Grostenquin France

The Sky Lancers

Tony Hannas

In January 1986 Tony Hannas recorded a few of his Sky Lancers recollections. He begins with a reference to a mid-air collision.

First of all, the collision occurred on a practice run which we used to make two or three times a day.Before we had aircraft specifically assigned to us, we had to scrounge them from the squadrons. The easiest way of doing this without creating animosity was to do one sortie in the early morning,before squadron ops began, and one in the evening, after they terminated. This made it easier to get four Sabres for our other sortie around midday.

When we finally got our own aircraft, we maintained a similar routine. Additionally, in the evening we could practice over the airfield - most shows would be at airports, and thus we could use the runways as references. Otherwise, I had found a small lake about 10 miles south of Grostenquin which we used as a simulated airfield.

The day of the incident (July 13, 1955) was quite bumpy, so instead of doing our routine at low level over the lake, I decided to do it at 1000 feet. During a line astern pass (four aircraft line astern) somebody touched somebody starting a chain reaction in which Nos. 2, 3 and 4 were each damaged. We used to fly a very tight formation, one of the tightest of all European teams, and in the line astern, the noses were directly below the tail pipes in front; and in box formation, the wings of the wingmen and the leader were overlapping by at least three feet. Out metal-to-metal separations were probably 24 - 30 inches, so our margin for error was little. We felt comfortable with things, and felt compactness presented better unity, and a better picture from the ground.

No. 3 (Eisler) suffered the most with the nose of his Sabre damaged, his pitot head lost (hence no airspeed reading) and most elevator lost. BR Campbell who was No. 2, received tail damage, and Gerry Theriault, No. 4, had a dent in his nose. I immediately picked up No. 3 on my wing and returned him to base where he landed flying formation right down to the runway. I then did the same with No. 2. Gerry felt safe in coming in by himself.

When the collision occurred, I was checking the positioning of the three behind me in my rear-view mirror. Suddenly, two aircraft broke violently up and to the right and left, and the third violently down. Doing the practice at 1000 feet certainly saved at least one aircraft.

One thing that this reinforced was the image of the Sabre as a sturdy machine. From my first trip in it, I always had the sense that it was like a powerful horse. I suppose the way you got into it supported this feeling - you climbed up the side not unlike stepping into a stirrup, and then into the cockpit which was like the saddle. The damage suffered by Eisler's Sabre showed what a tough "old horse" the Sabre was.