If you would ask an aviation photographer “What is your favorite aircraft?” , the majority would reply “the jets”…

If you would ask in detail, they all love the ‘old’ metal, those jets that become very rare nowadays if you want to see them flying and not in a museum. And among those classics, the Swedish Saab built jets are a category outside competition! The Swedish Air Force Historic Flight is doing an outstanding job in keeping their legacy jets in a flying condition.

Once again we were very fortunate to be able to fly with all that precious metal for two glorious days in June. After we finished our project in Denmark, we flew with the Skyvan to Trolhattan in Sweden.

But the headliners were of course the classic jets. The Swedish Air Force Historic Flight also presented their support plane when they fly out to airshows – a Cessna Citation – nicely decorated with Swedish markings. They also have the Saab B17 in their collection now, and it was the first time for us to see this giant warbird like aircraft. Like many of their assets, there is only 1 example flying in the entire world.

We paired the bare metal Viggen with the 2-ship Gripen, much to the delight of the photographers onboard the Skyvan. All of these formation set ups are so exclusive, the menacing weather only added to the spectacle. This Viggen has less than 100 flying hours left before it will be grounded forever…

The Swedish Air Force C-130 Hercules is by now also a pretty Old-timer and another rare opportunity for us.

For the Saab Draken we need some good skills to catch it, as the aircraft can only make flybys, it has a notoriously high minimum speed but we all managed to get our memory cards full of this iconic delta. On the first day we got to see the bare metal two seat version.

The Saab Tunnan and Saab Lansen gave us both a solo join-up and time enough to fly a few unique 2-ship formation set ups.

Day 1 concluded with that amazing Saab Sk60, still in the colours of their once famous ‘Team 60’ aerobatic team, so nice to see this jet for one last time….or was it maybe not the last time?

We finished our Swedish project with another chance to see the Saab Sk60, and we truly enjoyed every second of its join up, this time it really was the final photo join up of the trainer jet in military service. The good news is that a few of these will go now also under the wings of the Swedish Air Force Historic Flight, so hopefully we get to see them again in the future.

If you look at the photos in this report, we can only have a giant smile from ear to ear, celebrating that we managed to do it once again. This is really a project you should join us on once in your life, if you have a taste for the old jets. Sweden, June 2025 is already in our schedule!