Interview with Ari Saarinen on the Saab 35 Draken 

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_"In an interview, Finnish Air Force pilot Ari Saarinen recalled performing the Cobra maneuver (Kort parad manöver) in a Draken while intercepting a Royal Air Force Nimrod over the Baltic Sea; the Nimrod pilot reduced power in order to get the Finns to overshoot, but the Finnish Drakens performed the cobra maneuver to slow down, which according to Saarinen caused the British pilot to praise them over the radio."_ Legend! :)

In 1999 I was in Rovaniemi, Finland. When I was waiting in the airport hall to get home, two Saab 35 Drakens took off. One got out of sight, but to my big surprise the other jet began performing aerobatic maneuvering above the airfield. It even came flying right towards the airport building and just before I thought it would to go through the glass facade the pilot set the plane on its tail in full AB. The whole building was shaking. Quite astonishing and a great rememberance of the time I spent in Finland.

A amazing guy. These interviews are so important for the generation's to come. Thank you

These Finns are just the understated nice guys. Always a great sens of humor balancing a clear talent for what they do. Nice people.

I know personally Ari and very professional fighter pilot and has a great sense of humor. Regads to Ari and all sqdrn 11 pilots.

These old fly guys are such a nice breed. All of them are so humble and well mannered and of course the love for their trade (and hobby in many cases) comes through very clearly in these interviews. Great stuff!

I had an old SAAB 900 car and it was exquisite. Clutch in the front of the engine and a FAST car for it's time. 2 million miles and rock steady.

great interview and what a nice humble guy Ari Saarinen is.regards from Dublin ,Ireland.

Nice guy. Finnish airforce should be proud of this officer. And his speaking of English is great..

The swastikas you can see aren’t related to fascism. Actually they are Finnish Air Force symbols from 1918-1945. Swastikas are still on FAF flags and medals. Prior to Nazis it was used as a symbol of good luck.

Great interview! Was impressed with how honest was his opinion about the difference between flying commercial or for the air force. I suspect many ex air force pilots must agree :-)

Just a amazing and professional interview about Finn legend! Thank you!

Outstanding interview! I love these old Cold War era pilots and aircraft. Ari Saarinen was super! Keep it up Mike!

That was my aircraft back in the days, too.

Enjoyed the interview. I have always admired the performance and good looks of the Draken. Met a Draken pilot back in 1984 who was training into the F16. Although he liked the F16, he really loved the Draken.

priceless interview from a draken pilot , id love too hear more of this .

Finland had a few different Draken versions Ex Swedish B C and F versions, and their own F equivalent built by Valmet. Some Drakens didn't have radar because of treaties with the USSR on the max number of "fighters". The Finns modified their Valmet drakens to basically a Swedish J35J+ standard as they got RWR's and Countermeasures integrated as the Danish scrapped their drakens they bought the RWR's second hand.

Another great one! Awesome hearing about the actual handling characteristics of the J35. 10 degrees nose up on landing with 90% power?! I wonder what the descent rate was... Kiitos Ari!

What a great and interesting interview😁 Their fouga duo show is allways so beautiful to watch.

What a nice guy! I bet he is a wonderful instructor.

At the beginning of the clip you can see a de Havilland Goblin jet engine on the floor, and to the left of it is a silver de Havilland Vampire aircraft which used that type of engine. The Goblin engine is a centrifugal design, unlike modern jet engines which are all axial.

Thanks! i grew up next to an airbase with Saab Drakens, and sometimes miss seeing and hearing them take off and flyby. And i remember seeing the presentation and Flying Display of the red-white-red Draken 1997 (16:11). Ostarrichi Draken as we call it, because it was painted with the, then 1000 year old first written mention of Austria, back then called Ostarrichi. When it took off they played a moving song about home and everybody was silent, and some people even had tears in their eyes.

Saab Draken, my all time favourite plane. Good interview.

Another great interview Mike, I am married to a Finn so I have a particular interest in Finnish aviation.

Cheers from Finland! I just found this channel, amazing stuff! Looking forward to gorging through all these great interviews. For me this video is a good way to start exploring the content, as the Saab Draken is my favourite out of all the aircraft the Finnish Air Force has had in their inventory.

Wonderful interview as usual. We need the Viggen and Gripen now!

Great vid ....great aircraft.... + his English is excellent....

