By Mortz C. Ortigoza
When I was a kid growing up in the then war-torn Cotabato, I enmeshed myself reading used military magazines from Clark Air Base the Americans would give to the personnel of the Philippines Air Force (PAF) where my father belonged.
One of them was the supersonic F-5 A/B – the one I took photo at the Clark Air Museum in Pampanga after I covered the air acrobats of the South Korean pilots and their TF-50 supersonic jets.
I thought the needle nose F-5s were smaller but looked bigger when I touched and felt its dirty white aluminum alloy skin.
There are two main models of the aircraft, the original F-5A and F-5B Freedom Fighter variants – the Philippines bought 37 of them from 1965 to 1998 from the United States - and the extensively updated F-5E and F-5F Tiger II variants. Smaller and simpler than contemporaries such as the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, the F-5 cost less to procure and operate, making it a popular export aircraft. Though primarily designed for a day air superiority role, the aircraft is also a capable ground-attack platform. 
The F5s have been used extensively to patrol areas claimed by the Philippines in the disputed Spratly island chain and the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. They were also used by the famous PAF "Blue Diamonds" aerobatics team that mesmerized the crowds in air shows nationwide in the 1960s and the 70s.
The jets were also used to back soldiers fighting communist insurgents in the central and northern Philippines and Muslim separatist rebels and the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group in Mindanao. They blasted military rebel positions and their Tora-Tora planes (T-28 Trojans) at an air base in Sangley Point, Cavite during a coup attempt in 1989 that nearly toppled the government of President Corazon Aquino.
After 40 years of guarding the nation’s airspace, the PAF retired the F-5s in September 2005.
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