Following on from my previous visit to witness EART in 2016, in 2017 I decided to visit this exercise again due to the unique opportunity to see various air-to-air tanker aircraft from multiple European countries at one go. Like Frisian Flag, the aircraft took off in two waves, departing early in the morning, returning just before lunchtime, and later taking off after lunch and returning back in the late afternoon.
EART 2017 saw the participation of three different tankers from France, Germany and Italy together with their air and ground crews. Unfortunately, this year the Netherlands did not participate with tanker aircraft as the two RNLAF KDC-10 aircraft were grounded due to technical issues. In addition, the French tanker that was participating in the exercise went tech the day before my visit, and thus I did not have high hopes to see it fly. However, to my joy, on the day of my visit the French Air Force sent another tanker with spares to fix the broken tanker, so I managed to photograph two french tankers on the same day! That was a nice surprise!
In addition to the tankers, I also photographed a RNLAF C-130H Hercules based at Eindhoven Air Base, as well as a Belgian Air Force C-130H that performed some touch and goes during the day.
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