Four Hellenic Air Force Vipers made a fuel stop in Italy on their way to Poznan, Poland.
NATO Tiger Meet is an annual exercise that gathers squadrons sporting Tiger (or feline) emblems. The Exercise’s distinctive feature is that the planes that attend it usually get brand new, flamboyant tiger color schemes.
On May 12, 2018, four HAF F-16s belonging to the 335 Squadron from Araxos, wearing Tiger markings, visited Aviano Air Base, in northeastern Italy, on their way to NATO Tiger Meet 2018 in Poland.
In this post you can find the photographs (taken by our contributor Claudio Tramontin) of the four aircraft, three F-16Cs (serialled 003, 007, 017) and one F-16D (023), about to land on runway 05 at Aviano: whilst the single seaters featured a quite simple tiger stripe on the upper side of the tail, the two-seater sported a special tiger livery that covered the CFTs (Conformal Fuel Tanks) as well as the external fuel tanks with the text Akir 1941 – Araxos 2018. In fact, the 335 Sqn is the oldest HAF squadron: it was established at Akir (RAF Aqir, Palestine, currently Tel Nof airbase, Israel), in 1941.
More specials will attend NTM2018 that we will cover in the next couple of weeks.
