We Chased The F-16 Tapes For Four Years. They Were Wiped For 340 Francs.
Three appeals and a tribunal established that the one-inch reels existed, went to a regional records office in 1991, and were degaussed in 1993 under a media-reuse schedule. What survives is a fourth-generation VHS, re-recorded twice.
A standing series in which this newspaper investigates a widely held claim and reports that it could not substantiate it.
BEAUVECHAIN, Belgium — Certificate 93/RD/1187. Two pages. Dated 17 June 1993.
Two one-inch open-reel tapes, degaussed and reissued to a signals unit. Reason code 07: media reuse. Valuation, for the state's property register, 340 Belgian francs a reel. About eight euros now.
Those two reels are the primary record of the strongest radar-visual case in Europe, and there is no other.
What we were after
On the night of 30–31 March 1990 two F-16s locked onto a target that went from 150 to 970 knots inside a second, and an air force said so at a press conference, on the record, with a printout in the room.
Thirty-six years of argument have followed. Every side of it quotes the same figure.
Nobody in those thirty-six years had checked the figure against the recording — which is a strange sentence to write about the most-cited case on this continent, and we spent four years establishing that it is true.
What four years produced
Three refusals. Three appeals. One hearing before an administrative tribunal, in a room with eleven seats, at which the state's representative said, accurately, that the newspaper was asking for something that no longer existed and had not for a very long time.
The tribunal ordered disclosure of the surrounding paperwork on 14 March 2025 and we had it on 6 May.
It establishes three things. The reels existed and were logged into the wing registry on 31 March 1990 as items 9 and 10. They were transferred to a regional records office in November 1991 on a note that describes them as "radar registration", with no case reference and no retention marking. And on 17 June 1993 they were wiped, under a schedule written in 1988 for range telemetry.
The schedule
Directive 88/ARCH/12 is eleven pages and we have published all of them.
It says that magnetic media held for more than twenty-four months without an active retention marking is to be assessed for reuse. It contains no exception for a case file. It contains no field in which a person can write this one might matter.
The man who signed the certificate held eleven thousand reels and reused nine hundred and six that week, most of them telemetry from the Ardennes. His reply runs at the foot of this page. We asked him whether he wanted his name kept out and he wrote back declining, which is more than we expected.
What survives
One VHS cassette, made for a staff briefing, dubbed from a U-matic working copy that itself came off the reels. The U-matic has been missing since 1994.
The cassette was then recorded over twice at its tail and copied again for a documentary.
We paid Dr. Rosalind Okonjo-Vermeulen €4,100 to examine it for eleven weeks. She counts at least four generations of loss, finds the burned-in timecode unreadable after eleven minutes forty, and reports that the ten seconds in dispute sit inside a dropout.
The number
So we cannot substantiate 970 knots.
We also cannot knock it down, and we want that said as loudly. Colonel Lucien De Brouwer-Haesaert, who gave the figure in 1990, still gives it, and told us plainly that he read it off a printout he handed back at the end of the briefing.
He is not lying. He is remembering. Thirty-six years on, a remembered number and a copied number are the same kind of object, and neither is a measurement.
What this desk takes from it
Nobody suppressed anything. That is the finding, and it is duller than either of the stories that have been told about this case.
Tape cost money. Storage cost money. A records schedule written for range telemetry made no allowance for a case that would still be argued about in 2026, and no allowance was the correct engineering decision in 1988 and the wrong one by 1991, and the person who could have noticed the difference was a warrant officer with a list.
There is no document at the foot of this story. Our Vault holds the transfer note, the certificate and the schedule, and it does not hold the thing this newspaper spent four years asking for, because that thing is now somebody's signal traffic from 1994.
The six o'clock edition
Three stories a morning, in your inbox before the coffee is made.
Sources & Method
We stopped arguing about the number and went looking for the tape. Four years, three refusals, three appeals and one hearing produced a two-page certificate with a price on it. Then we paid a forensic examiner to tell us what the surviving copy can and cannot support, and published her answer before we wrote a word of this.
Who we spoke to
- Adjudant-chef (ret.) Marcel Vandeputte-Coene, Named on the destruction certificate as the authorising warrant officer. Traced through the pension register; interviewed at his home near Ghent, twice, the second time with the certificate on the table February and April 2026 His reply is printed in full, unedited, and he asked that it be printed in full.
- The 1991 transfer note and certificate 93/RD/1187, Defence records, released under a tribunal disclosure order. Three refusals, three appeals, one hearing; ordered released 14 March 2025 and delivered 6 May 2025 2022–2025
- Directive 88/ARCH/12 — magnetic media retention and reuse schedule, The schedule that governed the reels. Obtained from a defence library catalogue, uncatalogued box 41; photographed and published entire September 2025 Written for range telemetry. Makes no provision for a case file and no provision for a hold.
- Colonel (ret.) Lucien De Brouwer-Haesaert, Present at the 1990 press briefing at which the figure was given. Two video calls; we read him our transcript of his own remarks January 2026 Says he read the number from a printout he handed back at the end of the briefing and has not seen since.
