>>4498490 (LB)

It struck me as really odd, also. A guy walks out his door, sees a contrail, notes that it's a VC-25 rather than the mundane 747, so snaps a picture with a hand held zoom camera.

Uh, no.

Let's assume AF1 is lolly-gagging along at 30K ft and a bit over 400 knots. From the included angle, I'd say the picture was taken at a included angle of no more than 30 degrees, probably closer to 20. But 30 makes the math easy. So AF1 was 6 miles up. With an observation angle of 30, that makes line of sight distance 12 miles. This guy claims he spotted a plane the size of a large ranch house 12 miles away, recognized the significance of the model/paint scheme and managed to pan and zoom in on it whilst it streaks through the sky at 500 MPH. With a hand held.

Bullshit.

My guess, if that picture time/space is true at all, is the pic was taken from an observation plane. Likely military. Likely Brit military. And released for what purpose we might wonder.