I got a chance to sit in a stationary (sic) operational Draken in ca 1979. I find it funny that at the time I was quite interested in Fighter Jets, as these flew regularly past above the field in front of my home in Sweden, but the Draken did not interest me much, more so the SAAB Viggen J37 and the older SAAB Tunnan J29. As I matured my appreciation for the beauty of the Draken has though grown. One of the more beautiful of fighter jets ever made, and the power... well lets say that the power felt standing nearby when it powered up for take off and engulfed a bath tub amount of jet fuel made an impact! No wonder many of my friends desired to get into the Flygvapnet as conscripts, flying jets and getting a "free" pilot´s license to then fly for SAS. Those were the days

Traffic Jams over the Baltic sea!!! Love the stories.

Finally a Saab related video!! Now you need to scare up some Swedish pilots 😉. Optimally somebody who flew multiple types/variants. A Danish F-35 Draken pilot would be interesting also as it was a quite different aircraft in many ways then standard fighter/interceptor variant operated by the other users. Great interview as Always and im looking forward to the next one (and im hoping you asked him om his view on how it compared with the J-35).

Hyvä video, greetings from Sweden lad!

Great interview thanks Mike! Gotta love the cool no B.S nature of the Fins! Awesome cold war flying story :)

Haha, the guy even made an Ace Ventura reference, what a legend!

Thank you Ari, and thanks also to AI!!!! The Drakken is one of my favorite aircraft of all time. I actually got to see them in England, when I was in the USAF back in the 80s. What a treat it was, to see the different NATO aircraft types, as well as others.

What a nice man ! Great interview. Thanks.

And this is why the Hawk is still the advance fast jet trainer of choice.

Best interview ever! Thanx to the both of you.

What a great story...I love hearing about the Draken from a pilot's perspective

Thanks for the nice interview, it is nice to hear about rare experiences from the first hand.

What a great guy. And his favorite airplane is the De Havilland Mosquito! There's a guy who knows his airplanes :-)

Back in the early 2K we were developing a Draken model for Strike Fighters, but we hit a wall trying to get the "feel" of the plane for developing a suitable flight model: I've heard about the super stall problem before, but we didn't know when (22°) it develops and how the stable the plane was manoeuvring, because nobody we contacted, either in Sweden and Denmark was willing to give us first hand informations (for free, being a free model). have we had access to this kind of informations we could have done a better job.

Very interesting video. Ari seems like a very nice person and I’ll bet he’s a terrific instructor, if I ever scrape enough money together for a Magister I’ll be sure to look him up. The Draken has been a long time favorite since building a model of one when I was very young. It always struck me as an aircraft that was ahead of it’s time and once more accurate information about it was available my admiration has increased. The Swedes go their own route when designing an aircraft and they sure seem to have a knack for building excellent aircraft. Long live the SAAB Draken!

Interesting Channel! I'm new here but interested in military aviation for decades! The Saab Draken allways was one of my favourite Designs! Simple but Beautiful! Amazing Jet! :-)

Seen the Draken fly a few times and it sure is majestic.

Very humble characters

Different perspective was fantastic! Thanks for another great interview.

Best interview ever, nice to hear about all the details regarding J35. And everything else👍👍👍👍👍

Modern pilot equipment also feature the bladder at the back of the helmet with added positive pressure breathing so I guess the swedes were ahead of their time back then. Now days proper fitting of the helmet with other anti-G equipment is perhaps even more important than back then since now days we have all these gizmos like JHMCS (Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System), NVG etc.

The most unique design I've ever seen and way cool and extremely capable even in today's environments. I bet it guzzles fuel like a Phantom too. Very good video and all the best to Ari and all concerned with this video. 35 Draken - amazing machine.

The Primary Gliders behind AWESOME

Loved this interview! Nice job getting this one

Certainly worth a read - Saab 35 Draken - Walk Around - amzn.to/2xvHF4F

The first airplane in the Finnish air force was a gift from the Swedish count Eric von Rosen to the white side in 1918, during the Finnish civil war. The count used the swastika as his personal emblem and the plane was marked with his emblem when delivered. The emblem stuck and was used by the Finns for a long time with out any connections to the German use of the symbol. There are however a possible link between the Finnish use of the symbol and the German use. In 1920 Eric von Rosen (who gifted the firs plane to Finland) was looking for someone to fly him to his estate - Rockelsta castle. The weather was bad and no Swedish pilot where willing to fly him but a German, former fighter pilot was willing to fly him home. When they arrived the weather was even worse so the pilot was invited to stay over the night at the castle. At the castle the pilot vas introduced to the sister of von Rosens wife, Carin that later became his wife. The pilot was no other than Herman Göring well before he met Adolf Hitler and became the head of the Luftwaffe. Göring would have seen the swastika during his time at Rockelsta and one can speculate if Göring later was the person that introduced the swastika to Hitler - hence the link between the Finnish and the German swastika. However most historians holds this link as unlikely and argues that Hitler would have known about the swastika as it was already in use by many in Germany at the time.

