SHOOTING ON BASE-Gilze-Rijen 7ties, 8ties...

[GerritsFinest]

Gilze-Rijen was not really a spotters heaven in the early days of Dutch Spotting… Sometimes practice approaches by KLu F104’s and NF5’s and when you were lucky a Navy Atlantic. Residents like the S11’s en L21’s all operated within the aerodromes boundaries. But when 316SQ arrived here in 1972, more and more enthusiasts (many from Eindhoven) were claiming their photo spot near the Langenbergseweg for ultimate landing shots. Hair-raising situations took place when traffic on that road did not stop for the red traffic lights! Regularly evasive actions had to be taken by the pilots to avoid collisions with crossing cars and trucks. Not many foreign visitors found their way to Gilze-Rijen in the beginning of the seventies. The base got more and more operational and had to be trained for the NATO TACEVAL’s. That included the familiarisation of the cross-servicing and fire brigade in order to handle all kinds of aircraft types for a quick turnaround such as fuel, oxygen and weaponry. Normally they came in via a normal flight plan, but also unexpectedly the so called AMPLE TRAIN flights. For aircraft from abroad the MP and Customs were always informed and most of the time they checked passports and cargo and stayed around toooo long to my opinion because I was planning ON BASE SHOOTING…
Thursday 17th May 1973 was such a trainings event: RF4E 35+70, Mirage 5’s BA43, 57 and BR05, Canadian CF104D 104656 and Harrier XW916. Underlined could not be shot unfortunately.

[CR-74050]

Nice report and great shots again!

Cheers, Dick

[Jonathan]

Unique pictures again, Gerrit. Thanks for sharing. Keep them coming!
Best wishes,
Jonathan

[Bennie]

Months before my 5th birthday, how cool is that?
And.....who would have thought that we would become colleagues (o.k, only for a short time...) some 15 years later, Gerrit?

[Gerard]

wow, great pictures! That's 5 years before I started spotting and I already feel old

Did you have to abuse your "long wide raincoat" again, to hide your camera?

Best regards and keep them coming!
Gerard

[RAMPAGE]

Great set Gerrit...

[Alpha Kilo One]

I nearly hear those howling J-79's of the Staf again
Memories.....

[GerritsFinest]

Thanks guys for the nice remarks! Indeed the long raincoat was very useful, except on sunny dry days, that looked quite suspicious of course. My Air Force grey webbing shouder bag (called Pukkel) was very useful too! With the howling of one Canadian F104 still fresh in the memory, more followed next week:
monday 21 may 1973 till 29th even five CF104's flew the "tiles from the roof" regs:104706, 104786,104788,104822,104837 other visitors:
Friday 18 may 1973 Pembroke BAF OT-ZAD 4
Tuesday 22 may 1973 CT133 133345 still in shiny metal!
Tuesday 29 may 1973 CT133 133393 in olive and CC130E 130327

very nice to see as well :the old infrastructure on the base like the tower and old hangars, what a difference nowadays!

[GerritsFinest]

and two more pictures:

[Bennie]

Do I see a tail of one of the first NF-5 aircraft hiding behind the last Shooting Star??

[Jonathan]

Wow! I keep records of Gilze-Rijen movements since early history. All of these were new for me, so thank you very much Gerrit!!!
Best wishes,
Jonathan

[GerritsFinest]

What makes ‘shooting on base’ easier? Certainly be good friends with cross-servicing and fire brigade. The daily contacts during work and drinking beer afterwards makes a lot of things easier to arrange. I always made large photo prints of visiting aircraft and when there something to celebrate a nice photo was an easy gift and after some time a lot of my photos were present on many walls…
When on Tower or Approach duty you could not walk away of course to make shots, but at Base Ops, which was also situated in the (old) tower, you could sneak out when it was quiet… but gritting my teeth when it was n’t possible, like Wednesday 6 June 1973 when two nice RAF Phantoms passed in front of me on the taxiway, grrr. So:
Friday 1 June 1973: RF4E 3566 > (overshoot)
Monday 4 June 1973: C45 084 MLD >
Wednesday 6 June 1973: Buccaneers XW528 and XW531 from nr 15SQ, and F4’s XV399 and XV473
Friday 8 June 1973 F104’s KLu: D8048, D8093, D8341, D8309,D8318 and a surprise Fouga Magister CM170 7-JG 409!
Monday 18 June 1973 Aloutte 2 XP967 AAC from Luton
Thursday 28 June 1973. A traumatic day… the NF5A K3002 313Sq crashed in front of our eyes near the village of Hulten, the pilot was killed. “Probably hit by lightning’ was the official cause of the accident. Myself and other witnesses had another opinion. The first time (and the last) I took a cigarette! The board of investigation wanted to ask me the next day, but I was on leave in Ermelo where I lived that time. I planned to pre-visit the Air show at Deelen 60 Years Klu. Agreed was that they would pick me up at the base by Aloutte3 and bring me to Gilze-Rijen. So it happened, the A515 was the taxi and also brought me back to Deelen. Shooting must go on!

[mart]

Very interesting thread.

Why did you think the NF-5 crashed then?

[jimmy van drunen]

Very interesting thread.

Why did you think the NF-5 crashed then?

K-3002 NF-5A 3002 315sq w/o 28jun73

[GerritsFinest]

July 1973 was very quiet concerning visiting aircraft, sommer season started. Nevertheless two types you do not see so much in the south were welcome guests:
Tuesday 10 July 1973 two times DO 28 5813 (4088) and 5842 (4117) plus a Piper from Deelen R159
Wednesday 18 July 1973 a Fiat G91T 3411 of WS50! see the photo's below...