Four Alouettes

The team began when the Alouette III squadron No. 299 put up four white-and-black striped helicopters for a single display. Requests to repeat it led quickly to a formal, permanent team, founded in 1973 and placed as Flight 4 of the No. 300 (training) Squadron at Deelen. Its four Alouette IIIs were later painted red, white and blue. Crews changed every year and flew normal training and transport tasks outside the season, yet the team built a strong reputation across Europe, won prizes and encouraged other services to form helicopter teams. Invitations from the United States and Australia had to be turned down for budget and logistic reasons.

Accidents and a final performance

During one training flight over the Ginkelse Heide the rotor blades of two helicopters touched, and some crew were slightly injured. On 1 October 1990 a pilot was killed near Oud-Reemst when the tail boom of a team Alouette broke off on a routine flight, a failure traced to the wrong material used in an earlier strengthening modification and subsequent fatigue cracking. The team flew at the 1994 open day at Leeuwarden and, on 26 June 1995, provided the four helicopters for the premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. With the Alouette III being phased out, the team was disbanded in 1995.