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2-FG also coming back after a
standard one hour instruction flight. Compare the jet exhaust
variable section of 203 with the one of 217: it seems that metal
was worked differently.
To continue with the short story of our EC 2/2 'Côte d'Or'
Squadron, it was re-formed in April 1965 with a dotation of
Mirage III Cs. It's status changed when it became a year later,
always with traditions of SPA57 and 65, an OCU for all pilots
having to fly Mirages to become officially during 1968 the, ECT 2/2
' Côte d'Or' (Fighter and Transformation Squadron).
Having many difficults to assume its task with its two seat
Mirage III Bs and III BEs it was reinforced during in October
1972 by a third Escadrille taking over traditions of the SPA 94 'La
Mort Fauchant' (The Blooming Death), the insigna being a skeleton
running with an arm holding a bloom up... I add, as a joke, that
when Mirage flew at Mach 2+ speed it was ' La Mort Chauffant' (
The Warming Death' ) !
SPA 94 was created in June 1917 as N 94 with Nieuport 24 aircraft
while at this period of WWI the existing French fighter units
received SPAD VIIs. It's only ealy 1918 that '94' received the
modern fighter and became a SPA Escadrille. After war
successively became 6th escadrille of 1st Aviation Fighter
Regiment in January 1920 to transform, during 1924, in 7th
escadrille of 34th Aviation Regiment. With Armée de l'Air it was
3rd Escadrille of GC II/1. Succesively the unit had used Nieuport-Delage
Ni-D fighters, Dewoitine 500 and 510s before to get Bloch MB 152
Fighters at Buc airfield in Autumn 1939 for the defense of Paris
and depending from Air Operations North Zone, the famous aircraft
requiring four hands to recover from a vertical dive !!!. With
its 29 kills and loss of 8 pilots GC II/2, after Armitice, went
to Le Luc airfield very near the Mediterranean Sea. During 1942
it exchanged its Blochs for Dewoitine 520s and was disbanded when
German troops occupied the half part of France under control of
the Vichy Regime after the Allied landings.
Such was the state of ECT 2/2 with 3 escadrilles in this Summer
1972, when I just spent a few minutes outside the Dijon Air Base,
en route from Paris to Luxeuil with its 4th Fighter Wing.
