3-D Air Superiority

Thursday, June 19, 2014

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."

Apache Air-to-Air Kill, 1991 Iraq

It is a little known fact that an AH-64 Apache got an air-to-air kill in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, and I've only seen it listed on 1 or two kill lists. Here is the story from Thomas Taylor's awesome book:

Lightning In the Storm
Thomas Taylor
pp. 363

Turbo is eager to take out more armored vehicles but Gabram is preoccupied with controlling his flight and listening to other action on the causeway. East of the Bearcats, 2-229 reports an enviable kill- an Iraqi helicopter in flight.

Some small chopper like a Kiowa darted up hell's highway, skimming over destroyed and derelict vehicles, apparently in search of a particular one. The Apache initially mistook it for an allied chopper, maybe Saudi, because Iraq had not put a plane over the front since the ground war began. Searching the radio frequencies for friendly aircraft, the Apache determined there was none in the vicinity matching his description. He also deduced the shopper's mission: some general was stuck in the deadly traffic jam and had ordered his own extraction.

Wisely the Apache trailed the chopper from afar, waiting till it set down in the teeming road. A figure sprinted from a BMP to the chopper. He jumped in quick as a pathfinder; the door was still open and the chopper beginning to climb when a Hellfire joined him. Still spinning, the tail rotor flew another half mile, returning like a boomerang in search for the vanished chopper of which it was once part.

"Four more and you're an ace!" someone kids the victor.

Friendly Fire Humor

The following is a tale from Alpha Strike Vietnam, an interview based history of Naval Air Combat over North Vietnam. Not all combat was squinted eyes, frantic callouts ending with the loud crunching of metal impacting a foreign hilltop. Sometimes, downright funny stuff happened:

Alpha Strike Vietnam
Jeffrey L. Levinson
pp. 99-100

The other incident took place between Bobby Kirkwood and Paul Dempewolf. I'm on top of these two when Kirkwood shoots a sidewinder and gets a MiG. Dempewolf also shoots s Sidewinder and it heads straight for Kirkwood's tailpipe. I'm look down on this incredulously, and I'm saying to myself, Self, I know what I'm going to tell Kirkwood as soon as he's hit. I'm going to say, "Hey Bobby, you've just been hit with a Sidewinder, that's your problem, better get ready to jump out of that thing." Just as the Sidewinder approaches his tailpipe, Kirkwood launches another one, and the Sidewinder headed for him goes after the one he just launched, lops off the starboard horizontal stabilizer of his airplane, and puts roller markers on the underside of the wing.

One of the missiles hits the MiG, and the other flies through the debris. Kirkwood keeps on going. Meanwhile, I've got my hands full and decide not to say about the whole thing because Kirkwood is still flying the airplane, and he doesn't have utility or hydraulic failure.

We got back, had this big debrief, and I said, "Okay, now I'm going to tell my story." They said, "Impossible," and I said, "Go out and look at the airplane." We went up on the deck and the [plane's] starboard stabilizer was sliced off and there's a big line down the underside of the wing made by the stainless steel guidance and balance fin of the Sidewinder. Kirkwood about, and Dempewolf tried to claim half a kill. He's lucky he didn't get his ass kicked, but it was funnier than hell.

Monday, May 19, 2014

3-D Rendering of Mine

Exciting shot of an F-15C gunning a Flanker into a fiery flaming mess.

Composite image- HUD is from an actual F-15C HUD, clouds are from clouds I photographed, the bullets and Flanker are original 3-D models/renders, and the explosion, HUD symbology, etc are photoshopped in.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Fox Three... Splash Two MiG-29s...!"

This is one of my original 3-D renderings of air superiority at its best! Two Lakenheath F-15s are engaging 2 Serbian MiG-29s at medium range. The two Eagles, piloted by Captains "Boomer" McMurray and "Claw" Hwang egnaged the MiGs which were approaching an allied strike force during Operation Allied Force on 26 March 1999. Both MiGs were destroyed.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Are Aces Gone Forever?

In the April 2012 Air Forces Monthly magazine, Roland Dansereau asked one of the squadron's commanding officers the following:

"Are aces gone forever?"

To the uninitiated, it could be construed as a pretty insulting question (Hey, fighter pilot, why aren't you an ace yet?). But the heart of the question is, "The U.S. hasn't been seriously challenged in the air for over 30 years, and when it has been challenged, we clobbered the enemy. Is anyone ever going to climb up and throw a serious fighter force against ours, in enough quantity that we'll finally be able to produce some aces?"

The pilot responded with amazing maturity and professionalism: "I feel strongly both ways. I hope not because I have trained my whole career to test myself in battle against enemy pilots and airplanes and I am confident that if there are five targets out there, I would be an ace.

"I hope so, because that means that our country and our military won't have to go through the horror and cost in blood and treasure that a major war would bring. The world is a dangerous place and eventually somebody is going to contest our ability to control the sky.

"They will lose."

Air Forces Monthly Web Site

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Black History Month conclusion- Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr.

My apologies for not being more involved with my Black History posts in February. I realize it's now March, but life, health, etc. have been in the way. And I could not let this entry go off to the digital ether.

Daniel “Chappie” James, Jr. is another big, big achiever. He flew in Vietnam as Col. Robin Olds' executive officer, and like Olds, had also flown in World War 2 and the Korean War (WWII 1/2). His blazing rise would eventually result in earning 4 stars for his flag, and a life of interesting stories no one else can tell, except to say this guy did it all.