Frecce Tricolori
| Frecce Tricolori | |
|---|---|
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| Country: |
 Italy
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| Currently used aircraft type: | Aermacchi MB-339 |
| Sponsor: | Aeronautica Militare |
| Base airfield: | Rivolto military airfield |
| Founding: | 1961 |
| Colours: | Blue, red, white, green |
Frecce Tricolori ( Italian for three-colored arrows ) are an aerobatic team of the Italian Air Force , which was established in 1961 as 313º Gruppo Addestramento Acrobatico . The squadron is stationed at the Rivolto military airfield near Udine and was given its current name on July 1, 1961: 313º Gruppo Addestramento Acrobatico - Pattuglia Acrobatica Nazionale (PAN) “Frecce Tricolori” .
history
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The origins of the aerobatic team go back to the 1920s. During a visit to Great Britain, some senior flight officers had learned about the beginnings of formation aerobatics. The order to establish an aerobatic team went to Colonel Rino Corso Fougier in Udine . He is regarded as the father of Italian formation aerobatics and significantly shaped the training standard of military pilots.
The first five-man aerobatic team of his 1st squadron ( 1º Stormo ) was stationed in Campoformido . The first season appeared on June 8, 1930 at the 1ª Giornata Aerea dell'Ala in Rome as the official representative of the Italian Air Force. At this hour of birth, they presented their first program with seven Fiat CR.20 double-decker hunting vehicles . The 2ª Giornata Aerea dell'Ala 1932 showed its program with biplanes of the type Breda Ba.19 . In 1936 the " Frecce " received the Fiat CR.32 .
After the interruption caused by the Second World War, they began training aerobatics again with jet planes. The teams Cavallino Rampante ("Rearing Horse"), Getti Tonanti ("Thundering Jets"), Tigri Bianche ("White Tiger"), Lancieri Neri ("Black Lancer") and the Diavoli Rossi ("Red Devil") became famous.
The first real Italian aerobatic team was set up by 4º Stormo . As the first unit with the double- hulled de Havilland DH100 F.B.52, the pilots of the squadron formed the first Italian aerobatic jet team in 1954 with the name "Cavallino Rampante". With the Republic F-84 G the “Getti Tonanti” started as the successor to the “Cavallino Rampante” squadron. The aviator film I quattro del getto tonante (“The four thundering jets”) was shot with the team. In 1955 the 51ª Aerobrigata took over the function of the official aerobatic team of the Italian Air Force with the team "Tigri Bianche", flown with F84G Thunderjets. In 1956 the 4 ° Stormo flew again with the new Canadair F-86 Saber Mk4 . The 6 ° Stormo flew the Republic F84F Thunderstreaks as the "red devil" ("Diavoli Rossi") for the first time on May 19, 1957 at Turin-Caselle airport . In 1958 the 2ª Aerobrigata with the name "Lancieri Neri" was set up. The six pilots flew an F-86 Saber .
The General Staff of the Italian Air Force decided at the end of 1960 to set up its own aerobatic team, which should only be available in the secondary role as a light fighter-bomber squadron. This task was entrusted to the 313º Gruppo.
The season
On July 1, 1961, the squadron was named "Frecce Tricolori". Initially, the squadron flew with F-86 aircraft; In 1963 it was converted to the Fiat G.91 . The squadron has been flying MB-339 PAN aircraft since 1982 , which are normally used as advanced trainers or light ground attack aircraft. Today the squadron consists of ten aircraft, making it the largest aerobatic team in the world. The formation of ten is divided into a formation of five and a four-man formation several times during the flight program, as well as the soloist, who does a kind of show of his own and demonstrates all the character traits and maneuverability of the machine between the program parts of the formation. The squadron flies to around 40 airshows each year, starting on May 1st with the start display at the home airport in Rivolto near Udine .
During the 1986 season, the Frecce Tricolori performed 22 times on 11 shows on their North American tour in Canada and the USA from July to September . In total, the Frecce Tricolori flew more than 2000 demonstrations until 2009.
The flight program has been almost standardized for decades and - with the exception of the cuts after the Ramstein flight conference disaster - has only seen minimal changes. One of the really newly trained figures in recent years is, for example, the figure Berlino 2006, flown after the victory of the Italian soccer team at the 2006 FIFA World Cup . It shows a heart of the two partial formations flown from bottom to top with the national colors in the smoke.
