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Fighter planes taking in part in simulated sky-high dogfights left the skies above Les Landes with beautiful cloud formations like this taken by the Visit’ Mont de Marsan tourist site.

The ring clouds were visible across a large part of the south-west of Nouvelle Aquitaine from Mont de Marsan to Béarn, Dax and the Atlantic coast.

Bringing back echoes of the skies above southern England during the Battle of Britain, the contrails left by the fighter jets were acclaimed by social media users on Twitter and

Regional newspaper amused readers with daft suggestions as to the cause – Santa out on a training run or Fidel Castro blowing a smoke-ring from space – until it said the cause was three jets from the Mont de Marsan air base and included many more photos from readers.

Then Biarritz Twitter user Denis Pierre provided the proof with this read-out from the FlightRadar24 website of the jets’ traces…