We just had the opportunity to visit one of the French air force bases nearby to the village where we are staying. The French air force is referred to as Armée de l’Air. We found that they have a historical Armée de l’Air museum at the Base Aérienne 115 Orange-Caritat that civilians can visit with advance permission. John wrote to them with our personal information and we were approved within a few days to visit on a particular date, that being yesterday.  It was a short drive to the Orange area, although Madame GPS as usual likes to test our patience, directing us to the smallest country lanes as possible, quite frequently leaving us (read: me) breathless as the driver chooses between driving into a ditch or canal or losing a mirror or headlight to an oncoming speeding truck…but I digress.

After navigating around a road closure with no apparent detour route, and finding the actual air base with minimal signage and no address, because of course, why would top secret information such as location of the air base be readily available on the internet…we found our way to base and to the sentry post. Luckily John speaks French very well, and he quickly understood that we must back up out of the secure gated sentry post into the civilian parking lot to present our identity papers in exchange for our museum ID passes. After we took care of paperwork, our guide Maurice, walked us through the park filled with one of each of the historical French Armée de l’Air aircraft.

 

The museum itself is 6 rooms, not particularly large, but our guide spent the entire time with us (about 2 hours) personally explaining each exhibit, the entire history of the area and how the air base developed since it was opened in 1939, just in time for the start of the second world war.  Maurice has great pride in the French air force, it’s history, and his past background as a mechanic with the air force. He spoke most of the tour in French, so it was interesting for me to try to keep up, but good practice!  There are numerous mannequins in authentic uniforms, helmets, patches, flight suits, sample munitions, official documents, timelines, and photos from both WWI and WWII.

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During the visit, we could hear the Mirages flying overhead and we were keen to see a takeoff or landing, but of course that was not part of the museum visit.

As I understand it, there are four air bases across the country. Each has a Mirage 2000 ready to go 24/7 in case of emergency, along with others that can be activated. 115 Orange-Caritat is a training base for candidates to learn how to fly the Mirage, and when they pass flight training, they move to another base for combat training.

We could have listened to Maurice enthralled for another couple hours but the workday was coming to an end for them and so the head officer signed our papers enabling us to leave the base and retrieve our identity papers. As we walked across the parking lot, we could hear one of the Mirage’s coming in for a flyby and were able to capture it overhead. Mission accomplished.

C’est tout.  A Bientôt.