet shot down by Russia'
- Published on September 27, 2024 at 04:13
- 3 min read
- By Tommy WANG, AFP Hong Kong
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"A US F16 fighter jet was shot down on the 28th in airspace over the Black Sea after refusing to obey Russian orders. The video was made public," read the simplified Chinese caption to a TikTok video shared on September 23, 2024.
The video appears to show an image of a fighter jet in flames, followed by photos of US defence chief Lloyd Austin and Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
Sticker text on the video claims Zakharova said: "Games shouldn't be played in a war zone."
The image was also shared in similar clips on the Chinese short video app Douyin along with the false claim.
They circulated weeks after Ukraine said a US-made F-16 fighter jet had crashed in combat, killing the pilot (archived link).
The military said the plane and pilot crashed during a combat mission after having shot down incoming Russian missiles.
The crash of the F-16 -- the first reported loss of the supersonic aircraft -- was a high-profile setback for Kyiv, which had lobbied the West to send the advanced fighter jet for months.
The United States is a key military backer of Ukraine, and has provided around $175 billion in both military and economic assistance to Kyiv since Russia's February 2022 invasion (archived link).
The image circulating online, however, does not show the F-16 that crashed and there have been no official reports of Russia shooting down a US military jet in the region.
Airshow collision
Reverse image and keyword searches on Google led to the same image of the fighter jet in flames on the Air Team Images website (archived link).
The picture in the falsely shared video appears to have been flipped horizontally.
The Air Team Images photo is credited to photographer Carl Ford, and stated it was taken on July 24, 1993 in Fairford, United Kingdom.
Its description read: "The first of a sequence of photos of the mid-air collision between two Russian MiG-29s. No one was killed or seriously injured in the incident. The pilot can be seen ejecting."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image as seen in the falsely shared TikTok video (left) and the photo on the Air Team Images website (right):
Ford also posted the same photo on his Flickr account on October 15, 2015 (archived link).
The photo has previously been falsely linked to the war in Ukraine, which AFP debunked in March 2022.
At the time, Ford told AFP: "This is my photograph and it's one in a sequence of 11 images of Russian planes I took with a motor drive on my Nikon F.3 HP on 24 July 1993."
The accident was covered by the UK's Independent newspaper on July 26, 1993, which reported that it had occurred at the International Air Tattoo held at the Fairford Royal Air Force base (archived link).
AFP has debunked other misinformation about the war in Ukraine here.
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