25.August 2001

Open House in Laage

On the morning of August 25th, the day of our open house, the first look out of the window was horrible: Fog !!

Everything had been planned for many weeks, even months. A traffic management plan had been coordinated with the authorities , a remote shuttle system with approximately 100 buses had been established and the the airbase completely on duty was busy. Guest airplanes from the USA, Great Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Holland were invited and stood ready for the show. More than 300 guest crews were present, the base was full of snack huts, drink stands and ..., now nothing should move because of bad weather?

But soon the weather god soon revealed a cloudless blue sky - now it had to work!

And it worked! According to estimates at least 150.000 visitors came to take a look inside the Air Force at Laage. The best traffic concept, however, cannot accomplish miracles with these crowds, Laage isn't Dallas and long traffic jams formed around the air-base. Those visitors that were early were rewarded with an early entry starting at 8:30.

The base filled with people and in areas where normally only jets wander, there was suddenly a public festival atmosphere. The supply seemed very positively arranged, sufficientl food and drinking huts were arranged and even fruit stands were built up. There were many quite content visitors  sitting in the sun, "armed" with beer and Bratwurst  to look.at the airmen in the sky.

These grumbled into two, respectively two-hour flight periods as of 10:30 hours and 14:30 hours. Our own MiG 29 FULCRUM and F 4 F PHANTOM as well as TORNADO, ALPHA JET, F-18 HORNET, various helicopters and transport planes, and even the new fighter plane for the Luftwaffe the EF 2000 TYPHOON demonstrated their abilities. With afterburner takeoffs, fly-bys with both extremely slow and very fast speeds, roles, tight turns and other maneuvers made the crowd blink into the sun. (Unfortunately, this was a circumstance the photographers didn't like very much: counter-light could hardly be avoided)

The first event in the afternoon left many visitors astonished: 2 of our MiG-29 demonstrated their enormous climb performance by intercepting 2 other MiGs at an altitude of 36.000 ft (12km) over the field. The contrails could already be spotted as the interceptors took the runway for takeoff.. After 90 seconds in afterburner the interceptors suddenly trailed the two target contrails - intercept complete!

The two stars of the day were  MiG 29+20 and the F 4 38+31, which were provided with special designs for this day. They will fly only a few weeks in this paint scheme and will visit other similar events.

In the evening all wing members  finished the day at a comfortable hall feast with their families. All of us agreed: a perfect day!

Thanks to everybody playing a part and to you, our guests!

Followingly  Impressionen of the excellent event! Simultaneously our thanks to everyone, that sent us pictures or still will do so!