Welcome to the renewed Thunderstreaks.com!

The roaring Sound of Thunder filled the air when on a regular flying day some 40 Republic F-84F Thunderstreaks of both 314 and 315 squadrons took off from Eindhoven Air Base for different missions.

Impressive was the sound of the Wright J-65 jet engine, the air vibrated and the soil was shaken, when pilots pushed these robust flying machines to full power on the brakes before take-off.

As young spotters positioned a few hundred metres away at the fences of the Air Base, we were watching carefully, noted down the registrations of the incoming and outgoing aircraft and took as many photographs of them as possible, despite - keep in mind that we are talking here about the Cold War Days - frequent patrols by Military Police and Base Security Personnel, who tried to prevent us from doing so. (Today authorities are grateful to us for having managed to save so many pictures from those days for posterity!)

The described scenes, which we experienced, have made an everlasting imprint in our minds and are still today vividly engraved in our memories.

Our website Thunderstreaks.com is dedicated to what we refer to as our "Golden Years of Spotting": the period between say 1961 and 1975, when lots of time, effort and money was spent to see as many military aircraft as possible. Our both main station at the time was Eindhoven, an airbase of the Royal Netherlands Air Force that hosted a number of Thunderstreak - and later of NF-5 squadrons. No need to say that it was the Thunderstreak that inspired us to give the chosen name to this site.


  • Dutch F-84F
    (1 album)

  • Dutch RF-84F
    (1 album)

  • Other F-84F
    (1 album)

  • Other RF-84F
    (1 album)

  • Spotters Log
    (15 albums)

  • Various
    (2 albums)

What is it you will find here?

Section 1, the most important section, is entirely dedicated to the Dutch Republic F-84F Thunderstreak; it is our wish to publish a picture of each and every F-84F that flew with the Dutch air force, such in various liveries. Some background information on the type will precede the actual picture gallery.

Section 2 concerns the Dutch Republic RF-84F Thunderflash reconnaissance aircraft; in fact this type of aircraft was already phased out in 1963 so that we had no chance of photographing one although a few were observed. Instead we have selected a number of great pictures supplied by the Royal Netherlands Air Force, a number of them have never been published before.

Some background information on the type will precede the actual picture gallery.

Section 3 deals with the Thunderstreaks and Thunderflashes operated by various NATO air forces such as Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Norway, Denmark and of course the USAF. Please visit this section frequently because it will be updated on a constant basis!

Section 4 is called "Airshows, museum and base visits", which will provide you with photographic reports of Air Shows, Base Visits etc., which we ondertook in those "Golden Years": an Eldorado of Spotters Events took place in those years, such as Tactical Weapons Meet, Best Hit, Royal Flush, Tiger Meet, Open Days and so on.

Finally this website contains a mix of individual shots, all from our private collections, gathered in Section 5.

Truly an interesting memory of the past, worth while visiting!


We hope you will enjoy the site! For now, enjoy exploring the "Golden Years of Aircraft Spotting"!


Frank Klaassen
Hans Engels
E-mail: info@thunderstreaks.com