Derk

Fantastic Jonathan !! The description of the atmosphere is great, very nice style !!!!! In the '50's we lived near Eelde where the Dutch flying school was stationed and we always had flying students around in our house as guests (via the fieldhockey they played together with my brother and sister). They just came by or stayed for days for studying. Untill my father asked them to stop it, we regularly had litlle airhows over our house by those guys with (indeed) Tiger Moth's and Harvards and during a holiday at Schiermonnikoog Island there was a dusk low level "bombing raid" with a Beech 18 with closet rolls (!) being thrown out of the passenger door..... Those were the days my friend...... The pilots ended as 747 captains with KLM - we are still in touch with them - so in the end all was well, but the beginning was like your story !! I have a very nice book with paintings and drawings by Serge Stone about life in the KLu, which also starts out with Tigers and Harvards in the way you so vividly describe .. Great Job !!

Worried about this one too....

Sure looks like fun, makes me want to have a go tonight witth the A4K in one of the NZ terrains....

Saw it, Croatia did well !

Well, penalty or not, I was not that much impressed anyway by our team, especially later in the match. The Danish goal was a very good job by the guy who scored (Krohn-Dehli ,played in NL with Ajax a couple of years ago but only as a substitute and was sold because they saw no future for him ... ) , but I also consider it a blunder by the goalie. What the Danes did extremely well after that, was the rock-solid consolidation of their lead !!! Let's not forget that Denmark has been European Champion before and they DO have good players. A lot of them play in the top German en English leagues and three of the players last night (Eriksen,Paulsen, Schöne) play over here in top teams. Rommedahl played for Ajax for years and in fact all the major teams in Holland regularly have Danes playing in their teams. Even the coach, Morten Olsen has been the coach of the same Ajax in 1997 and they considered asking him again in 2009..... So a lot of overlap between Denmark and Holland, and very good contacts. The Danes we have here are very well liked and usually speak our language very well after a short time, a very nice point I think......

Well done, though a penalty for Orange would have been justified.....

Nothing for the Dutch either I think.....

Yep, saw that one too lately. Fantastic what dedicated people and/ or real hobbyists can achieve !!!

Lego is FABULOUS!! This thing should be in Billund Henrik !!!!

Hi, hi, pulling out the other contents of the bra will distract the attacker even more I guess...

Well, 72 pages full of good old Soesterberg, the place where our airforce was born in 1913 and our main pre war airfield. The Germans build it into a really big airbase in WW II...... My grandparents lived nearby, took me there in the '50's as a little boy, I saw the Meteors, even a dual(!) Spifire of 322 Sq, the first F86F's of 32 Sq. Later the KLu Hunters and F86K's, the 32Sq "Wolfhounds" F 100C's, F102's (including the dual), the F4E''s and finally the F15's.....At that time it was a helicopter base too, with the first Chinooks we got and of course the 334Sq F27 Troopships.. Saw a lot of fantastic airshows there, had a trip in an F27, visited the base on other occasions as a member of the Dutch Airforce Association (KNVOL) etc. Andy Bush flew F4E's from there and Veltro 2000 served at the 32 Sq avionics shop. Those were the days........ Right now it is closed but for a great part still intact, including the main runway, which cannot be removed because of the special biotope it creates (!!). Lots of wildlife and birds. Some shelters are being demolished, some buildings at the Camp New Amsterdam part still in military use, the US alert hangars, the tower, dispersal area's are still there and in the seven still available T2 hangars (brought in from Scotland when the base was rebuild from the Luftwaffe ruins of WW II) they are planning the Dutch Defence Museum (airforce and army). And of course the Airforce Memorial with the names of all pilots who were killed since 1913 is still there... No housing or any other projects allowed, just aviation and military history. A beautiful place it still is and that is what it will always be......

Hurray, the beginning of te end of terror in W. Europe !!!

Only one thing to say: wish I had been there.... An airforce keeping an example of practically every jet it ever flew in the air - including the supersonic ones - deserves the highest praise !!!!!!!! Thanks for posting Jonathan (and o yes: GREAT PICS) !!!

OK Henrik, around the end of the NF 5 period, 313 & 315 Squadron were at Twenthe, 314 Squadron at Gilze Rijen and 315 Squadron at Eindhoven . 314 and 316 changed places a couple of times (never understood why). Basically, after a couple of years, tailbands were introduced based on heraldry of the regions where the squadrons were stationed , the Twenthe squadrons sported red tailbands with a white horse, and Gilze and Eindhoven, being situated only about 20 km from each other, had a white band with werewolves ("Were Di") . And Sophocles, I'll try to make as clear as possible where the NF 5 differed from the F5.

Anything you want to know about the NF5A (quite a one-off in the F5A family) .... just say so.... Looks very good !!

You might as well skip de Kooy, which was and still is a helibase with a short rwy, never any substantial fixed wing activities ..... If anything of the Dutch Navy must be included it should be Valkenburg, a real airfield, 90 km to the SSW right on the coast, the sort of "Dutch Nordholz" (but maybe that is too far south and too close to the border of the map and of course the whole game is a "what if" affair). And just a very small remark/ whine: no tower at Leeuwarden and I do miss the Ringkobing Fjord on the west coast of Jylland (but mainly because I spent a holiday over there ) . For the rest I LOVE the whole thing, including the squadron scramble/ take off, big thanks for bringing it out !!! Houdoe, Derk

Of course quite agree with you FC. Just the same the occasion was a very frustrating and quite sad one. The squadron was very well trained and had a lot to do, the Orions had just been modernised for about E 250.000.000,= and would be sold (read: given away) for exactly that amount to Germany and Portugal, the airbase was modern and in fine shape (rwy recently renovated) and would be completely closed, meaning a direct local job loss of about 1300 and the fixed wing flying with the MLD would come to an end. The plan was that the money saved on all the cuts would be invested in a cruise missile capability (!!) on some ships -stupid plan anyway and of course cancelled after some time- and all proposals for alternative use of the airfield (part civilian, offshore bussiness, VIP flights for international institutions/ gouvernement/ royal flight and a somewhat reduced number of P3C's) were refused. Very much a political game in which the "ship navy" played its role too, because they would loose one or two frigates if fixed wing naval aviation would be maintained ....... The whole thing still stinks.......

Here we gooooooooooooooooooooo !!! Thank you so much Michael for this highly interesting scenario and terrain !!!!

Old story, but here's some low country low passing .... meaning a sad farewell to good old Valkenburg RNNAS a couple of years ago....

In the beginning of the F-104 period the KLu stll had quite a number of Sgt. pilots, somewhere later on during the '60's they decided all pilots had to be officers.

Hey, great, thanks a lot !!!!! Actually it works quite well with the Block 15 with dragchute tail. I applied to my F16AM (little present from Ravenclaw 2 years ago, later equiped it with "birslicers" as actually the J- 015 was an MLU Viper) . Great pilot too, guess our Belgian and Danish friends are jealous (unless you 're planning their demo Vipers too )

Hóóóly s**t, means that we haven't got anything left here at home (btw, great pics, pretty girls too !!)

Even if it's monday in two weeks or even two months !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looking forward for that one too !!!!