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Germany’s smallest air force base (AFB) is presently undergoing the largest reconstruction in its history: Zell AFB near Neuburg on the Danube, home to Fighter Wing 74, is making a sweeping effort to get ready for hosting 29 Eurofighter aircraft. The AFB is gradually taking leave of its F-4F Phantom IIs, which will be fully phased out by 2008. This type of reequipment is tantamount to a quantum leap, in the air and on the ground, from the 1970s into the new millennium.
F-4F Phantom of Fighter Wing 74
You bet it was an F-4F Phantom that this fine morning appeared far away in the sky as a tiny dot in the glaring morning sun. It was given away by the plume of smoke trailing behind its two General Electric J79 engines. “Smokey” is what the Western world’s most-built combat aircraft is monikered to this day, for a good reason: so much smoke is a dangerous telltale especially during missions in enemy airspace. Phantom pilots therefore try to hide behind a ruse: since an F-4’s exhaust plume diminishes when the afterburner is selected, they like to fly with one engine at maximum power and the other at idle setting.
The Eurofighter has little need for such deceptive tactics; its EJ200 engines don’t smoke in the first place. And with its mere 17-ton takeoff weight, versus the Phantom’s 27 tons, it’s far ahead of the game, anyway, and much to the delight of its pilots.
Major Norbert Biehler
One of them is Major Norbert Biehler. As he shows up in Shelter 19, clutching the helmet under his arm, he seems to be the German Air Forces’ answer to Bruce Willis, only bigger. Which prompted a lady journalist to ask whether the seat in the Eurofighter indeed was adjustable. “Sure,” he says and continues to assure her: “Compared with the Phantom, the cockpit has plenty of uncluttered space.”
Biehler is one of the four Neuburg officers so far qualified to fly the Eurofighter. He has logged 51.5 hours on it, compared with forty times that much accumulated on the Phantom. 15 further F-4 pilots are successively being detached for Eurofighter cross-training to the training unit at the Laage Fighter Wing 73. The back seaters (weapon systems officers) of the presently 28 Neuburg Phantoms are retiring as planned, if temporary career officers, or are assigned other specialist jobs with the air force.
Pilots are enthused about the Eurofighter
Before Biehler climbs up the moveable yellow ladder and into his cockpit, he briefly calls up the pages of the ESS (engineering support system) sitting barely three meters to the side of the jet. That’s how the Eurofighter does its “paperwork”. Through “pilot’s acceptance” the major finally acknowledges that he has taken control of the aircraft. From here on out, the plane is his baby. The canopy closes and the major is raring to go.
A few seconds later, the difference between a Phantom and a Eurofighter becomes audibly apparent: when the Eurofighter’s No. 1 engine is started using the onboard APU (not the airstarter as with the Phantom) and lights up, a medium-to-high-frequency secondary tone comes into play and that sound mix remains during the rocket-like climb that follows a little later; it’s easy to differentiate from the Phantom engines’ powerful thud.
In the cockpit, meanwhile, the preflight systems checks are made. They cap careful flight preparations that had started two hours ago with the weather and flight safety briefing, route and fuel calculations on the computer and tactical coordination with other pilots. By way of good-bye, Biehler’s Eurofighter rocks its mighty slats all the way up and down. The major then eases the airplane out of the shelter. He doesn’t need to touch the throttle for that; the engines develop sufficient thrust for taxying at idle. With the F-4, he always had to assist a little.
Demanding military flying routine
The maintenance crew accompanies the jet to the last-chance position. This is where the specialists will once more circle the aircraft in a much-rehearsed choreography to check closures, tires and potential oil leaks, and prime the armament. As part of the Phantom-to-Eurofighter conversion, the barriers at the last-chance position needed raising, considering that an IRIS-T missile gone wild would clear the size of barrier used in the old Phantom days.
30+19 is then ready to taxi to runway 27. An F-4F is already waiting for it. The show begins. While the seventies jet begins to move under the full power of its afterburner, the Eurofighter sprints behind it at merely military power (dry), needing less runway length to take off. The commander, Colonel Uwe Klein, is pleased with the textbook takeoffs from the construction site, his alias for the AFB.
Eurofighter in its shelter
Not without good reason. Because the reconstruction and modernization program, stretching from 2003 into 2008, includes totally 40 smaller and bigger construction projects, a good three-quarters of which are connected with the introduction of the Eurofighter. The construction activities—and this is still another differentiating characteristic versus the Phantom era—are turning the airfield, occupied since 1961 by Fighter Wing 74, into a full-fledged AFB including a repair hangar, arming facilities, fire station, IT facilities and squadron operations facilities, all of them brand-new. Things have changed a lot for the technical group as well: the formerly independent squadrons have been folded into a maintenance and electronics squadron much in need now of training to cope with novel materials, more complex avionics and English as the new AFB language.
A new simulator building has gone up, too. This is where newly qualified Eurofighter pilots can practice—without courting injury or death—how to most effectively serve Fighter Wing 74’s major function, namely that of securing the Federal Republic’s air sovereignty. “After that simulation training,” says Commander Klein, “we can practice all that real-life in the air, pitching Eurofighters against Phantoms. That’s the one big advantage you have when you operate two different fighter types alongside each other.” For the alert section, which by NATO mandate the Wing maintains 24/7 all year round, things remain pretty much the same for now: until 2008, it still relies on the Phantom weapons system.
Major Biehler’s act is over. He sits relaxed at a table in the Second Wing lounge. He had been flying almost an hour against a Phantom over Southern Germany. His dedicated pilot’s enthusiasm might prompt him otherwise, but in his officer role he is pledged to remain mum on operational details. So ask him who won today and he’ll just grin from ear to ear.