In April of 2016 I travelled to the Netherlands to witness for the first time Exercise Frisian Flag, a multi-national military exercise designed to bring pilots and ground crews in situations compared to real life. This improves the interoperability between the various NATO air forces, in both air-to-air missions, as well as air-to-ground missions. The exercise takes place in Leeuwarden, Friesland, in the northern part of the Netherlands.
This years edition saw six different aircraft types participating in the exercise; Eight F-15s belonging to the United States Air Force (coming from Massachusetts and California Air National Guard), Eurofighter Typhoons from the German Air Force, Panavia Tornado GR4s of the Royal Air Force, Mirage 2000D’s of the French Air Force, F-18 hornets from the Finnish AF, and finally F-16s from the Polish , Belgian and Netherlands Air Force.
The pilots flew two waves each day, with each wave comprising roughly around 40 aircraft each time. It was amazing to witness a departure of such a large amount of jets in a very short time span, and twice in a day! The weather was great on the first day I was there, not so much on the second. This gave me ample opportunities to take lots of pictures in the sun, which was my main aim obviously.
Besides the aircraft assigned for the exercise, I also witnessed other aircraft that acted as support aircraft, such as a Norwegian Dassault Falcon 20 and a Finnish Air Force PC-12. Two very rare machines! I was also lucky to witness one of the shortest approaches to land of a C-130H Hercules of the dutch air force, as well as their F-16 test bed named orange jumper, that flew to perform weather checks before the exercises started on each day.
All in all it was another memorable experience, despite the rain on the second day. I will certainly be back in the near future, especially due to the varied aircraft types this military exercise attracts each year 🙂
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