Cold War
During World War II, Switzerland struggled with buying and building modern combat aircraft. The fourteen Bf 109G Gustavs acquired from the Germans (including two interned) proved increasingly difficult to maintain, and were removed from service in 1947, although the "Emil" variants purchased earlier continued on until 1949. The Swiss also acquired nearly 200 aircraft interned after violating its sovereignty, but most were unsuitable for Swiss operations.
However, in 1948 the Swiss were able to purchase 130 surplus P-51 Mustangs from the United States. Several other aircraft types followed, including the 220 de Havilland Vampires purchased in 1949 and 1953, 250 de Havilland Venoms acquired 1954-56, and 100 Hawker Hunters. The P-51s replaced the Messerschmitt Bf 109s and remained operational for a decade. Both the Venoms and Vampires showed remarkable longevity, with the Venoms in service until 1983 and the Vampires until 1990, more than 40 years.
Read more about this topic: History Of The Swiss Air Force
Famous quotes containing the words cold and/or war:
“The funny part of it all is that relatively few people seem to go crazy, relatively few even a little crazy or even a little weird, relatively few, and those few because they have nothing to do that is to say they have nothing to do or they do not do anything that has anything to do with the war only with food and cold and little things like that.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.”
—Anthony Burgess (b. 1917)