Superb video Mike thanks

Thanks for this really nice interview "thumbs up"

I really enjoyed the the video, thanks

Fascinating and what an awesome dude. Love Finland.

I was amazed when I saw the instrument panel! Where is the normal forest of dials and indicators! Very simple but probably lots going on in the background!

Cool guy, thanks for sharing.

Brilliant interview!

"The boarder is there to know where to pay the taxes" 😂 What a great guy

Great interview with a very approachable, Ari Saarinen. Would love to buy him a beer or two and hear some stories!

Always enjoy your videos sir!!! And I'll be eagerly awaiting your next ;-)

FUNtastic Aircrew Interview !!PLEASE if possible do some interviews with Greek and Turkish pilots of F100,F102,F5,F4,F104,Mirage F1s etc with their stories of the hard air combats between them back in the 70s and 80s

Draken was "my childhood jet fighter" in Rovaniemi Finland. Very noisy!

Great interview!

The Prettiest jet fighter ever. No other plane comes close to, the J35 has been an obsession of mine for 30 years plus. remember my uncle gave me a poster of the diffrent SAAB planes whene i was 6-7 years and saw this Crown jewel of a plane and that was it, i was hooked, the only fighter jet that would make me look away from the Warbirds.

Another nice bloke, the fins seem like top lads! Would love to know if he ever come up against an EE lightning

Great interview & he got the right favourite aircraft he'd like to have flown the Mossie ;-)

Thank you!

Spy plane in 1967. We live 10 km (air line distance) from the main militayr NATO air base in Norway, Gardermoen. I love to see the NATO jetfighters on the sky every day. A sunny summer day in 1967, a singel ''Draken'' came slow, quiet, and very ,very ,very low from east, (Sweden is only 60 km air line distance away) and turn back east over the top of our house. Very low. Very, very noisy it built speed. but still very low flying I was a young boy, who loved figheter planes, and knew at once what kind of a plane Draken is.. Swedes are spies..!

Great. An interview with a pilot of a rarer less exported type.

If you want to see Draken fly, it comes to the weekend airshow "Flygfesten" every three years it is held in Sweden. The only flying Viggen also comes by to show of it's abilities, which is something else. The latest Gripen model is a given of course. And the war proven Tunnan.

If I remember rightly the Draken would have carried anti-air rockets. Would've been an interesting to hear if he had any experience.

Saab Draken and Mirage IIIC, Two airplanes absolutely on par with the best planes of the "superpowers" at their time. Unfortunately Germany didn't buy it instead of the F104 Starfighter. It would have saved many pilot's lifes. A beautiful airplane.

In t(h)rust, we trust! Great interview.

First class video!

"its like a church stool" lol lol

I feel honoured you chose and flew the Draken. And flew them well, none crashed?

Top work fella 👍

Swedish cranked arrow was ahead of its time, and makers of the Concord copied it for high-low speed handling qualities

The J-35 still looks like something out of a Sci-Fi movie. Incredibly beautiful airplane.

That cockpit looks refreshingly 'simple' as well. Very uncluttered. A stark contrast to the Jaguar a couple of weeks ago!

Interesting - I used Air Botnia to/from Turku or Helsinki many times - either from Stockholm or Copenhagen. Landing crosswind in Turku in a blizzard in an Avro 85 with it's narrow gear is quite an experience.... But I bet guys like this are used to just that.

Is that a W33 in the background, on the floor? Standing underneath it later on.

Almost the same looking air speed indicator ( the same style) is in F-105 Thunderchief

I always like using this on Ace Combat Zero, I wish it had gotten into AC7

These interviews make my day. Looking forward to future interviews and hopefully some day you can speak with Russian pilots.

interested to find how the engine was started ? what kind of starting system they had on the Draken? Thanks

Subscribed!

So where is the guided tour of that Finnish Air Museum with all those amazing and interesting displays

The sound levels of Ari and the interviewer could have been matched better.

Superb 👌

Very interest.

Draken 😍🇫🇮

Legend

Ari Saarinen,was Draken, pilot.

Excellent💯👍👏 video Perfect💯👍👏 name for aircraft 🔥🔥🐲

Mulla on pienoismallina MIG21 C aion maalata sen suomen väreuhin ..tarroja ei oo mut sen kissan saa piirtämällä ja tunnukset maalamal🙂..