The Ballon de Servance is a summit in the Southern

Vosges The Vosges ( , ; ; Franconian and ) is a range of medium mountains in Eastern France, near its border with Germany. Together with the Palatine Forest to the north on the German side of the border, they form a single geomorphological unit and ...

Mountains, located on the border of

Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Bourgogne-Franche-Comté (; , sometimes abbreviated BFC; Arpitan: ''Borgogne-Franche-Comtât'') is a region in eastern France created by the 2014 territorial reform of French regions, from a merger of Burgundy and Franche-Comté. The new region ...

and the

Grand Est Grand Est (; ) is an Regions of France, administrative region in northeastern France. It superseded three former administrative regions, Alsace, Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine, on 1 January 2016 under the provisional name of Alsace-Champagne-A ...

region. It is the highest point in the

Haute-Saône Haute-Saône (; Frainc-Comtou: ''Hâte-Saône''; English: Upper Saône) is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region of northeastern France. Named after the river Saône, it had a population of 235,313 in 2019.

department and within the Comtois Balloons National Nature Reserve. It marks the first significant peak with an altitude exceeding 1,000 meters when approaching the Vosges Mountains from the southwest. Its neighbor, the Ballon d'Alsace, only surpasses it by 31 meters.

Geography

The summit area is occupied by a small pasture, one of the smallest in the massif, dominated by restricted military installations and a

pasture Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Types of pasture Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, c ...

for cattle during the summer. The pasture is crossed by a hiking

trail A trail, also known as a path or track, is an unpaved lane or a small paved road (though it can also be a route along a navigable waterways) generally not intended for usage by motorized vehicles, usually passing through a natural area. Ho ...

that connects the Col du Ballon de Servance to the Sailley refuge and the Col du Luthier. The Ballon de Servance rises to an altitude of 1,216 meters, straddling the border of two departments: Haute-Saône, where it stands as the highest point, and

. It is situated between the Ballon d'Alsace to the east (separated by the Stalon Pass), the Château-Lambert massif to the west, the Valley and the Planche des Belles Filles massif to the south, and the Upper

Moselle The Moselle ( , ; ; ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it joins at Koblenz. A sm ...

Valley to the north.

Air disaster of 1963

On the morning of June 25, 1963, two American warplanes, F-100 Super Sabres, crashed simultaneously into the rocks of Luthier due to bad weather. The pilots were supposed to report their position at 10 a.m. but failed to do so. Both aircraft had taken off from Hahn Air Base in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

and were en route to

Mâcon Mâcon (), historically Anglicization, anglicised as Mascon, is a city in east-central France. It is the Prefectures of France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Saône-et-Loire in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. Mâcon is home t ...

. Near the border between Vosges and Haute-Saône, close to the Sailley refuge located below the fort on the eastern slope of the summit, there is a memorial dedicated to the two pilots killed in this simultaneous double air disaster. Behind the memorial, the remains of a jet engine have been preserved. The memorial erroneously mentions the date of June 26, 1963, which is actually the date when the wreckage was discovered. The two pilots were named William Evans, 24, from

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

, and William Whittington, 25, from

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. The memorial serves as a reminder that during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

era, they died for freedom.

References

{{reflist Mountains of Haute-Saône Mountains of Vosges (department) One-thousanders of France Mountains of the Vosges

Geography

Air disaster of 1963

See also

References