How Good Are The French?
Lossie23,
I was lucky enough to do an exchange tour with the French Air Force a while back. It's a very different environment to the RAF and the quality of their crewroom banter leaves a lot to be desired - needless to say, they tell similar harmless anti-British jokes based on national stereotypes - no offence meant, none taken but the culture of p*ss-taking doesn't exist in the same way as it does in the RAF.
The kit was by and large excellent. The Mirage 2000C is a superb aircraft: easy to fly, extremely reliable (that was one of the biggest differences I noted coming from an F-4 background) and it had a highly effective built-in ECM suite - no draggy pods on pylons, now there's a thought. The guys who operated it were certainly comparable with their NATO counterparts and more than held their own on the ACMI, on ops and elsewhere.
The engineers were good too and were capable of deploying the squadron overseas remarkably quickly - on a det in Saudi during the 1990s we had 40 troops looking after 8 aircraft whereas our neighbours on the ramp, an RAF GR1 outfit, had 240 people looking after 6 aircraft.
So from personal experience and as one who's all for non-PC banter at every opportunity, I'd say, "Welcome aboard, Messieurs les Grenouilles."
Last edited by Ali Qadoo; 14th Mar 2009 at 12:51.
Reason: Speling and p.unctuation