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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 only a few hundred metres away ,close by 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 1961 and 1979, 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.
After our Golden Years we continued our aircraft spotting activities and we also include a selection of photographs taken in these later and more recent years in our website.

Far most of the pictures on this website have been taken by ourselves, by Frank Klaassen or by Hans Engels; in the event we did not take the photo ourselves  we always own the original negative/slide (so we have the copyright). Although not obliged to do so, we are prepared to give viewers credit by adding their name if they rightfully claim to be the actual photographer of a picture on the site.
Just send us an e-mail!
Occasionally we make use of official air force photographs, issued to us for publication purposes; we will mention this in the appropriate cases.

if you would like to use one or more pictures of this website for any  purpose (such as in publications and/or on other websites or otherwise) , we will appreciate it if you would first let us know by sending an e-mail to the address below holding your request.
VIEWING INSTRUCTION: Just click on an album (e.g. BASE VISITS) to see the underlying galleries; then click the gallery to see the thumbnails. After that click the thumbnails to see a larger image .
Our site will of course constantly be improved and updated.
Enjoy and experience our “Golden Years of Aircraft Spotting” !

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