Other F-84F

This part of the site contains an assorted set of pictured of U.S., Belgian, American, Greek, French, German, Italian, Turkish and Greek Thunderstreak pictures. They are all taken by ourselves in the sixties and seventies of the past century, or have come to our collections through our network of co-hobbyists at that time.


  • Other F-84F
    (34 pictures)

Belgian Thunderstreaks

Like Holland, Belgium received its Thunderstreaks as a loan from the US Government under the MDAP plan. The were replacing the F-84G and E Thunderjets that were operated by the 2nd Wing at Florennes and the 10th Wing at Kleine Brogel. The first of the total batch of 197 Thunderstreaks arrived in August 1955.

The 10th Wing at Kleine Brogel flew Thunderstreaks till 1964 when the F-104 Starfighter took over. All remaining aircraft were gathered at Florennes; here the best ones were selected to remain in service with the 2nd Wing and the less lucky ones were transported to the Aircraft Storage Parc at Koxijde. Here at Koxijde they were gradually sold and scrapped.

No. 2 Wing flew its Thunderstreaks till 1971; replacement was found in the Mirage V. Again all remaining Streaks were flown to Koxijde and eventually scrapped. A few escaped and ended their lives as decoys (disguised as Mirages) at various Belgian air force bases. Below is FU-159; does not look happy at all, does he?


Colours and Coding
When the Thunderstreaks arrived in 1955 they were in metal finish; large squadron codes were applied on the nose with on the tail in smaller lettering an FU- registration (FU-01 till FU-197). Each of the six F-84F had its unique code:

2nd Wing Florennes:
  • 1 Squadron used 3R-
  • 2 Squadron used UR-
  • 3 Squadron used YL-A
 10th Wing Kleine Brogel:
  • 23 Squadron used Z6-
  • 27 Squadron used RA-
  • 31 Squadron used 8S-


In 1958 the machines were camouflaged, but kept their squadron codes. These codes eventually disappeared in 1959, when they were replaced by a very large (FU-) registration.

And this is the way we remember the Belgian Streaks at best. Below picture was used by the Belgian Air Force as a publicity postcard. They must have sent thousands of them:


Spotters notes
Belgian Thunderstreaks never were a common site for spotters. We saw them occasionally visiting Eindhoven and at nearby Kleine Brogel. Below are a number of shots I made of Belgian Thunderstreaks (click to enlarge photo):

A FU-12 visiting Eindhoven in the late sixties FU-177 in an overshoot

FU-37 taxiing over the "first lane" at Eindhoven FU-106 and FU-91 parked at Florennes

Aerobatics
FU-52 was one of the aircraft that often could be seen in the mid-sixties while performing airobatics at local airshows. It had a special colour scheme that changed somewhat over the years. Here are two examples of those colourschemes:

FU-52 colourschemes FU-52 colourschemes

And by the way, here is that same FU-52 a few years later, in its standard "Vietnam-style" camouflage scheme:

FU-52 Vietnam-style camouflage


To the boneyard
When Belgium finally said goodbye to its Thunderstreaks they all went, as said, to the Aircraft storage parc at Koksijde air base. Here at Koxijde there were sold as scrap and eventually all destroyed. We visited Koksijde in 1971, right in the middle of the period that they kept coming in. Here is an overview of what our cameras recorded at that time, and by the way, it was not only Thunderstreaks we saw. They had a large collection of C-119 Packets, Pembrokes, a few C-54\’s, etc. In short, it was Davis Monthan European style. Fascinating! Anyway, this section contains a few pictures we took of the Thunderstreaks in store. We will add more pictures of Koksijde in the coming months.