A so-called full display , also called Complete Aerobatic Sequence , takes about 30 minutes including take-off and landing of the two five formations. There are three different programs, depending on the weather and the cloud base on the day of the demonstration. The full display as a fair weather program in which all parts of the program can be flown without restrictions, the rolling display when it is cloudy, when no loops are flown, and the flat display as a bad weather program , in which there are only fly-bys of the audience.
The plan to equip the squadron with new Alenia Aermacchi M-346 aircraft was canceled by the Italian Air Force for reasons of cost . In 2013, the cheaper Alenia Aermacchi M-345 was selected as the successor to the MB-339 .
Reviews
Even before the Ramstein air convention disaster , the squadron met with rejection from some air show organizers with the character Pierced Heart, especially in Great Britain , as many saw this part of the program as a great risk potential. On the other hand, the Frecce Tricolori were considered the most spectacular show team worldwide and were a crowd puller at flight days all over Europe.
According to a newspaper report from 1988, there was a lack of understanding when the squadron allegedly agreed to perform on a flight day in Switzerland just one week after Ramstein . It was to be read that the attendance was gratefully refused.
In Germany , the squadron has not yet been invited to the Berlin International Aerospace Exhibition .
Flugtag Ramstein 1988
The catastrophe
On August 28, 1988, three Frecce Tricolori aircraft collided in Germany during the Ramstein flight conference , which is still the worst occurrence for an aerobatic team in terms of dimensions, number of victims and consequences. All three pilots died and one of the planes crashed into the crowd. The debris and, above all, the ball of fire that was created from igniting kerosene (the machine's tank capacity was approx. 1.4 tons) immediately killed 31 visitors. In the following weeks and months another 36 of the injured died, so that a total of 67 spectators and the three Frecce Tricolori pilots were killed. More than 1,000 people were injured, most of them burns from the kerosene fire.
Episodes for the season
Despite the most heated discussions - even in Italy - after the disaster, the squadron of the Italian Air Force remained and to this day demonstrates the skills of the Italian military pilots in the largest aerobatic federation in the world. The trust of the flight enthusiastic public had to be regained in the years after the accident. Some passages of the flight program, which had been flown until August 28, 1988, have been defused or even canceled. It took the Frecce Tricolori almost a year to recover from the shock of the tragedy and to rebuild the season. In the following year, 1989, a flight program was completed without soloists. It wasn't until 1990 that the season started again in the old formation.
Others
Since 1987, the Italians can be admired every two years at the RIAT Royal International Air Tattoo , the world's largest military air show in RAF Fairford , Great Britain. Only in 1989 did they fail after the Ramstein accident.
During the International Bodensee Airshow (IBAS) in August 1998, the Frecce Tricolori were stationed together with the Red Arrows at Friedrichshafen Airport on Lake Constance in Germany and only flew over Lake Constance to the Swiss side for the demonstrations. According to eyewitnesses, a training session for the soloist at the time over the airfield was immediately stopped again in Germany under the argument that aerobatics were prohibited in a military context .
On June 24, 2007, the team flew over Fiorano Modenese with red smoke for Ferrari's 60th birthday .
Tribute to Pavarotti
On September 8, 2007, the Frecce Tricolori saluted during the funeral service for Luciano Pavarotti in Modena with a flyover with smoke streaks in the Italian national colors. The season will also play the aria Nessun Dorma as a tribute to Luciano Pavarotti for the finale of their show, as it has been doing since its 40th existence in 2000.
literature
- ACROBATS OF THE AIR. The aerobatic teams of the world, illustrated book by Luigino Caliaro ISBN 1-4054-7905-1 Parbon Books Ltd. UK
Individual evidence
- ↑ Acrobats of the Skies, the aerobatic teams of the world, Luigino Caliardo pages 10–35
- ↑ Picture of a Saber Mk4
- ↑ Airshow magazine: Frecce Tricolori ( Memento from December 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ "Berlino 2006" schematic figure
- ↑ Il Sole 24 Ore, September 24, 2013
Web links
- Squadron homepage (aeronautica.difesa.it)
- Video "Aircrash Ramstein 1988"
- Airshow magazine: Frecce Tricolori
- Frecce Tricolori from the online magazine Checksix.de . Archived from the original on June 28, 2014 ; accessed on March 12, 2018 .
- Schematic representation of the aerobatic maneuvers
- Abbotsford Airshow 1986 - Part One
