AMERICAN FLIERS WELCOME IN FRENCH CITY.

Byline: Craig R. Whitney The New York Times

The arrival of three U.S. Air Force high-altitude U-2 spy planes early this year at the air base just outside this Provencal city of 40,000 raised a few chauvinistic French eyebrows, it is true.

But most people here seem quite happy to have 223 Americans in their midst, 30 years after Charles de Gaulle threw all foreign NATO forces out of the country in an assertion of French sovereignty.

``We're used to having Americans around,'' said Alain Detavernier, who like many other residents works at the base, the principal test flight center in France.

In fact, Lt. Col. Alan D. Hoover, the officer in charge of the U-2s and a squadron of four KC-135 refueling planes that preceded them, was an exchange student at the test pilot training school here a decade ago and speaks fluent French.

With France drawing closer to full military participation in NATO again, political sensitivities are less of a concern to the Americans here than the weather.

``Our main concern here is the mistral,'' Hoover said, referring to the powerful winds that sometimes sweep for days at a time from the Alps down to the Mediterranean.

The winds can make it risky for the U-2s, with a 103-foot wingspan, to take off and land here, even with the longest runway in Europe, at more than three miles. Their mission is daily surveillance of the military situation in Bosnia, an hour's flying time away, for the NATO peacekeeping force there.

The KC-135s, from McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kan., are also here to help keep American, French, British, and other allied fighter-bombers on station over Bosnia for long periods in case the peacekeepers need to call on them.

Col. Marc Leduc, the French base commander, tucked the U-2 detachment into a vast hangar vacated eight years ago by Dassault Aviation, in a far corner of the airfield.

``This is by far the most impressive facility I've ever worked on in the U-2 program,'' said Lt. Col. George W. (Bill) Carrington, the senior U-2 pilot here, who is trying to brush up his rusty French for forays out into the vineyards and Roman ruins of the surrounding countryside.

One of his interpreters here is Master Sgt. David Lusignolo, who arrived recently from Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas.

The first thing he did when he got his assignment, he said, was to call Garda Hofmann, his old French teacher at Grandview High School in Columbus, Ohio.

``She gave me a real passion for the language,'' Lusignolo said. ``She wished me luck and asked me how many kids I had.''

Leduc said his American guests were well behaved. ``When they're not, their commander gets them in line,'' he observed. ``But their way of eating, it must be said, is very different from ours.''

Still, Lt. Col. D.R. Kenerley, commander of the American refueling squadron, makes time for a full French luncheon at Leduc's mess every Wednesday.

And Guy and Colette Bourgaud, who sling the French equivalent of hash at a mobile diner parked under a cedar tree just outside the base's main gate, are working on changing the light-lunch habits of as many other Americans here as they can.

``At first, they wouldn't try anything they didn't know, but gradually I got them to move from spaghetti and meatballs to French food once in a while,'' Guy Bourgaud said. ``Pretty soon they were trying boeuf bourguignon, my Tuesday special, and even poulet chasseur on Wednesdays.''

Bourgaud also made the concession of putting Philly cheese steak on his luncheon menu, for 40 francs: steak on crusty bread with plump, juicy Provencal tomatoes, green peppers, and melted Gruyere cheese.

``They sent a doctor out to make a health inspection, but he saw that this is a decent place,'' Bourgaud said, turning down the propane gas under his Thursday spaghetti special. ``I guess they didn't want to risk stomach upsets at 10,000 meters,'' about 33,000 feet.

The U-2 flies even higher, above 70,000 feet, beyond the reach of any missile or gun anybody in Bosnia might want to fire at it.

``Reliable French military sources'' took a potshot of a different kind, though, in early May. Citing such sources, the French daily Liberation reported that a U-2 based in Britain had flown over and photographed three nuclear weapons sites in France on March 16.

Both French and American military officials flatly denied that any such thing had ever happened. ``The report was a complete fabrication,'' one high-ranking American officer said, and both Leduc and Hoover said it had left no hard feelings on either side here.

Both the KC-135 and the U-2 units rotate in and out every few months, and most of the Americans stay at U.S. government expense in modest French hotels.

Didier Testard, the manager of the Hotel Mercure in Fos-sur-Mer, five miles away from the sycamore-shaded streets of Istres, said: ``For most of them, it's very expensive to eat in a restaurant in France, which is why they go to Guy and Colette.''

``We tried to make spare ribs for them here, but the attempt wasn't very successful,'' Testard said. ``But we give them a big American-style breakfast, and let them cook snacks in our kitchen.''