Patrouille Suisse
| Patrouille Suisse | |
|---|---|
|
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| Country: |
 Switzerland
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| Currently used aircraft type: | Northrop F-5E Tiger II |
| Sponsor: | Swiss Air Force |
| Base airfield: | Emmen military airfield |
| Founding: | 22nd August 1964 |
| Colours: | Red White |
| Weblink: | www.patrouille-suisse.ch |
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The Patrouille Suisse ( PS for short ) is an aerobatic team of the Swiss Air Force .
assignment
The task of the team, founded in 1964, is to demonstrate the efficiency, precision and readiness of the Swiss Air Force at home and abroad. The pilots of Patrouille Suisse are military pilots of the professional aviation corps , the commentators work, among other things, as air traffic controllers at Skyguide (air traffic control Switzerland), who only perform this additional task during the current season
Location of the Patrouille Suisse
The Emmen military airfield has served the Patrouille Suisse as its home airfield since 1994. With a new deployment concept for the Air Force, the plan was to relocate the PS to the Payerne military airfield for the 2008 season , which was not carried out because of the central location, RUAG's know-how , the proximity to the Wangen-Lachen training area and the relief of the military airfield Payerne. Originally and until 1994, the PS had its home base at the Dübendorf military airfield .
history
The idea to set up a demonstration team of professional pilots, dates back to 1959. At that time the received monitoring Squadron (UeG) the order to train a four-engine double patrol for demonstration purposes. The formations were at that time with aircraft of the type Hawker Hunter flown Mk.58.
In view of the national exhibition Expo64 in Lausanne and the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Air Force, formation flight training was intensified with the Hunter double patrol. Anniversary performances took place across the country, which delighted hundreds of thousands of spectators. At that time, the name Patrouille Suisse arose spontaneously, based on the French Patrouille de France .
In what was then the Federal Military Department (EMD), they were convinced of the effectiveness of the formation flight and therefore decided to appoint the Patrouille Suisse as the official national aerobatic team. The Patrouille Suisse was founded on August 22nd, 1964.
In 1965, the team competed for the first time in a full season with four presentations. In the period that followed, the program was continuously refined and the exact execution of the individual figures was perfected.
In 1968 the Dassault Mirage IIIS was to be shown to the people. Only two demonstrations were made with the Patrouille De Suisse Mirage , after which the demonstration with Hunter remained.
In 1970 a fifth machine was added to the patrol and a further eight years later the sixth machine. The film about the Patrouille Suisse, made in those intervening years with 5 planes, was called Supercanard (1976, director: Peter Clausen, 20 minutes), named after the formation that could be formed with the five planes. Since the Hunter two-seaters were not yet available at the time of the filming, the air-to-air footage was filmed from a Vampire Trainer DH.115 .
In 1977, a smoke system was introduced at the Patrouille Suisse hunters. This was taken out of service together with the Hunter in 1994.
Demonstrations abroad were not possible until 1978 due to the strict neutrality of Switzerland. This changed in 1978 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Patrouille de France, to which the Patrouille Suisse was invited. In Salon-de-Provence , a demonstration abroad could now be flown for the first time - now with six aircraft. Numerous other demonstrations followed at home and abroad, and when it first took part in 1979, Patrouille Suisse won the coveted Shell Trophy of the International Air Tattoo .
In 1991, on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation, the Hunter were given a new look. The undersides of the wings now shone in the Swiss colors red and white.
The Hunter aircraft type was withdrawn from the Swiss Air Force in 1994; the hunters were replaced at the Patrouille Suisse by the F-5E Tiger II used as space guards in Switzerland . These machines were now completely painted red and white. A public competition was held for the new design. The planes in the new livery of the Patrouille Suisse according to the scheme of Hansjörg Oberholzer also took over the tasks of the hunters as target towing and target display aircraft for air-to-air and surface-to-air shooting and were technically adapted for this they got a smoke system again. The F-5E from Patrouille Suisse are also used for regular flight service and the air police service.
Since 1996, the Patrouille Suisse has been flying its demonstrations at home and abroad with a smoke generator integrated into the aircraft. The smoke system tank is housed in one of the two on-board cannon magazines; this can be dismantled with little effort, so that the PS-F-5E retain the full combat strength of the regular F-5E. With the smoke system, on the one hand, the show effect could be increased, but at the same time the safety for the pilots could be increased, because when flying towards each other, the pilots see each other much earlier if the smoke is switched on. The demonstrations are flown with six F-5E's, but when performing abroad, a seventh machine is sometimes relocated as a reserve.
Incidents
On June 9, 2016, the first incident occurred since the Patrouille Suisse was founded. Two jets of the squadron touched in the air during training the day before the airshow near the Leeuwarden military airfield . The F-5E J-3086 then crashed into a small lake near the town of Bitgum. The pilot ("Püpi") was able to save himself with the ejection seat and was slightly injured. The second machine, the J-3088, landed with a damaged horizontal stabilizer. The season's appearances at the air show were subsequently canceled.
Specialty
In contrast to many other aerobatic teams, the pilots of the Patrouille Suisse are relay pilots and a relatively small number of them are deployed with the demonstration team. The planes also remain in service and they are not training planes like those of the most famous European teams.
