I've been thinking about raising something on here for years now, which shows a degree of reluctance on my part, but if I don't raise it then I will never get a possible explanation.
First of all, I'm a complete ignoramus on aviation matters, know next to nothing about different aircraft, etc, but in this context I don't believe that's too important, so please bear with me.
This story is sixteen years old now. I was in London for a few days, almost certainly the early part of March 2002 because I was attending the London Book Fair, which took place at that time of year. Sunday was Booksellers' Day so, being my calling, that was the day I always attended. Monday was sometimes worth going to for me, but Tuesday never so. So, it would have been on either the Monday or Tuesday, it was a nice early Spring day and I elected to sit outside the ground floor café/restaurant at the Barbican Centre in the City of London, with remarkably few others doing the same. Time was lunchtime, around 12.30 to 1.15, I'd say, and suddenly there was this terrible screeching roar in the sky above as a passenger aircraft (if I saw which airline, then I forgot) went almost overhead in a N.E. to S.W. direction seemingly only yards above us at low speed, with an RAF aircraft to one side of it almost as if tied by an umbilical cord. This was only six months after 9/11, and the sound of the aircraft was chillingly similar to that of the first airplane to hit the World Trade Centre, captured on that piece of film. I admit to being full of apprehension and dread, thinking that, whether a terrorist action or not, that plane was going to crash, and quite soon. I got on the phone to my wife and told her what I'd seen and heard, in the expectation that the magnitude of it would shortly become apparent. I didn't know what else to do, phones in those days weren't mini computers and I had no access to any other sources of info. I awaited the air being filled with insistent sirens, etc etc, but none ever transpired and, what's more, the incident was never reported in any newspaper, no news channels, nothing. It was as though I'd dreamed the whole thing up (spoiler- I didn't!) I'd lived and worked in London for decades before that and the only time I'd seen an airplane flying so low was on the approaches to Heathrow, or London City, but it was that awful screeching noise that really got to me. There must have been a news blackout on it all, as thousands of people in the City of London at least must have witnessed it.
So my question here is simple - does anyone else remember this/ heard tell of it or can provide a rational explanation as to what was going on.
Thank you for your forbearance.