- Dr. Rosalind Okonjo-Vermeulen, Video forensics; commissioned by this newspaper. Examined the surviving cassette for eleven weeks; report published in full including the parts unhelpful to us 2025–2026 Counts at least four generations of loss and finds the ten seconds in dispute inside a dropout.
What we could not confirm
- The acceleration figure. We could not substantiate 150 to 970 knots and we could not knock it down. The surviving cassette is fourth generation and the ten seconds everybody argues about sit inside a dropout that Dr. Okonjo-Vermeulen calls unrecoverable by any method she knows.
- Whether the U-matic working copy still exists somewhere. It is logged out to an analysis team in April 1990 and never logged back. Two of the four people who might know are dead, one does not remember, and one declined to speak to us.
- Whether anybody ever asked the records office to hold the reels. No hold request is in the file. The absence of a document is not proof that nobody wrote one, and we have been wrong about that before, in print, on this desk.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
-
The Meridian TelegraphBELGIUM CONFIRMS: 970 KNOTS IN ONE SECOND
Ran the 1990 press conference figure as a confirmed instrument reading, and has re-run it in eleven pieces since.
Had that we did not
The press conference, accurately quoted.
Left out
That nobody at the paper, in thirty-six years, has asked to see the recording the figure came off. We asked them. They confirmed they had not.
-
The Hollow PostTHE TAPES ARE GONE AND YOU KNOW WHY
Reported the destruction as deliberate, a fortnight after we filed our second appeal and using our case number.
Had that we did not
That the reels no longer exist. True, and they had it before we printed it.
Left out
The reason code, the valuation, the schedule, and the fact that the same certificate destroyed nine hundred other reels the same week, most of them range telemetry.
-
They Buriedthis newspaperWe Chased The F-16 Tapes For Four Years. They Were Wiped For 340 Francs.
Went after the primary record rather than the argument about the number, and reported what four years produced, which is a two-page certificate.
Had that we did not
The transfer note, the certificate, the retention schedule, and a forensic report on what survives.
Left out
We gave four years to a records question and eleven days to the physics. A reader finishes this piece unable to say whether 970 knots is even a plausible reading of that radar in that geometry, because we did not do that work and we should have commissioned it in year two. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Adjudant-chef (ret.) Marcel Vandeputte-Coene in person on 9 April 2026, with the certificate and the draft; given six weeks and asked whether he wanted his name withheld. Declined anonymity in writing. Replied on 21 May 2026, by post, four pages. Printed unedited and in full at his request.
You have come to my house twice and you have been polite both times, so I will answer you properly, and then I would like you to print all of it and not the sentence you like best.
Yes. That is my signature. I have not disputed it and I did not dispute it when you first wrote to me.
Now. In 1993 I was responsible for a store containing something over eleven thousand reels of one-inch tape. The schedule was Directive 88/ARCH/12 and it was not mine, it was written in 1988 by people I never met, and it said what it said: magnetic media held more than twenty-four months without an active retention marking is to be assessed for reuse. That is the whole mechanism. There is no committee. There is a man with a list.
The reels you are asking about arrived from Beauvechain in 1991 with a transfer note describing them as radar registration. Two items. That is what was written on the note and that is what was written on the boxes. There was no case reference on them. There was no retention marking on them. There was no letter in the file from anybody asking me to keep them, and I want to be exact, because you have been exact with me: in nine years in that store I received forty-one hold requests and I honoured forty-one hold requests. Not one of them was for these.
That week I signed for the reuse of nine hundred and six reels. Most of them were range telemetry from the Ardennes. I did not know what was on numbers 9 and 10 of a 1991 transfer, I could not have known, and I will tell you honestly that if I had known I still could not have kept them, because the paper that lets you keep something is the retention marking and there wasn't one.
You have written 340 francs in your headline. I understand why. It is a good line and it makes me look like a man who sold history for the price of a meal. What 340 francs is, is the replacement cost of a blank reel, and the reason it appears on the certificate at all is that the state required me to account for the value of the property I was reissuing. It is a bookkeeping entry proving I did not steal a tape. You have turned an anti-corruption control into the price of your headline.
The last thing, and it is the thing I would like printed if you print nothing else. Between 1991 and 1993 that store was open to any officer with a request form. Between 1993 and today a very great number of people have written a very great number of pages about this case. Not one of them, in the two years the tapes sat on my shelf, wrote to ask what was on them or to ask me to keep them. Your newspaper is the first to come and look. Four years, you say. I was there for nine, and the telephone did not ring.
I am sorry the tapes are gone. I am sorry in the way you are sorry about weather. If you would like to be angry at somebody, be angry at a directive from 1988 that had no line on the form for this one might matter.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
How was this story?
We publish the result, whatever it is. Reader verdicts appear on the front page and in our newsroom metrics.
Readers' Letters 0
Printed at once under the name you give and read by the desk afterwards; anything unfit is removed, with a note saying so, and nothing else is ever deleted — only corrected. Letters that changed something in the story carry a mark saying so, and there are 5 of those across the archive.