Istres Air Base

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BA125 (false colours)

BA125

Bagde of the squadron 3/4 Limousin

Istres Air Base (Base Aérienne 125 or BA 125) is a large multi role tasked air base located at 43°31′28″N, 4°56′30″E, near Istres, north of Marseille. The airport facilities are also known as Istres - Le Tubé (ICAO airport code: LFMI).

The main user of the base is the French Air Force. It has several operational units on the base, including:^[1]

Strike squadron 3/4 Limousin equipped with Mirage 2000N.
Tanker squadron 00.093 Bretagne equipped with KC-135 Stratotanker,
DAMS 11.004 (Dépôt d’armes et de munitions spéciales or Special Weapon Storage) responsible for the hardened alert facilities of nuclear mid-range ASMP missiles to be used by Strike sqn 3/4 in the deterrence role.
Air Defence squadron 01.950.
25th air engineer regiment.

The base also hosts a helicopter squadron and a large repair and training facility. In addition, it also includes test facilities for DGA, Dassault Aviation, SNECMA, Thales and some aeronautical units of the French Navy. More than 5000 personnel work on the base.

On 31 March 1992, a Boeing 707 of Kabo Air, a Nigerian company made an emergency landing after a flight of danger almost unprecedented in the history of airliner flight. In turbulence at 35,000 feet, engines 3 and 4 separated from the wing, along with flaps and control systems. With delicate operation of the remaining power and controls, the flight headed for Marseilles trailing fuel from broken tanks. Istres air traffic control called the flight to tell them they had visual contact. "How can you see us? We're still in cloud?" "You're on fire," came the reply. Abandoning Marseilles as a potential landing site, the pilots spotted part of the Istres runway in a gap in cloud and performed a flapless, downwind landing with a touch-down speed of nearly 200 knots and a raging fire fueled by the remaining fuel load pouring from the right wing. The gear failed and the aircraft's ground slide took it off the far end of the runway, but the crew of five survived and the cargo was saved. The incident brought to light cowboy practices among certain airlines - the 707 involved in the incident had passed mandatory maintenance and was overloaded.

Secondary users also occasionally include the United States Air Force and NASA. As the base runway is 5 km long and 60 m wide, it is the longest one in Europe and a potential emergency landing site for a transoceanic abort landing (TAL) of the Space Shuttle. USAF has used the base for air refueling operations for missions over the Balkans,^[2] as well as, according to some sources, for U2 reconnaissance flights over Bosnia.^[3] It may be corroborated by the ground exhibition of a U2 during the 1996 Istres Air show (Balkans operation where running at this time).