General Background

The Northrop F-5 tactical fighter was designed as an extremely maneuverable, supersonic fighter with a high rate of reliability at a low operating cost. The F-5 first flew on July 30, 1959 with the first customer delivery in 1964. The last of more than 2,600 F-5’s was produced in 1989 and about two-thirds of these are still in service with 26 countries more than 4 decades later. The F-5 was manufactured by Northrop Grumman and under license in Canada, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland.

The Aircraft

The Austrian Air Force was retiring the Saab J-35 Draken in 2005 so they needed a stop-gap aircraft until the Eurofighter would be available in 2008. In 2004 they decided to lease 12 Northrop F-5Es from the Swiss Air Force. On July 9, 2004 the first 4 of the F-5Es arrived at Nittner Air Base at Graz Thalerhof. These 4 F-5Es were J-3005, J-3030, J-3033 and J-3065. Since these aircraft carried American armament it was necessary to get the approval of U.S. authorities.