Beauvechain air show, June 1966

At two o’clock in the night it started raining. The day before, on Saturday, my elder brother and I were at the air show at the civil airport of Beek in the southern of The Netherlands. Lots of civil aircraft, a number of aircraft of the KLu and MLD and only some interesting foreign visitors were present, under which the brand new Luftwaffe Transall YA+053. The show ended by the fly-by of 4 F-102A from Soesterberg, 2 F-105D from Bitburg and 2 RF-4C from Alconbury. In the evening we drove on our motorbike towards Belgium; the yearly show of the air force should take place at the airbase of Beauvechain on Sunday. But during our night stop, somewhere between Beek en Beauvechain, it started raining. Early in the morning I was wet, very wet, and cold. I hated visiting air shows.  My bad temper changed rapidly, when it became dry by the end of the morning. And by the time the air show should start, at 3 o’clock exactly, the sun carefully tried to reach the airfield. By that time already the Luftwaffe Transall (again the YA+053) and the first prototype of the French Air Force Breguet 941S had shown their capabilities. And we had visited the static display, which showed this year almost only aircraft of the Belgian Air Force. Only a Huskie of the USAF and an S-61 of the Danish Air Force were foreign visitors.

The air show itself was great. Besides the Belgian tradition to show numbers of aircraft at the same time, such as the mass start of 9 F-104G, a fly pass of 12 F-104G, parachute dropping out of 12 C-119G, there were 5 demoteams. The Belgian Air Force presented the ‘Red Devils’ with 6 Fouga Magisters, the KLu had its ‘Whisky Four’ team with 4 T-birds. The French AF showed the ‘Patrouille de France’ with 6 Magisters and the Italian Air Force presented a marvellous show by the ‘Frecce Tricolori’ with their 9 Fiat G-91PAN. And last but not least there were the ‘Red Arrows’ of the RAF with their Folland Gnats.

Highlights of the show were for me the formation of 4 Norwegian Air Force F-5A/B, the first time for me to spot this a/c in Norwegian colours and 4 F-100D/F of the Danish AF. And the demonstration of an A-4E of the USNavy and the Italian AF MB-326 and Piaggio P-166.

As a conclusion I must say that I enjoyed this day, in spite of the bad weather in the morning, and I made some interesting pictures.