Germany trip: Fliegerhorst Neuburg
With Hamburg-Finkenwerder, Schleswig and Laage having been successful stops, it was time to head South to Bavaria. Our next target was Taktisches Luftwaffengeschwader (TaktLwG) 74, known as “The Bavarian Tigers” in Neuburg.
As we did before, we set off early from our hotel in Munich to be at the Neuburg base before the expected start of the day’s flying. Easily finding spot 3, we settled in for the familiar wait. After only a short time, the base fire truck took its position on the airfield, right in front of us! Several of the “Bavarian Tigers” took off for the morning wave, giving us several opportunities for photographs. Spot 4 was a great location to capture the fighters’ return an hour later, with the traffic light on the perimeter road providing a great indication of the impending landing of an aircraft.
We went to the village to grab some lunch and decided to take it “to-go” in order to get back to the base as quickly as possible. Driving back, we briefly spotted what looked to be a Tornado in the overhead break ! Unable to find the mysterious Tornado, we continued to spot 3 and found a few spotters already there. One of them very kindly shared that there would possibly be a training launch of the Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) jets, known as a “Tango scramble”, and that we should go to spot 2 for the best shots. We stayed at spot 3 for a few more minutes, photographing the departure of the Tornado we had seen earlier before relocating to spot 2. The “Tonka” turned out to be from TaktLwG 33, based at our next stop, Fliegerhorst Nörvenich.
The Tango scramble, with live-armed Typhoons in full afterburner, was an incredible highlight, and we thank the local spotters who shared the information with us. Once the jets had disappeared from view,We returned to spot 4 for the afternoon recoveries, getting the “head on” shot of a taxiing Typhoon I really wanted.
Another successful base visit “in the bag”, we headed back to Munich for the day’s other critical objective, beer and food at the famous Hofbräuhaus !