The Patrouille Suisse was after the Patrouille de France as the second aerobatic team after the air show disaster at Ramstein in 2002 for the International Aerospace Exhibition in Berlin and thus to Germany invited. The Swiss were guests there again in 2006, 2008 and 2010 - still with restrictions in the standardized flight program. It was also the Patrouille Suisse that was the first military association aerobatic squadron to perform again in Germany outside of the ILA Berlin; namely for the port birthday of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg in May 2009. Although the Swiss Air Force has adapted its radio communication to the NATO standard and uses the Brevity Code as the standard, Patrouille Suisse and the PC-7 team still use a large number of them for their flight demonstrations Terms of the Bambini Code . The communication between the pilots of the PS team takes place on the frequency 359.450 MHz, which is outside the usual air traffic .
At large air shows such as RIAT or Air14, the Patrouille Suisse flies a joint overflight formation with the PC-7 team, the Hornet Solo Display Team or the Super Puma Display Team at the opening of the flight demonstration. A formal joint and longer demonstration with the PC-7 team took place once on September 7, 2014 at Air14 in Payerne.
The team
The pilots of the Patrouille Suisse are military pilots of the professional aviation corps . New pilots are elected by the remaining team members when a pilot leaves. The first training flights for the formation flights at closer intervals than in the normal patrol flight are then flown in pairs.
In 2019, the Patrouille Suisse team consisted of the following people plus the ground crew (their first name and function are listed):
| Nickname | position | Surname |
|---|---|---|
| Tiger Zero | Commander | Colonel Lt. Nils Hämmerli "Jamie" |
| Tiger Uno | leader | Major Gunnar Jansen "Gandalf" |
| Tiger Due | Right wing | Master Claudius Meier "Mac" |
| Tiger Tre | Left wing | Captain David Pereira "Pepe" |
| Tiger Quattro | slot | Master Martin Schär "Jaydee" |
| Tiger Cinque | 2nd solo | Hptm Lukas Nannini "Bigfoot" |
| Tiger Sexi | 1st solo | Hptm Michael fragrance "Püpi" |
| Tiger Sette | Replacement pilot / filmmaker | |
| Tiger Otto | Speaker | Hptm Yanik Varley "Nik" |
| Tiger Nove | Speaker | Captain Jody Bolomey "Jody" |
Planes
As a rule, the team also uses the F-5E with the Patrouille Suisse livery for training. A total of twelve F-5E from the second procurement series from 1981 with this color scheme were originally in service with the Swiss Air Force (J-3080 to J-3091). Initially, ten aircraft were able to use one of the eight smoke generators developed by RUAG . The J-3080 and J-3089 do not have this capability. If the smoke generator with its two diesel oil tanks of 40 liters each is installed, the right on-board cannon cannot be used. The F-5E from Patrouille Suisse are also used as target tug planes for target flight squadron 12 because of their eye-catching colors. The military registration numbers of the machines are J-3080 to -3091. At the beginning of 2015, because of fatigue cracks, gray aircraft without special paint had to be used in the second series. For connecting flights, the commander of the Patrouille Suisse usually uses the Pilatus PC-6T Turbo-Porter V-622 "Felix", which is also painted in the colors of the Patrouille Suisse.
See also
literature
- Urs Mattle, Katsuhiko Tokunaga : Patrouille Suisse. Backstage. AS Verlag, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-909111-76-3 ( reading sample ).
- Karin Münger, Max Ungricht: Swissness: 50 years Patrouille suisse, 25 years PC-7 Team. Verlag Cockpit, Belp 2014, ISBN 978-3-906562-43-8 (German / French / English / Italian).
Web links
- Patrouille Suisse on the Swiss Air Force website .
- Patrouille Suisse 2016 ( Memento from April 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). Swiss Air Force, March 2016 (with all pilots since it was founded; PDF; 9.1 MB).
- Patrouille Suisse gallery on swiss-wings.ch.
- Patrouille Suisse: Teamwork at a thousand pace ( memento from January 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). Swiss Air Force website, August 30, 2014.
- Jean-Luc Brülhart: “My pilots also need a strong neck” . Supplement to the Berner Zeitung , August 3, 2013 (interview with Daniel Hösli).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Insider (Patrouille Suisse Fanclub magazine) 2014, p. 9.
- ^ Films - Supercanard . Peter Clausen's website, accessed February 9, 2016.
- ↑ Insider (Patrouille Suisse Fanclub magazine) 2014, p. 10.
- ↑ Successful competitions by the Swiss Air Force. In: NZZ , September 1, 2003.
- ↑ Swiss Air Force: Swiss F-5 Tiger: 250,000 hours in the air ( memento from December 5, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on November 28, 2014.
- ↑ Here is the ejection seat of «Püpi» report in the eye (newspaper)
- ↑ After the crash at Patrouille-Suisse: Both pilots are doing well . SRF, June 9, 2016, accessed June 9, 2016.
- ↑ PC-7Team and PS to Air14. Video on YouTube.
- ↑ Interview with Simon Billeter, Leader Patrouille Suisse , baseltattoo.ch, 2015
- ↑ Ballerina meets fighter pilot: Tanja Oetterli and Markus Gygax , srf in person , January 5, 2019
- ↑ Booklet 2018 Patrouille Suisse
- ↑ Insider (Patrouille Suisse) Fanclub magazine 2014, p. 10.
- ↑ Report on the creation of the Patrouille Suisse PC-6T Turbo Porter Felix