General Dynamics’ booklet “F-16 is here!”

This booklet, published by General Dynamics themselves, tells the story of the first years of their second built military aircraft (the F-111 was there first built plane back in 1964): the well known and by many air forces (in fact their fighter pilots) acclaimed ‘Fighting Falcon’ (nevertheless the booklet never mentions this name)!

This booklet, 36 pages - 20,40 x 20,20 cm - stapled, describes in short all the “Receives First F-16” day festivities of the five first ever users of the multirole fighter plane.

The very first operational users were the four squadrons at Hill Air Force Base (Utah) from January 6th 1979 onwards. Than the Belgian Air Force was the second having their “Receives First F-16” festivities on January 26th in1979, followed by the RNLAF on June 6th, 1979. And the RNAF (Norwegian) on January 25th in 1980 and the RDAF (Danish) on January 28th, also in 1980. Furthermore articles about the “ET&T” (European Test & Evaluation) program, the “F-16 Flight Demonstration” (the series of maneuvers flown by GD testpilots demonstrating the turning and acceleration capabilities – nice to perform them by yourself ! ). And the “Flight Evaluations” by the air forces of (the later users) Israel, Australia and Spain.

An article about the 1979 Canadian Forces Bases Tour, and the 33rd Paris Air Show in 1979 where this Fighter was the talk of the event completes this interesting booklet.

In fact a must-have for the (known by its real sake name) ‘Viper’ fans!