Operational History
The Royal Netherlands Navy lost three Atlantics out of nine aircraft in a series of failures over the Atlantic Ocean, resulting in the grounding of the type in 1981 and its eventual replacement by the P-3 Orion. The German Marineflieger operated theirs from 1963 to 2005, losing one in an accident. The German Atlantics also replaced by the P-3 Orion.
In 1999, a Pakistan Navy Atlantic was shot down by Indian Air Force MiG-21s after they failed to force it to land at an Indian base, raising tensions in the region, in what was dubbed the Atlantique Incident. Disobeying instructions from the MiG pilots, the Atlantic maneuvered to escape from them and was shot down by a heat-seeking air-to-air missile over the Rann of Kutch region.
Several German Atlantics have been donated to museums, including the Luftwaffenmuseum and the Dutch Air Force Museum, Soesterberg, Netherlands.
A Breguet Atlantic, referred to in news reports as an Atlantic Model 2, was used by the French Army in the search for parts of Air France Flight 447.
Read more about this topic: Breguet Atlantic
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