All That Dogfights Does Not Die

The F-15 Eagle has an amazing record, 104+ kills, never killed. But that doesn't mean it has a 100% kill ratio of itself. Read this amazing dogfight with- of all planes, MiG-25 Foxbats- of the Iraqi Air Force in 1991. You won't find this one anywhere else!

Curiously, it's been MiG-25s that put up the best fights against F-15 Eagles, and not the nimble MiG-29s, -23s or -21s.

Crusade
Risk Atkinson
pp. 230-231

In what had been a routine afternoon sortie, Bigum and his wingman, Captain Lynn Broome, had refueled down south and were returning to Cindy CAP to spell the other two Eagles when AWACS radioed a warning of enemy aircraft: "Xerex three-one. Snap, two seven zero. Bandits three zero zero. Ninety miles." Bigum rolled went ninety degrees, searching toward Baghdad with his radar. AWACS called again: "Skip it. Skip it. Bogus targets." Bigum and Broome steered back north, irritated at the false alarm.

 Eighty miles south of the CAP, AWACS Called a third time: "Bandits west, seventy miles. High. Fast." This time it was real. A pair of MiG-25 Foxbats, flying at 42,000 feet and at an astonishing one thousand knots- faster than the F-15's top speed- streaked from the Iraqi capitol toward Cindy CAP. The two Eagle pilots on CAP, flying under call signs Vegas and Giggles, turned to face the enemy fighters. Giggles, slightly in front of his wingman, fired two Sparrow air-to-air missiles a the lead Foxbat, which in turn fired at Vegas. The Foxbat banked north in a sweeping turn at twice the speed of sound, outrunning both Sparrows.

Vegas peeled south to avoid the enemy missile. He then re-entered the fight and fired three Sparrows at eh second Foxbat, but for reasons never determined, none of them left the Eagle's wings. Vegas, alarmed, broke south. Giggles fired a final, futile missile at the fleeing MiGs and turned to protect his wingman.

Randy Bigum watched this drama unfold on his radar scope. The Iraqis, he realized, had tried to ambush the planes patrolling Cindy CAP, they were not simply fleeing to Iran. Haviung failed, both Foxbats now curled back west with their afterburners lit, evidently heading toward Al Taqaddum Air Base on the far side of Baghdad. Bigum turned to give chase. If he and Broome angled south of the capitol, Bigum calculated, they might cut off the Iraqis.

The race began. Bigum kept his eyes on the radar scope; Broome was trailing by thirty miles over his left wing. In their war with Iran the Iraqis occasionally tricked enemy pilots into giving chase, only to destroy them with a sudden attack from below by Mirage F-1s. Bigum was so intent on avoiding such a trap and watching the Foxbats that he failed to note a 140-knot southwesterly wind pushing him far to the north. Only when he glanced out the cockpit hoping to spot the Iraqi contrails did he see his mistake. There lay the presidential palace, the sun-spanked Tigris, and the office buildings of downtown Baghdad. At the same time the Eagle's electronic warning gear detected emanations from SA-2 and SA-3 tracking radars. "Oh, my ***," Bigum muttered. From AWACs came a gratuitous radio call: "Heads up for SAMs."

But the SAM batteries failed to launch, probably afraid of hitting the Foxbats. Bigum again concentrated on the enemy fighters, now twenty miles away. Each performed a split S- an acrobatic half loop- and dropped almost to the ground. Broome fired two Sparrows at the trail Foxbat; neither hit Bigum angled down to twenty thousand feet and glanced up long enough to see the twin runways of Al Taqaddum ten miles dead ahead. The lead Iraqi had slowed from a thousand knots to under three hundred, drifting into his final approach to land from the northwest.

Now Bigum fired. The Sparrow darted from under his plane and climbed sharply before knifing back down toward the ground, a sign that the missile had locked onto its target. Bigum watched as the first Iraqi landed and rolled down the runway. "Come on, *****!" he urged the missile. "Come on *****!" But the Sparrow never made it. The Foxbat had slowed to a forty-knot taxi, and the radar-guided missile could no longer distinguish between aircraft and ground clutter.

Then the trail Foxbat floated into view from a mile from the western end of the runway, landing gear down. Bigum squeezed off another missile. Again the Sparrow climbed and dived. By this time Bigum had descended to eight thousand feet, directly over the airfield. Only concern of hitting the MiG, he guessed, had kept the Iraqi gunners from firing at such an easy target. As he banked left to escape, the second Foxbat touched down. Bigum saw the curve of the pilot's helmet and puffs of smoke spurt form the tires. Ten feet form the Foxbat's left wingtip, the Sparrow plunged into the runway and exploded. The Iraqi taxied unscathed toward the flight line.

The Eagle pilots had fired ten missiles to no effect. A week later Vegas and Giggles would destroy four Iraqi fighters fleeing toward Iran. But for Bigum, the chance had come and gone, never to return. If fortune had robbed him of two kills, it had also permitted him to fly without penalty across downtown Baghdad and Taqaddum at midday. The lesson was not lost. In the squadron ready room Bigum tacked up a sign: "Don't let your eagerness to get a MiG cause you to be our first casualty."