A UK photographer managed to snap a stunning picture of a test pilot ejecting from a crashing plane on September 13, 1962.
Pilot George Aird lost control of his Lightning F1 fighter on its final approach in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, after an engine fire.
Ten seconds and 30m from landing, the plane suddenly pitched its nose up.
Mick Sutterby turned around to see the plane crashing. (Jim Meads)
With the plane moments from crashing, Aird managed to eject sideways, throwing him clear of the explosion.
And by pure coincidence, local photographer Jim Meads happened to be standing there with a camera.
Meads was near the airfield because he had intended to take a photo of his neighbour, who was also a test pilot.
In the foreground of the photo was a 15-year-old tractor driver, Mick Sutterby, who turned his head after hearing the plane losing control.
Sutterby was not intentionally in Meads’ frame.
Moments before the crash, he was telling the photographer he needed to move out of his path.
The plane crashed close to the runway and even closer to a greenhouse. (Ministry of Defence)
“I stopped to tell him that he shouldn’t be here, I heard a roar and turned round and he took the picture,” Sutterby said in 2011.
“There was not a big explosion when it crashed, just a loud ‘whhooooof’.
“I was later told that if the pilot had ejected a split second later he would have ejected himself into the ground.”
Aird survived the crash, but was not unharmed.
He smashed through the roof of a greenhouse, breaking both of his legs and knocking him unconscious.
He awoke in a garden bed of tomatoes soaked by the sprinklers.
In this photo, both the impact site of the Lightning crash and the gap in the greenhouse roof where Aird smashed through are visible.
The spot in the greenhouse where the pilot crashed through is visible in this photo. (Ministry of Defence)
Aird would recover and return to the skies six months later.
When Meads’ photo was published, it was written off as a fake by many sceptics.
But its authenticity was confirmed when the Ministry of Defence issued a “D Notice” banning its publication.
But the “D Notice” was issued too late.
The photograph had already been printed in the Daily Mirror.