SAAF Celebrates Air Force Day
Date: 1 February 2007
Today is Air Force Day, commemorating the establishment of the SAAF on 1 February 1920.
The annual parade is held at the SAAF Memorial at Swartkop and Unofficial SAAF Website reporter Shaun Melass was there.
Throughout the week the skies over Pretoria have been filled with the sights and sounds of helicopters, turbo props and jets.
The reason for all this activity was that 1st of February is SAAF Day where the SAAF celebrates all that is good and this includes some very serious formations of anything that flies.
I took up position at the South African Air force Memorial at Bays Hill, Swartkop, in anticipation of an excellent photo opportunity. With the exception of the Flag Formation (Augusta's with flags hanging below), all the formations flew from East to West which presented a problem in that the Sun was in the East. I had to wait until the formations were abeam me before shooting which left me with a very small window of opportunity to take photos.
Nevertheless it was an awesome sight to witness as wave upon wave of formations flew by and made me feel extremely proud to be a South African. As you can see in the photos some of the formations were very low and it made for a dramatic image to have the ground appearing as a background.
The ceremony was opened with the fly-by of two Augusta's carrying the flags. They flew in a North to South direction along the runway at Swartkops Airforce Base. The formations then approached from the East and were bang on time. I understand that there was only one formation that was seven seconds off its slot, while the rest were within a couple of seconds of their slots. This is extremely impressive when one considers that the formations were all approaching from diverse holding points.
The formations were made up of the various sections of the Airforce and included various types of helicopters, Caravans, King Airs, Turbo Daks, Citations, Hawks and Cheetahs. There were no C-130's or CASA's.
All too quickly it was over. From the time that the Flag Formation flew over to the time that the Cheetahs arrived in their high speed dash not more than fifteen minutes had elapsed.
