I've got a pretty good one- from April of 2003. It is a pretty long story so be prepared.
I was flying North over Oman on an Operation Iraqi Freedom mission. Our Radar equipment was having some issues, but we wouldn't realize this until later. In front of us was a line of thunderstorms stretching from well inside Saudi Arabia, all the way across Oman and the Persian Gulf into Iran. Unfortunately the Saudis were not kind enough to grant us over flight, and obviously going over Iran to get around this line of storms was not an option. Therefore, we had to find a hole and hope for the best.
Right next to the Saudi border, our Radar Navigator found what appeared to be a 30-40 mile break in the line of storms. Visually it was impossible to confirm this, since it was around midnight local, and we were already in thick IMC. As we approached the line, flashes outside from lightning that we couldn't see (due to the thick IMC) became more frequent and intense. The static on the radios became so loud and constant that we lost radio contact with the air traffic controller in Oman (Muskat control). Then we entered a light chop (turbulence), and I ordered my crew to strap into their ejection seats with chutes and helmets on. Just as I was finishing that sentence, we got hit by a hellacious wind sheer that almost instantaneously kicked off our autopilot and picked up the right wing about 60 degrees. I could tell it was a right forward quartering wind sheer, because we gained about 75 knots of airspeed in the blink of an eye.
I pulled the throttles back in an attempt to maintain turbulent air/thunderstorm penetration airspeed, and fought to level the wings. The chop became so violent that I could barely make out the instruments. Saint Elmo’s fire completely enveloped the aircraft, discharging into the atmosphere every 3-5 seconds. Frequent lightning was visible all around us despite the thickness of the cloud we were in. At this point I still only had my lap belt and headset on- I couldn't take my hands off the controls, since it took every ounce of effort and concentration I had to prevent a total loss of aircraft control. Under the circumstances I didn't even feel comfortable transferring aircraft control to the copilot so I could strap in.
After several brutal minutes of this, the wind direction instantly shifted to a left quartering wind sheer, and we lost 110 knots without warning. 250 is our thunderstorm penetration airspeed- so that loss of airspeed put us at 140 knots. Unfortunately a B-52 at FL370 at combat gross weights will stall somewhere around 200 knots. 140 obviously isn't flying airspeed, so we started falling like a rock.
As soon as I saw the airspeed go from 250-ish to 140-ish, I slammed the throttles to the firewall and dumped the nose to about 10-15 degrees nose low. To make matters worse, the variable nature of the wind was alternately picking up one wing, and then the other. As we were losing altitude I saw up to 75 degrees of bank. I was going from stop to stop on the yoke and rudders in my efforts to keep the aircraft from rolling over. Passing FL300 the airspeed had built up to about 210 knots indicated, and lateral control improved to the point that I could keep the bank angle less than 30 degrees. I leveled off at around FL270, pulled the throttles back to MRT, and allowed the airspeed to build back up to around 250 before initiating a climb back to our assigned altitude of FL370. The turbulence subsided, and slowly we entered VMC conditions. By the time our radios cleared up enough for us to talk to anyone, we were in UAE airspace at FL370. None of the controllers said a word about the 10,000 foot altitude deviation- I'm not sure they were ever even aware of it.
As far as we were able to determine later, there was a problem with the power output of our Radar that made the weather on the Radar scope look much less intense than it really was. Therefore, what looked like a rain shower between two thunderstorms was in fact a developing thunderstorm between two extremely intense, mature thunderstorms.
Why is there never footage of someone actually penetrating anything (weather wise) interesting?
