Geilenkirchen air base in Germany, not far away of the Netherlands border, February 28, 1982…the base is in full effervescence! Indeed the first Boeing E-3A “Sentry” popularly called AWACS as landed marking the start of a new way in airspace surveillance and control.
The AWACS component was born from a common desire of several NATO nations to acquire a fleet of E-3A too expensive to be supported individually. This experience was a success and the participant nations enlarged along the years. Thirty years later the E-3A component count 17 nations all working together at Geilenkirchen to ensure the security of European airspace and participating to different war missions like the last conflict in Lybia. Thirty years jubilee had to be underlined and the best way was to open the doors of the base allowing the visitors to learn more about this component. The week-end of 16th and 17th of June could be named “great AWACS fair” thanks to a wonderful static display (no flight demonstrations) including aircraft of all participating nations, some collection and historic aircraft and the possibility to visit a great part of aircraft with an amazing success for the E-3A. Every crew members did their best to give the explanations and answer the different visitor’s questions. But this week-end was also underlined by a pure American style atmosphere including music, ground parade, folk traditions, children’s entertainment, old cars and military vehicles and last, but not least every country was proposing culinary specialties like Italy with pasta, United Kingdom with their famous stew, Denmark with different kind of fish and Belgium with french fries (of course) and different kind of beer! In one word this jubilee was marked like it must be and it was a real pleasure to cover this event.
SBAP team would like to thank the E-3A component authorities for all the facilities allowing covering this event. And as the saying goes: Happy Birthday!
