Ever Found A Mig 25? They did!

[Pilotasso]

Confused as to what this has to do with the mig-25 :huh:

[uhoh7]

you're right, I apologise. It's an interesting thread. would be great to know what really happened out there

 

from wiki, which is at least as reliable as the CIA: "US military officials initially claimed that no American aircraft was lost in air-to-air combat during the war. However, later investigations indicated that a US Navy F/A-18 piloted by LCDR Speicher was shot down by an air-to-air missile on the first night of the war.[3] The kill was reportedly made with a R-40DT missile fired from a MiG-25PDS flown by Lt. Zuhair Dawood of the 84th squadron of the IrAF.[4]"

 

another Account: "I've got a fast-mover, on my nose, he's hot,'' Anderson called out. "Confirm bandit?''

 

Anderson needed the controller to call the fast-mover a bandit, an enemy, instead of a bogey, an unknown. The rules of engagement that night were strict. With hundreds of jets in the sky, the possibility of "blue on blue,'' of a friendly fire kill, was extremely high.

 

The Hornet pilots had to confirm an enemy fighter at least two ways before firing a missile: They could see it with their eyes (nearly impossible at night), they could ID it electronically or the controller could declare it hostile.

 

The hair on the back of Hull's neck shot up. He had been so concerned with shooting his HARMs that he had his Hornet in bombing mode, instead of sweeping for enemy fighters.

 

"Oh my God! What was I thinking?!'' Hull flipped the switch and started scanning for air threats.

 

The call also jolted other pilots. Albano flew a few miles behind Anderson. Albano knew what "hot'' meant: The Iraqi fighter's nose pointed almost directly at the nose of Anderson's Hornet.

 

A couple of pilots thought they heard Anderson identify the enemy as a MiG-25, a Soviet-made jet that could fly at nearly three times the speed of sound.

 

The controller answered Anderson:

 

"NEGATIVE . . . negative bandit, confirm BOGEY.''

 

Anderson and the Iraqi pilot roared through the dark sky at each other. Anderson didn't want to shoot down one of his own. No stain clung to an aviator more than a blue-on-blue kill. Fellow pilots would talk behind the pilot's back, ask what was wrong with him, get antsy about flying with him. Horner's staff feared half a dozen or more friendly fire kills in the first two weeks.

 

Anderson wanted someone else to see what he surely saw. They'd been told dozens of times: Better to let a bad guy go than shoot down a good guy.

 

"Confirm BANDIT?'' Anderson said again, not yelling but punching the words more strongly.

 

"Negative bandit,'' the controller said. "Declare bogey.''

 

Now sweeping, Hull spotted the enemy jet on his radar, but it wasn't coming toward him.

 

Albano and the others desperately looked for it but couldn't find it.

 

Anderson asked a third time, even more firmly.

 

"CONFIRM BANDIT.''

 

"Negative . . . bogey. Negative . . . bogey.''

 

The Iraqi fighter and Anderson's Hornet zoomed past each other, at a combined speed near 2,000 mph. Neither fired a missile.

 

The pilots figured the jet "bugged out,'' just kept flying away from the Hornets, knowing they didn't have the power to catch him. Some A-6 pilots a few minutes later saw the massive exhaust, nearly 300 feet long, of a MiG right over their heads.

 

Dave Renaud, from VFA-83, heard Anderson say the MiG had turned "cold,'' flown out of firing range.

 

A few minutes later, he saw a big explosion off to his right. It seemed close, maybe five or 10 miles away, and at his altitude.

 

Its bright flash mesmerized him. He watched it sparkle and glow all the way to the desert floor.

 

Must be an Iraqi jet getting knocked out by an F-15, he thought. That made sense. Air Force F-15s had launched ahead of the other jets and were to sweep the skies of Iraqi fighters.

 

The radio frequency was still buzzing, so Renaud didn't report the explosion.. Nor did he mark his latitude and longitude. Just in case, though, he did talk into a tape recorder running in his cockpit.

 

"I see a big explosion off to my right,'' he said.

 

Stumpf saw it, too. The blast lit up his Hornet like a strobe.

 

Pay attention, Stumpf told himself, and don't do anything stupid. They pushed toward the targets, fired their HARMs, then turned south toward the tankers.

 

Stumpf wanted to haul out of there, but instead had to chug back to conserve fuel. It seemed to take forever to near the Saudi border.

 

Hull lit his afterburners to blaze back, then remembered that would make him an easy mark for a heat-seeking missile. He backed off.

 

They all converged at the fuel tankers. They had to pass through a gateway, a specific location and altitude that would let others know they were not enemy aircraft trying to slip through.

 

About 20 miles from the Saudi border, pilots started checking in with the AWACs. Speicher should have reported in before Albano but didn't. Anderson asked Albano to try to reach Speicher.

 

Albano tried a tactical frequency only used by VFA-81.

 

"Spike . . . Bano . . . you up?''

 

Nothing.

 

"Spike . . . Bano.''

 

He switched to another frequency.

 

"Spike . . . Bano . . . you up?''

 

Silence.

 

Albano radioed Hull and asked him to try.

 

"Spike . . . ? Skull, have you got me? Spike, come in. Spike . . . How copy?''

 

No response.

 

....Then Rowe asked, if Anderson didn't mind saying, what had happened to his friend.

 

"It was a SAM that got him?'' Rowe said.

 

He remembers the look that came over Anderson. How his eyes filled with tears. "It was no SAM that got Spike,'' he said. "Let me tell you what happened.''

 

So Anderson told Rowe about how Spike came to him begging to go on the mission, and Anderson said no. And Spike came back a second time, and Anderson changed his mind.

 

Then he told Rowe about the MiG, and how the rules of engagement leaned toward letting an enemy fighter go if you weren't sure. For months, the Pentagon had stuck to the story that Speicher had been downed by a

surface-to-air missile.

 

"I'm telling you right now, don't believe what you're being told,'' Rowe remembers Anderson saying. "It was that MiG that shot Spike down.

 

"I HAD him, Dave, and I could have taken him out.''

 

With that, the official story of what happened to Scott Speicher started to come unglued.

 

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/msspeicher.htm