Patrouille de France 1961
 

From a friend, a nice piece of nostalgia. An official film of the P de F back when they were flying the Mystére IV.....

Patrouille de France ? ECPAD


Quelle finesse!!

... and eleven in the team

I was at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget in May 1961 where we (99 Sqn) had a Britannia on static display.

The Patrouille de France gave an excellent display, some of which I captured on 8mm cine film as seen below. I remember their smoke trails - very impressive! They were IMHO opinion eclipsed by 74 Sqn with their Lightnings who gave a Bravura display with lots of noise and very low flying.

Being screen grabs of 8mm cine film my pictures are not sharp but give you some idea of what it was like.

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...psbbf6fc17.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...psca0ee738.jpg

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...psd8d894e3.jpg


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...bedFrame-1.jpg

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...bbedFrame2.jpg

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...is-May1961.jpg

The Parisian crowds queued up to troop through our aircraft

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...ay1961-2-1.jpg

PAF are celebrating their 60th anniversary this weekend at their base at Salon.

60 ans de la PAF

Salon-de-Provence | Salon : le grand meeting de la Patrouille de France se prépare | La Provence

Saturday is for the bigwigs, Sunday is open day to the public. I would go to the event, but with 100k visitors expected it will be a bit of a scrum. A good view of the displays can probably be had from the Lancon service area on the A7 auroroute.

French TV, specifically France 2 is showing a 3h 15 special on the team starting at 1500 (French time). No doubt there will be lots of footage of celebs and experts sat around the sofa chatting :hmm: but I'm sure there will also be some good footage of the team somewhere in the program..

Programme TV | France2.

Not dissimilar from the flying programme the Red Arrows Trust ran for the 25th Anniversary of the Reds- all teams, no singletons. It was ISTR a great day.

Thanks for the heads up on the TV feature, the "pelouse" will have to wait ;)

Such are the trials of French TV :mad: