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

[bvdboomen]

Great to see you posting again Gerrit!
I love the inside pictures of "my" homebase.

[Key]

with all the previous comments!

Erik

[GerritsFinest]

Saturday 18 June 1977 some 200000 visitors came to the Open Day Klu. The YF16 was the star demonstrator with testpilot Neil Anderson at the controls. The performance was stunning, so was the F15 show and not to forget the A10. Coming from Le Bourget the latter lost his mate during the show on June 3rd crashing after a looping (DM75294). The YF16 showed at Leeuwarden a few day before he came to Gilze.
To avoid the crowd I decided to go the day before and do some operational shots near the taxi track and runway 10. The weather was murky and not ideal for shooting Kodachrome 25… so with my other camera loaded with FP4 I had no problems to handle the bad light situation. As always on the rehearsal taking of on both runways so at the end of the afternoon I paid a quick visit to the flightline on rwy 20. The Fouga MT34 acted as crew ferry and so did the Mir5BD. For the movements check 'showreports' on this website

[GerritsFinest]

and te following:

[GerritsFinest]

and the YF16 parked near the cross servicing

[GerritsFinest]

Tuesday 6 September 1977 hundreds of spectators were present during the arrival of 18 A7D’s from 120TFS Colorado ANG and 188TFS New Mexico ANG. After 8 hrs flying time the three waves of 6 aircraft landed at Gilze-Rijen using Blown callsings. A busy period for spotters always in September as the so-called Coronet-East/Reforger deployments were arriving everywhere in Western Europe. Large flying exercises were held as for instance Cold Fire. It was the first time that a Dutch airbase was selected to become the temporary home of a USA based unit. The new shelter area in which in those days A10’s were expected as a Forward Operation Location (FOL). Two A7’s could be parked inside with folding wings.
Between 6 and 26 September the following A7D’s were present:
Colorado ANG: 70-970, 70-986,71-341, 72-170, 72-196, 72-243, 72-248 73-992, and 73-996
New Mexico ANG: 71-301, 71-302, 71-359, 72-202, 72-224, 72-228, 72-237, 72-245 and 72-263
Transport C141’s: 60135 (29-8), 70011 (2-9), 67957 (5-9), 70031-59398-50256 (6-9) on 26-9 60174 and 50270 were noted. One C141 brought 5000 kg of meat just for an enormous Western BBQ held on Friday 16-9…

[GerritsFinest]

monday 26 September they all flew out in typical Dutch weather...

[GerritsFinest]

and two misty Lifters...

[PhotoFlight]

Wow gerrit its getting better every new post. Waanzinnig wat je toen geplaat hebt

[PhotoFlight]

Were you working on gilze during those days?

[bvdboomen]

Oh yeah! Great again Gerrit!
And I know the open days of 1977 very well... by not being there while my oldest sister was and forgot that I was totally hooked by airplanes already in that time, age of 10.

[Wildpicture]

Thanks for those wonderfull pictures. Seeing that YF-16 on Gilze was my very first real spotting experience! Ah, those days.

[GerritsFinest]

Finally some black and white shots from many I made at take off position, about 10m outside the runway, holy smoke...

[Bennie]

Does this ever stop Gerrit???????



I hope not!

[Soesterberg1954]

It's so good to see all these memories again Gerrit almost 40 yrs ago it seems like yesterday.