Afterburner.nl - Volkel Air Show 2004

25 Years F-16 in the Koninklijke Luchtmacht

On June 18th and 19th the Royal Netherlands Air Force held their open days at Volkel Airbase. The theme of this year open days was to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of the F-16 in service with the Koninklijke Luchtmacht (Royal Netherlands Air Force).

Remembering the 10^th anniversary of the F-16 in 1989, the expectations where high on this event. Unfortunately it turned out to be a little disappointing. With only 5 operational and 2 WFU KLu F-16’s (one was painted as the prototype of the F-16), 1 Belgian Air Force and 2 Italian Air Force on static display. No Danish, Norwegian, USAF and even Greek F-16s (which where at Twenthe Airbase, for clean hunter) were present.

Maybe the planning of the open days during exercise clean hunter was a little bit unlucky but, for many air forces a reason not to send aircraft over to Volkel as they were needed for this exercise.

The static display is always good at Volkel, aircraft a parked with enough space between them and there is no rubbish in the front and background and when shining, the sun is where it should be: in the back! It was also the first time that you could see Italian Air Force F-16’s on an air show out side Italy. Other welcome guests in the static display was an Italian AMX wearing an old fashioned green camouflage scheme with a large white code and a Bulgarian Antonov 30.

The flying display had 7 fast jet solo displays, with as highlight the Swiss F/A-18 demo. Several demo teams gave an excellent display during both air show days: the Frecce Tricolori, the Patrouille de France and the Red Arrows. In addition to this, the Swiss Air Force made there debut on a Dutch air show with their PC-7 team. They took off with 9 PC-7s followed by the F/A-18C. After take off they formed a vic formation with the Hornet in between, fantastic sight!

Every year the KLu shows off with an extremely impressive Air Power Display. It shows what air power means by several high speed passes of F-16s from every corner of the field while at the same time some fire works on the ground explode. After this, the ground side has been cleared and helicopters with troops and four wheel drives come in, escorted by Apaches. Also a C-130 comes in with many troops and four wheel drives. The soldiers secure the area. It is really an impressive sight.

However, due to operational commitments the Air Power demo was not as massive as previous years. For example there are at the moment only 10 out of the 30 AH-64Ds in the Netherlands, the rest is abroad, namely 6 in Iraq, 6 in Afghanistan and 8 in the USA. It's therefore a great effort that Gilze Rijen managed to send 4 Apaches in total over to Volkel.

Unlike the forecast predicted, the weather was no showstopper. But several rain showers (one even with hail) and low clouds forced the demo teams to do their low show on Saturday. In the end it was not a bad air show but it would have been nice when more participants showed up. See you all next year at Gilze Rijen.