Here is what happened during June or July 1979, I don't remember the exact date. This Mirage IIIE of EC 1/2 "Cigognes" (N°423 / 2-EL) was flown by a pilot of EC 3/2 "Alsace", Sergent-Chef Serge Gaerni, on an air combat patrol against two Jaguars. Serge ended up making a full rear sector gun pass against one of the Jaguars with high closing speed. He ended his gun pass so close to the Jaguar's tail that he got caught inside its wake, not managing to break away. At the very last moment he succeded and avoided collision, but he pulled so hard on the stick that he exceded by far the allowable g-limit, bending the main spar in the process. The entire airframe suffered, some rivets popping away here and there. Fortunately he managed to land the plane.
 This Mirage was damaged beyond repair capability at Wing level and had to be dismantled prior to transportation by truck to the Atelier Industriel de l'Air in Clermont-Ferrand/Aulnat for a complete overhaul.
 The light side of the thing is that it allows us to see a Mirage under a very unusual aspect, and to discover some details that are usually hardly visible. These pictures should be useful for modellers and painters alike.
Best regards,
Here are some pictures I took in September 1980 at the Centre d'Essais en Vol (Air Test Centre) in Bretigny (LFPY), an airbase located approximately 20 miles South of Paris and that boasted one of the longest runways in France. Aerial activity has been brought to a halt in 2001 due to the vicinity of Paris. Worthy of note on these pictures is the Mirage IIIE prototype (N°01) which spent all of its career with the Centre d'Essais en Vol. This machine was used to test various equipments, and therefore was adorned with a great variety of nose shapes.
Another plane of interest is Mirage IIIB N°235. Yes, it is a Mirage IIIB, as the serial number, the tail fairing and the fin shape indicate, and definitely not a IIIBE as the nose cone would tend to suggest. Remember: CEV aircraft most of the time were adorned with unusual nose shapes!
The unusual position of the fuselage roundel on both aircraft is worthy of note, too. At that time (1980) CEV still used several Gloster Meteor twin-seaters, both NF.11s and NF.14s. Although more than 30 yeas old the Meteors were much appreciated as test aircraft, for three reasons:
But the Meteor is definitely beyond the scope of this site!
Best regards,
Here are some pictures I took a very long time ago (it was in 1981). We were celebrating our Squadron's 40th Anniversary – it had been created as part of the Free French Forces in 1941 and then served within the RAF as 341 Sqn "Alsace" – and we had tried to gather as many types of planes having served in our markings as possible. One not very obvious choice was the Vampire. Our Squadron had been one of the very first flying Vampires in France. At that time, many Vampires were still flying in Switzerland. So I made a request to the Swiss Embassy, albeit with no hope at all. Those guys are neutral, and they never (at that time) had allowed military aircraft to fly outside of their boundaries. Yet, much to my surprise, we got a positive answer a few weeks later! Although the answer was a little bit surprising: "Well, you know, I'm the Commanding Officer of the Flying School in Sion, I have been requested by my Headquarters to send two Vampires for your airshow. But the Vampires are by no means recent aircraft, this is not very representative of the Swiss Air Force. Would you mind if we repaint them in French Markings?" You can imagine my answer! The next day I sent them a file with all necessary details (which they didn't send back, unfortunately).
 For some unknown reason, they painted a single seater Mk.6 and a twin-seat trainer Mk.55 (the "unknown" reason been that our Squadron C.O. had requested a twin-seater in the hope of making a right seat ride, which he didn't do). But, 26 years later, his preposterous request finally makes sense. This obviously has been the only military – I mean not civilian owned - twin-seat Vampire ever to fly in French markings!
(Just look at the picture with a Mirage IIIE (the pilot was CDT – and later GEN - Nicolas) overshooting the two Vampires with the SEPR 844 rocket engine on; looks to me like a Tomcat overshooting a Zero in "The Final Countdown", yet this was pure reality, not like in the movie picture).
Here are at last the photos of the Vampire Flight including the flypast over Dijon Air Force Base – and of what happened afterwards too. We were definitely unlucky that day, the weather was very poor.
