During the stay at Gilze-Rijen, there were no less than three international exercises for the Americans. One of those exercises was a Taceval, a tactical evaluation in which the basis in its totality was assessed by staff officers of NATO on the functioning under “war conditions”. These exercises were again on top of the normal program of 8 TFS, which, incidentally, had been extended with respect to the first Eagle deployment. The program no longer consisted solely of escorting the fighter-bombers to and from the front but from a more comprehensive air defense task. Lieutenant Colonel Coy formulated it in a typically American but very striking manner: “Our objective is to sterilize the sky!”
The text “Big Daddy Sheep” was on the inside of the large-sized brake flap of Coy’s eagle! This undoubtedly had to do with the fact that the 8th in the second world war already flew with the 49th Fighter Group and had the nickname “Black Sheep”.