Patrouille Suisse: history and F-5 Tigers of the Swiss aerobatic team

Six red-and-white jets come over the ridge in tight formation, trailing white smoke, and break apart in all directions – the thunder arrives only a moment later. The Patrouille Suisse is one of Europe’s best-known aerobatic teams, and it is one of the few that flies real fighter jets. Since 1995 those have been Northrop F-5E Tiger IIs, and for three decades before that, Hawker Hunters. Here you will learn how the team came about, what makes the Tigers special, how to recognize the aircraft and why the 2027 season will be a very special one for spotters.

Patrouille Suisse: the short answer

The Patrouille Suisse is the jet aerobatic team of the Swiss Air Force. It has flown officially since August 22, 1964, first with the Hawker Hunter, and since 1995 with the Northrop F-5E Tiger II. Its home base is Emmen military airfield. The program is shown with six supersonic jets that reach speeds of up to around 1,000 km/h. Because the army is retiring the Tigers at the end of 2027, Parliament has also decided to dissolve the team in its current form.

The beginnings: from the Venom to the Hunter

The Swiss air force had formation displays in its repertoire long before the official founding. When Zurich-Kloten Airport opened in 1953, four de Havilland Venoms flew over the guests. The Venom was the successor to the de Havilland Vampire, with which Switzerland had entered the jet age. In 1959, an order regulated the procedure for such demonstrations for the first time, already using Hunter jets of the surveillance wing, that is, the air force’s professional pilots.

Then on August 22, 1964, the time had come: the formation flew for the first time with the official mandate to represent the Swiss air force as an aerobatic team. In January 1965, the name “Patrouille Suisse” was officially confirmed. It began as a formation of four Hunters; a fifth aircraft for solo displays was added later.

A curious chapter: in 1968 the team appeared twice with the Dassault Mirage IIIS. That was as far as it went, though; the workhorse was and remained the Hunter. From 1970 the formation regularly consisted of five aircraft, from 1978 of six.

The Hunter shapes an era

For three decades the Patrouille Suisse was a Hunter team. The British jet served with the Swiss Air Force from 1958 to 1994 and is still a favorite of Swiss fans today. A few milestones from this time:

• 1977 brought the smoke system. The smoke not only makes the maneuvers more visible to the audience but also helps the pilots judge the position of the other aircraft.
• 1978 saw the team fly its first display abroad, in Salon-de-Provence. Before that, the policy of neutrality had prevented appearances across the border.
• 1979 the Patrouille Suisse won a trophy for its display at the International Air Tattoo in Great Britain – an early sign that the small country could keep up in international comparison.
• 1991 twelve Hunters received red undersides for the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation, with the serials giving way to the anniversary badge.
• On September 25, 1994, the team flew its last Hunter display in Nancy.

If you want to experience the Hunter era today, you will find aircraft in the Flieger-Flab-Museum Dübendorf and in the Fliegermuseum Altenrhein on Lake Constance. More about the type itself is in the profile of the Hawker Hunter.

1995: the switch to the F-5E Tiger II

With the end of the Hunter, the Patrouille Suisse needed a new aircraft, and the choice fell on the F-5E Tiger II. Switzerland had procured the light fighter jet through two armament programs, and the first Tigers entered service in 1978. For the team, twelve aircraft from the second procurement batch of 1981 were selected, with the serials J-3080 to J-3091.

At the same time the team moved: until 1994 it was based at Dübendorf, and since then Emmen military airfield has been its home base. The Tigers received their red-and-white paint scheme according to a design by Hansjörg Oberholzer, selected through a public competition.

The team flew the first season with the Tiger without smoke. Only from 1996 were smoke generators from RUAG available, which can be installed in ten of the twelve team aircraft. When the generator is fitted, the right-hand cannon cannot be used – a detail that shows how closely display aircraft and combat aircraft are linked at the Patrouille Suisse.

The Tiger in numbers

The F-5E is a small jet: around 14.45 meters long, with a wingspan of only about 8.13 meters. Two General Electric J85 engines take it to around Mach 1.6. It is armed with two 20 mm cannons. The F-5E made its first flight on August 11, 1972. You can read more details on variants, history and its role as an aggressor with the US Navy in the profile of the Northrop F-5.

Feature	Hawker Hunter	Northrop F-5E Tiger II
Service with the Patrouille Suisse	1964 to 1994	since 1995
Origin	Great Britain	USA
Engines	one jet engine	two J85 engines
Speed	subsonic in level flight	supersonic-capable
Team home base	Dübendorf	Emmen
Smoke	from 1977	from 1996

How to recognize the Patrouille Suisse Tigers

In the sky, the Patrouille Suisse is hard to mistake, but from close up it is still worth a careful look:

• Silhouette: pointed, long nose, slim fuselage, short trapezoidal wings with launch rails at the wingtips and a single vertical stabilizer. Two engine nozzles sit side by side at the rear.
• Livery: red and white, with the Swiss cross on the underside. Especially in inverted passes and turns you can see the cross clearly.
• Serial: Swiss fighter jets carry a “J” and a four-digit number. The team aircraft come from the range J-3080 to J-3091. How Switzerland marks civil aircraft is explained in the article on Swiss HB registrations.
• Gray Tigers in the team: Because fatigue cracks were found on some aircraft, from 2015 gray Tigers without the special livery temporarily flew with the team as well. A gray F-5 in the formation is therefore not a mistake in your identification.
• The escort: The Pilatus PC-6 “Felix” with the serial V-622, also in team colors, takes the commander, announcer and ground crew to the display sites. It has been in service since 1997 and is a collecting target of its own for many spotters.

