| HISTORY |
| Because of the need for an area to practice in gunnery , firing rockets and bombing skills , an area , called `Vliehors` was bought on the island Vlieland. It was and is a good place to practice because it lays so remote. But due the break out of WWII no serious excercises could be planned.Oud on the 2nd of may 1948 the first official excercises took place. It was really pioneering those days.Communication with the aircraft was summary. The targets were made of red rags numbered from 1 till 6 tighted between 2 poles. The observation tower was excisting of a simpel building of bricks standing on top of an old German WWII bunker. |
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| When the new generation fighters arrived , the number of targets were enlarged with old tanks and armoured vehicles.The targets got a new place and the new observation tower moved to the center of the Vliehors. In the early 70`s the present strafing targets were introduced.To this hardboard targets are Saab hitrecorders attached who registrate the impacts of the bullets. Live weapons at the time were dropped more frequent than today.The costs are simply to high and noise pollution must be reduced. Today only the Mk-82`s are dropped while in the early days except Mk-82`s also Mk-83 bombs and Mk-84`s were dropped at the range. Even the period of live bombing is restricted to 1 period in a year , namely from 15 september till 28 february. Also the napalm bombardements are history. Preserving nature is more a hot item nowadays than before.Regulary the remainings left by the excersises are removed to keep the range as clean as possible. |
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| Maybe in the future we can see the AH-64 Apache practice on the range because possibillities are trying to find to let our apaches practice at Vlieland |