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Unvisible Base Commanding Post linked to control tower is housed left outside at end of central of the triangular roads. Fore, technical installations for major repairs and overhauls with duct veins to test engines without to disturb too much the whole base. At left of hangars, entrance of the underground C.P. in case of war. At the left upper corner, the first little twin hangar houses the Blind Flying and Liaison Section of 4th Wing and receives visitor aircraft of other Armée de l'Air or foreign units. The two next larger twin-hangars housed, at this time around 1963, the two squadrons of 4th Fighter Wing fitted with F-84Fs, the detached Squadron ER 1/33 'Belfort' with RF-84Fs homed in the last pair of hangars between June 1961 and January 1967 before joining sister squadron ER 2/33 at the 33rd Recce Wing base of Strasbourg-Entzheim. Parking with F- and RF-84s is visible and turns left to main taxiway which turns left to runway 12. The base has two 8000 ft runways: 12/30 and 04/22 roughly forming a T. Here I spent first four months of 1963 with Medical Services located along the road after the water castle.
Among the most
astonishing things, a day of 1963, in the fore left twin-hangar
where was housed a 13th FW Mirage IIIC having destoyed its U/C
when landing on the wet runway, one of the mechanics having been
sent to disasemble the plane was seating on the rear dorsal part
of the Mirage with head fully over seat to tell to other people:
-Never do this when your 4th Wing get Mirages...
And he did it.............. with chin fully applied on top of
seat...and this latter ejected...and the man separated from seat
from a violent move of arms...did a ballistic trajectory to land
with head first on the tarmac of hangar...the seat passing
through metallic beams and roof of hangar to land, after a
ballistic trajectory, on the roof of the near Volkswagen car of
the Day Officer...
The medical story of the mechanic is a thing but the story of the
seat continued. A 13th Wing Dassault Flamant or a Martinet went
to Luxeuil and when loading the seat inside, a ring or lever
caught a part of the aircraft door and the secondary cartridge to
first eject chute extractor expoded. A mechanic had a little cut
at thorax and he had to rest a night at infirmary. In the morning,
when awaking, he told me he heavily suffered at thorax. A radio
was made and we discovered, nicely housed along a rib and near
the wound, the circular copper cap of a secondary chute ejection
cartridge !! My God, I tell you the medical story of the first
boy when I publish pictures on my 1973 report on 13th FW !!!!!
It's an astonishing if not a fantastic one...
