I

magine a rural Swiss village

deep in the Alps. Small

wooden chalets and dark

conifer trees lining a valley, set

against a backdrop of magnificent

mountains. Green fields peppered

with yellow flora waving gently as

a breeze drifts down from glaciers.

All this and more exists in the

Obersimmental in the Bernese

Oberland region south of Lake

Thun, nestled in the heartland of

the small nation.

It was in this

locale that

military planners seeking new

airfields in the 1940s found what

they were looking for on the plain

next to the village of Matten. A grass

runway gave way to a hardened strip,

part of the ‘Réduit’ – the national

redoubt – the centre of Switzerland’s

defensive fortress policy as it stood

against the Axis powers surrounding

the land-locked country.

What became known as St Stephan

airfield gained a concrete runway

post-war. It housed a variety of Swiss

Air Force types before de Havilland

Vampires and Venoms heralded

the jet age in 1955.

Mavericks

Hawker Hunters

first appeared at

St Stephan in

November 1980.

The resident unit

was Fliegerstaffel

15 (Squadron

15), which

occasionally

shared

the airfield with Fliegerstaffel

24’s electronic countermeasures-

configured, two-seat Hunters.

Along with Fliegerstaffel 7 at

Interlaken, Fliegerstaffel 15’s

wartime role would have been to

strike at communication centres,

transport bases and general

infrastructure both in Switzerland

and in Bavaria, Germany. Military

planners predicted that Soviet

tank and aerial forces would

sweep west, violating

Swiss neutrality.

Plane

Paper

Peter Lewis explains why an exotically

painted Hunter has been taken to heart by a

Swiss community

COLD WAR JETS HAWKER HUNTER

18 FLYPAST April 2018

Right

Hawker Hunter F.

J-4040 in fl ight over

Switzerland.

ALL PETER LEWIS

Below right

Ueli Leutert is the

Hunter’s regular

display pilot.