Fliegerstaffel 11
The Fliegerstaffel 11 "Tigers" is a squadron of the Swiss Air Force , which belongs to the professional aviation corps and, together with the Fliegerstaffel 8, is subordinate to the Fliegergeschwader 13. The home base with fighter aircraft of the type McDonnell Douglas F / A-18 equipped season is the military airfield Meiringen . Fliegerstaffel 11 is a full member of the NATO Tigers and has a tiger's head as its coat of arms .
history
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The unit was founded in 1925 as Fliegerkompanie 11 and was equipped with a Fokker CV until 1938. In 1938 he switched to the C-35 . In 1945 it was renamed Fliegerstaffel 11. From 1946 to 1959, Fliegerstaffel 11 used the De Havilland DH.100 Vampire jet aircraft from the Alpnach military airfield . From 1959 to 1975 the squadron flew the Hawker Hunter from the home base in Meiringen, then from 1975 to 1979 Alpnach was the home base again. During this period, some hunters (e.g. J-4129) received the tiger emblem on the fuselage immediately in front of the cockpit. This was followed by retraining to the F-5 Tiger and flight operations took place with this aircraft type from 1979 to 1997 in Alpnach. Under the command of Werner "Höffi" Hoffmann, Fliegerstaffel 11 retrained from the F-5 Tiger to the F / A-18 Hornet in Dübendorf in 1999.
On Friday, December 16, 2005, Fliegerstaffel 11 under commandant Peter «Pablo» Merz was relocated from the Dübendorf military airfield (which was not a war airfield ) to its current home base in Meiringen. Peter Merz as backseater and Michael «Elvis» Rainer as pilot carried out the last take-off of an F / A-18 from Dübendorf with the F / A-18D J-5235. The Fliegerstaffel 11 is the only F / A-18 squadron worldwide that operates from an aircraft cavern in daily operations . Because Fliegerstaffel 11 was stationed in front of the current home base in Meiringen on the Dübendorf military airfield, it provides the largest number of pilots of all flier squadrons who work in the Air Operations Center and the Air Defense & Directions Center in the Skyguide building and those of the professional aviation corps in Dübendorf. The commander of the Patrouille Suisse Nils "Jamie" Hämmerli, the commander of the PC-7 team Daniel "Stampa" Stämpfli as well as the co-founder of the F / A-18 Hornet Solo Display and former commander of the PC-7 team Werner "Höffi" Hoffmann are pilots at the Fliegerstaffel 11.
Tiger Association
Although Switzerland is not a NATO member, Fliegerstaffel 11 is a member of the Tiger Association , which connects all squadrons with a tiger as the squadron emblem. Staffel 11 was on site for the first time as an observer at the NATO Tiger Meet 1981 in Bitburg . The pilots traveled with the Twin Bonanza A-711, this aircraft with the yellow underside was decorated with glued-on tiger stripes, relay emblems on the engine nacelles and a red shark's mouth. From 1991 Fliegerstaffel 11 was no longer just an observer at the Tiger Meet, but a full member with the F-5E. However, there was no special Swiss paint job, only a new, color-changed squadron emblem with the inscription Season 11 on the front fuselage. In 1994 and 1996 the squadron was again only on site as an observer with the Learjet 35 T-781, from 2002 active with the F / A-18.
Season 11 won the Silver Tiger Trophy award in 1982 and 2008 . From March 24 to 27, 1983 and from October 17 to 21, 1986, Fliegerstaffel 11 hosted the Mini Tiger Meet in Meiringen. From March 11-14, 2005, the organizer of the Snow Survival Exercise in Sion. Because of these Tigermeets, where one or more aircraft of the respective squadrons are given a special "Tiger" paint job, it was decided in 2003 to design a Swiss F / A-18 as well. The choice as a relay machine fell on the F / A-18C with the registration J-5011, the 11 for the Fliegerstaffel 11. However, the machine received no major changes the first time, only the additional tank and the AIM-9 guided missile dummies were changed in color.
In 2004 the aircraft was given a permanent color scheme. This machine is used on Tiger Meet occasions. In normal flight operations, the J-5011 is given priority to the squadron commander, but is also flown by other pilots. If the current F / A-18 Hornet Solo Display Pilot is from Season 11, he will fly the demonstration with the J-5011 if possible. Squadron 11 was the first squadron of the Swiss Air Force to receive a squadron aircraft with permanent special paint, it took a few years until squadrons 6, 8, 17, 18 and 19 also got their own squadron aircraft.
Accidents
On October 23, 2013, a two-seater F / A-18D of Fliegerstaffel 11 crashed into Lopper Mountain . The pilot Stefan “Stiwi” Jäger of Fliegerstaffel 11 and the aviation doctor Volker Lang of the Aviation Medical Institute as a passenger were killed. As part of a patrol mission, the machine was on its way to the Lake Lucerne area , where an air police maneuver was to be trained. According to the Air Force, the flight doctor flew with them to get an impression of the requirements in the cockpit of a fighter jet. As part of the aircraft accident investigation by the military judiciary, the cause of the controlled flight into terrain was found to be a “misjudgment of the situation” on the part of the pilot. In the investigation report, the examining magistrate of the military justice recommended, on the one hand, that passenger flights on combat aircraft should only be carried out in good weather and, on the other hand, the review of the training in reversing maneuvers, especially in bad weather situations and low-altitude flights. The aircraft accident could therefore have consequences for the air force's safety management (as of June 2014).
Planes
Aircraft types used by Fliegerstaffel 11:
literature
- NATO Tigers - Fifty Years . NATO Tiger Association, 2011.
- Peter Bosshard, Donat Achermann: People Machine Missions: Stories from the Dübendorf military airfield 1914–2014. Swiss Air Force, FO-Fotorotar, Egg 2014, ISBN 978-3-033-04653-5 .
Web links
- Fliegerstaffel 11 website
- Fliegerstaffel 11 ( Memento from May 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on the Swiss Air Force website
- Squadron 11 on the website of NATO Tigers (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b It was a pilot's mistake! In: Blick , June 23, 2014, accessed March 9, 2016.
- ↑ a b F / A-18 crash on October 23, 2013: results of the aircraft accident investigation . ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Press release of the military justice , June 20, 2014, accessed on March 9, 2016 (PDF; 1.2 MB).
- ↑ Marcel Gyr: Also flying doctor dead . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 24, 2013, accessed on March 9, 2016.