A note on possible confusion: the Swiss Air Force’s twin-engine F/A-18 Hornet has two canted vertical stabilizers and is considerably larger. If you see a propeller aircraft in formation, you are dealing with the PC-7 Team.

Team, positions and program

Unlike some other aerobatic teams, the Patrouille Suisse pilots are not pure display pilots. They are professional military pilots and come from a Hornet frontline squadron of the air force. The displays are a secondary duty for them alongside their actual service, that is, safeguarding air sovereignty and air policing. When a pilot leaves, the rest of the team helps choose his or her successor.

The flying team consists of six positions plus a spare pilot:

Position	Role in the formation
Leader	leads the formation and gives the commands
Right Wing and Left Wing	fly to the right and left of the leader
Slot	sits behind the leader and closes the formation at the rear
1st Solo and 2nd Solo	show their own maneuvers and crossings, rejoin the formation for pictures
Spare	spare pilot, often films the displays for the debrief

On the ground there are a commander and two announcers who present the program – usually in several languages, as befits a Swiss team. The program itself consists of formation flying, loops, opposing passes by the soloists, crossings and a big final picture in which the jets break apart.

At major events, the air force’s display teams also work together. On September 7, 2014, the Patrouille Suisse and the PC-7 Team gave a joint display with 15 aircraft at Air14 in Payerne. There were joint flyovers at other airshows as well: at the Royal International Air Tattoo 2024, the Tigers flew past in one formation together with the Red Arrows.

On the road in Europe

Since the first display abroad in 1978, the Patrouille Suisse has regularly appeared at major airshows, including in Germany. The team visited the ILA Berlin several times, including 2002, 2006, 2008 and 2010, and in 2009 it flew at the Hamburg Port Anniversary.

In recent years this has shifted. For 2025 the air force published a slimmed-down calendar, and appearances abroad have since been the exception. If you want to see the Tigers, your best chances are in Switzerland itself – for example at military air days or at the Axalp live fire demonstration in the Bernese Oberland. You can find an overview of further events in the guide Airshows in Europe for plane spotters, and for the Austrian major event in the article AIRPOWER in Zeltweg.

Incidents

Formation aerobatics with fighter jets remains demanding, and the Patrouille Suisse has not been free of incidents either. On June 9, 2016, during training for an airshow in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands, two Tigers touched in the air. J-3086 crashed into a small lake near Bitgum; the pilot saved himself with the ejection seat and was slightly injured. J-3088 landed with a damaged horizontal stabilizer. The investigation attributed the accident to pilot error, and in 2022 the pilot was convicted by a military court.

On June 15, 2023, two aircraft touched again during training over Baar in the canton of Zug. A broken-off nose tip hit a house, and one person on the ground was injured. Both jets landed safely. Such events are one reason displays are strictly regulated and spectator areas clearly separated – how airshow safety in Germany was rethought after 1988 is explained in the article on the Ramstein air show disaster.

The end of the Tigers and the Patrouille Suisse

The team’s future has been fought over for more than ten years. In 2013, the then defense minister Ueli Maurer announced the end for 2016 because the Saab Gripen was planned as the Tiger’s successor. After the Gripen procurement failed, the Tigers stayed in service longer. In 2022, the Federal Council wanted to retire the F-5 by 2025 but failed because of resistance in Parliament.

In March 2024, the army then announced it would retire the Tigers at the end of 2027. The reason given was the strained financial situation: according to the army, operation costs around 40 million Swiss francs per year, and continuing longer would have required additional investment. At that time there were still 25 Tigers in the inventory, 18 of them in use – around half with the Patrouille Suisse. The remaining aircraft serve as target tugs and for measurement and test flights. Their tasks will afterwards be taken over by the F-35 Lightning II, the first examples of which the army expects from 2028.

In December 2024, the Council of States decided by 25 votes to 19 to dissolve the Patrouille Suisse at the end of 2027 for cost reasons. A fan club handed over a petition with 8,177 signatures, but this rescue attempt also failed. The idea of a popular initiative was likewise not pursued for lack of prospects of success.

What remains: the PC-7 Team

The Swiss Air Force is not left entirely without an aerobatic team. The PC-7 Team with nine Pilatus PC-7s from the Swiss manufacturer Pilatus is not affected by the dissolution. The army sees the PC-7 as the most sensible solution for continuing to field an air force aerobatic team. One important argument is cost: according to media reports, one flight hour of the entire PC-7 Team costs about a third of a single Tiger flight hour. Critics counter that a turboprop team cannot match the speed and sound of the jets. How the Swiss teams compare in Europe is shown in the overview of Europe’s aerobatic teams.

Making the most of the last Tiger seasons as a spotter

As of October 2026, only the 2027 season remains to experience the Patrouille Suisse in its current form. Plan early and keep an eye on the air force’s official announcements, because dates and programs can change at short notice.

How to set up your camera and settings for fast jets and smoke maneuvers is explained in the guide Photographing airshows. If you are interested in the other major teams in Europe, you will find portraits of the Frecce Tricolori and the Patrouille de France.

Conclusion

The Patrouille Suisse is more than an aerobatic team: since 1964 it has been the flagship of the Swiss Air Force, shaped an era with the Hunter and created, with the red-and-white F-5E Tiger II, a picture that spotters across Europe know. That it flies real, supersonic fighter jets makes it special – and that is exactly what now seals its fate, because operating the old Tigers has become too expensive. With the retirement at the end of 2027, the Patrouille Suisse ends as a jet team, and the PC-7 Team carries on the air force’s aerobatic tradition.