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 Antoine Roels first pointed his camera lens at aircraft in the sky when his base commander suggested the sky held other subjects of interest besides the feathered friends Roels generally photographed. Good advice. Roels refocused his lens on aircraft in flight. A few years later, he became the official photographer of the Belgian Air Force public affairs office. That distinction makes him the photographer for all BAF publications and the sole photographer allowed to fly in all BAF aircraft. To date, Roels has accumulated more than 1,100 flying hours in photo missions in more than fifty different aircraft. He has also flown with the British Red Arrows, Italian Frecce Tricolori, French Patrouille de France, Spanish Patrulla Aguila, and the Canadian Snowbirds.
His first assignment for the BAF was to capture the first flight of the first F-16 to roll out of the Gosselies assembly plant. He remembers it well, F-16 No. FB-22. “Before the flight, I was helped into my g-suit and told how it connected to the backseat equipment. But a technical problem arose and the first flight was postponed. Impatient to fly, I committed the cockpit to memory. The next day, I suited up again and again the flight was postponed. And again I committed the image to memory. The third day, I suited up and hopped in the backseat of the jet. Two practice runs had boosted my self-confidence, until I began connecting the equipment to my g-suit and discovered I had donned the g-suit inside out.”
The third time worked; Roels photographed his first F-16 in flight. But he hadn’t seen the last of that particular jet. When Maj. Frank De Winne was selected for the Joe Bill Dryden Semper Viper Award in 1998 for safely returning his F-16B to base after it developed engine problems, Roels was asked if he might happen to have a photo of that particular F-16B. Yes, ten years later, De Winne’s jet was the very same F-16B, No. FB-22.
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