F-16s depart for NATO Tiger meet with special color scheme that has almost vanished after landing

Following The Aviationist’s first post on the Polish Air Force Special Colored F-16s that were to attend the NATO Tiger Meet in Norway, there were rumors that the aircraft from Krzesiny AB had not landed at Orland airbase.

Indeed, someone who was spotting over there did not see one or both of the Tigerish F-16s from Poland.

Well, the mystery has been solved.

There’s a photo that is confirming that both planes actually arrived in Norway (the very same aircraft). But they were somehow different from departure as the Tiger overlay did not make it, as it was peeled off the aircraft.

It is the peculiar nature of the F-16 paint job that does not let use another layer of liquid coating on the fuselage.

This is not the first an aircraft loses its special paint job in flight, but the majority of these episodes took place several years ago, when the F-16 characteristic’s haze paint scheme was not very well known.

Being among the last operators of the Viper, maybe the Polish Air Force still has to learn the proper kind of paint that must be used for special colored F-16s.

Image Credit: Polish Press Agency



About Jacek Siminski
Standing contributor for TheAviationist. Aviation photojournalist. Co-Founder of DefensePhoto.com. Expert in linguistics, Cold War discourse, Cold War history and policy and media communications.
About David Cenciotti
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.