

The History of the French Air force Groups from 1945 to 2015
Created at the same time as the Armée de l’Air (the French Air Force) itself, at the beginning of the 1930s, the air groups epitomised the way the French air force had evolved for decades. Re-created at the end of the Second World War, the number of the Armée de l’Air’s groups was at its peak during the Cold War, before decreasing when the Soviet threat disappeared after the USSR imploded. During the 1990s, their very existence was questioned as the groups were finally purely and simply scrapped in favour of simple squadrons, before being re-formed twenty years later.
The book tells the more than fifty-year old story of the French fighter and reconnaissance groups from 1945 to 2015, i.e. the period from propeller-driven planes to jets, from Spitfires and Thunderbolts to Mirage 2000s and Rafales, including Ouragans, Mystères and Mirage IIIs.
Whether it still exists or only existed for a short while, each group is described in detail – its history, but also its insignia and its materiel – with hundreds of profiles not only of the armed aircraft, but also servitude planes and even those, like the T-6, used by ground attack units especially trained in Algeria and used by most of the groups of the time.