 Above are the participants of this flight, from left to right: Hauptmann Egger (the driver of the twin-seater), Oberleutnant Bohnenblust (as far as I remenber,the driver of the single-seater), Commandant Jean-Michel Nicolas (the one who managed to crack his SEPR 844 rocket engine), an NCO whose name has escaped me (it was 26 years ago!) and who was riding right seat in the twin-seater Vampire, and Capitaine Patrick Porchier (the one who didn't manage to fire his faulty rocket engine). Missing on the photograph are Lieutenant-Colonel Laporte, the pilot of the twin-seat Mirage IIIBE and myself obviously, since I'm taking the picture. One small detail is worthy of note: our engineers had prepared "Alsace" badge stickers which they were instructed to put on the fin of all aircraft taking part in the Anniversary celebration. So, as soon as the Vampires took a halt on the apron, they were quick to apply their stickers, as can be seen from some pictures. Quite obviously those stickers were totally irrelevant to the Vampires, so I soon instructed them to remove the stickers, as can be seen from the later pictures. Well, 26 years later, when having a look back at these old pictures, it appears to me that the documents I had sent to our Swiss friends to help them repaint the aircraft were rather accurate.
Best regards,
Here are some pictures of what happened in Dijon at the beginning of a sunny Friday afternoon during the Spring of 1977. Two Mirage IIIE's belonging to Escadron de Chasse 3/2 "Alsace" had been fitted with 1700 litre drop tanks to practice low altitude navigation in Northern Germany; as far as I remember, air to ground gunnery at Hechteren in the Netherlands was scheduled too. These 1700 litre drop tanks were very unusual in Dijon; our planes performed mostly air defence missions, and therefore the 1700 litre tanks (dubbed "Grosse Couilles" in French, i.e. "Big Testicles", or whatever you call it in a more imaged language) were very unusual indeed. Most of the time they were used by some high ranking Staff Officers who had to perform their 30 hours yearly allocation in order to keep their flying bonus. Some of those guys preferred to make high altitude navigations of 2½ hours duration just to burn some petrol. Just for the sake of memory, this configuration was called "6-Bravo". In the Mirage III, configuration was indicated by a combination of figures and letters. Figures indicated the armament, and letters indicated the petrol layout. Here are some examples: Armament:
Now let's return to what happened on that Friday afternoon. The two-ship formation was manned by two very experienced pilots. The leader was Capitaine Henri de Waubert de Genlis, who was at the time one of the two Flight Commanders of EC 3/2 and who later became a test pilot, and the wingman was Sergent-Chef Prime Martin, who was the official Air Force display pilot for the Mirage IIIE. The leader took off without problem, but the wingman suffered a nosewheel tire blow just before rotation. As the procedures implied, he then aborted his take-off and went to finish into the crash barreer, as the accompanying pictures show. This was quite a hairy manoeuvre because of the very high take-off weight in this configuration, but Prime made a sterling job as usual and he managed to maintain the aircraft in line down to the very last moment.
So the plane went to a halt in the position shown and nobody was hurt. Yet, this was the beginning of some very serious problems! Quite obviously, with a plane into the crash barreer, Dijon's 18/36 Runway was unusable. The other runway (02/20) was not suitable for landing a Mirage. So, the airborne leader probably would have to divert to an alternate, such as Luxeuil, 60 NM away. That would have been a normal procedure. BUT!!!! But remember, we were on a Friday afternoon; on that Friday night Henri de Waubert was organizing a big party at his place. Henri's parties were well known in the Air Force, there was plenty of people invited, including some Generals coming from Paris. Therefore, diverting to Luxeuil was out of question, he HAD to land in Dijon, and the runway had to be cleared as soon as possible. Flight time for the airborne aircraft was approximately 2½ hours, so things were feasible. Except for one slight problem: a Mirage III with full 1700 litre drop tanks could not be hoisted by a crane. Tanks had to be drained first, otherwise there was a risk of the main wingspar bending.
So the tanks had to be drained into a refuelling truck. The idea sounds simple, doesn't it? Yes, but refuelling trucks on an air base are intended to refuel aircraft, and not the contrary. So all available trucks were full, obviously. And a truck had to be drained prior to draining the airplane itself, and so on. Quite a complicated task… Nevertheless the engineers managed to do everything in time, Henri de Waubert cruised at the most economic speed possible, the runway was cleared and he could land at the opposite QFU without any further trouble.
The party was very successful!
Best regards,
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