In orderto commemorate the beginning of the French Revolution, National Military Parade (‘défilé’) is organisedin the French capital Paris on 14July, every year. A military parade which is conducted at Champs Elysees entails foot-soldiers, trucks and tanks for ground parade while air parade (‘défiléaérien’) comprises of various flybys made by range of fighters, helicopters and other aircraft.
Airbases
The flying participants usually flew from various airbases, sometimes from their homebases as well: C-130 Hercules (BA Orleans), A400M Altas (BA Orleans), E-3F AWACS (BA Avord), C-135F (BA Istres) , Navy Rafales (BAN Landivisiau) Navy support aircraft (BAN Lahn-Bihoue). But in case, if immediate fueling is required then airbases closer to Paris such as BA Evreux, BA Villacoublay, BA Creilbecome the flying bases for numerous aircraftparticipating in the parade.
BA Evreux
This year, the parade was conducted using Aerienne Evreux as the main airbase. The morning session witnessed Rafales and Mirage 2000staking off from runway 04 alongside their foreign counterparts such as Spanish and British Eurofighters, German Tornado, Belgian F-16. All French aircraft returned directly to their homebase afterwards, while the foreign jets returned to BA Evreux. A Dutch F-16 flew directly from it’s homebase of Volkel and returned home immediately after the parade.
From BA Evreux, a local C-160G Transall Gabriel and a CASA CN235 flew in the parade while a visiting Spanish C-130 Hercules landed afterwards. It was the last time for the C-160G Transall Gabriel to be a part of this parade since the remaining two C-160G’s will be retiring soon.
This report was made by Joris van Boven and Alex van Noye.
Photos with SIRPA.AIR in the name (overhead Paris) were delivered by SIRPA.AIR/French Air Force