Capt. Michael Scott Speicher
- Thread starter surreal1221
- Start date
The explosion of Speicher's plane was seen by the other flight members, though they didn't exactly know it was him at the time, just when he failed to respond to the flight check-in. I just don't know if follow-on flights behind them noted burning wrechage on the ground, etc, since the area his jet impacted was still in the middle of nowhere in southern Anbar, since the MiGs intercepted them well prior to their target area. Fog of war, I guess; esp this being the first night of the war......first major strikes we'd done in battle since Libya/1986 (am not including Panama as a major strike).
PGT
Well-Known Member
It's been a while since I read but I remember the books (Vipers in the Storm & Strike Eagle) mentioned the F-15C's provided extensive CAP flights, why wouldn't they intercept the incoming flight of MiG's and provide cover for the Hornets?
I don't know if they were in the area at the time. They had a very wide area to cover, from far southwest Iraq all the way to the Persian Gulf.....with aircraft inbound from all over that area. Thay just might not have been in the area at the time, OR that western part of Iraq where strike aircraft were ingressing from the Red Sea or from western Saudi may have been the responsibility for USN F-14s to cover.
That's all just speculation, but speculation that makes operational sense.
bunk22
Well-Known Member
Re: Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher
Either the XO or CO was flying as well that night and was parked at the Mig's six but could not get permission to fire as the controlling E-2 could not see the MIG due to doppler effect as I recall. I think the XO/CO went aroudn the circle twice with the MIG before letting him go. He claimed to visually ID the MIG-25 but was not given clearance to fire so he did not.
RIP Captain Speicher.
Either the XO or CO was flying as well that night and was parked at the Mig's six but could not get permission to fire as the controlling E-2 could not see the MIG due to doppler effect as I recall. I think the XO/CO went aroudn the circle twice with the MIG before letting him go. He claimed to visually ID the MIG-25 but was not given clearance to fire so he did not.
RIP Captain Speicher.
gna_in_lgb
New Member
Welcome home shipmate.
Captain Speicher's family has been through hell and my thoughts are with them at this time...your loved one is finally home; may he rest in peace.
"Leave No One Behind".
Captain Speicher's family has been through hell and my thoughts are with them at this time...your loved one is finally home; may he rest in peace.
"Leave No One Behind".
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Personally, I'm glad to know that he died instantly rather than spending 18 years in detention, being tortured and God knows what else.
The sad part of this story is his poor family, who spent all this time hanging to a thread of hope that he might have been alive and held by not-so-friendlies. That's an emotional roller-coaster like you can't even imagine. They can finally have some real closure now.
RIP, Spike. Here's a nickel on the grass.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
In my limited experience, air combat just doesn't work that way.
I think it is a little like a football play that lasts well past the ball is "down" and subsequently degenerates into a bar fight (or hockey game, I suppose). Everything is well thought out and executed at the beginning of the play, and then eventually there is so much chaos that it's tough to know who is who and where they are.
Theoretically the MIGCAP (the network of a-a fighters that were planned) would have been able to see and intercept anything taking off out of any of the few airfields in Iraq and get them before they were able to engage any coalition aircraft. That's just "in theory", though, because as Mike said the Fog of War is quick to make finding and fixing bad guys a lot more difficult than in practice.
It doesn't surprise me in the least bit that a MiG -- or several of them -- could have popped a friendly by surprise and nobody else would have known.
BillErvin
Peddling as fast as I can
Re: Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher
Minor correction, Capt. Speicher, wasn't promoted posthumously. When he was relisted by the DOD as missing/captured, he was officially still an active duty officer until he was found. The Navy promoted him just as if he was still active, when those promotion dates came up.
Welcome home Sailor:clap: RIP
Minor correction, Capt. Speicher, wasn't promoted posthumously. When he was relisted by the DOD as missing/captured, he was officially still an active duty officer until he was found. The Navy promoted him just as if he was still active, when those promotion dates came up.
Welcome home Sailor:clap: RIP
granlistillo
Well-Known Member
Yes you are correct and that is what I meant. I used the word correctly though. I wasn't referring to an action like a decoration...
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/posthumously
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/posthumously
gliderboy
Well-Known Member
Not everyone rests in peace....
From Harper’s, 2004: Scott Ritter on Scott Speicher
From “Missing in Iraq: The United States has not found Scott Speicher either” by Scott Ritter in the June 2004 Harper’s.
On September 12, 2002, George W. Bush made his case for war before the General Assembly of the United Nations, telling the world’s representatives that their countries faced dire threats from escalating regional conflicts, terrorist cells, and outlaw regimes. Governments with “no law of morality” possessed “the technologies to kill on a massive scale.” But only Iraq, assured the President, harbored “all these dangers, in their most lethal and aggressive forms.” Saddam Hussein had repeatedly defied U.N. Security Council resolutions, including a 1991 ruling demanding “that Iraq return all prisoners from Kuwait and other lands.” According to Bush, more than 600 nationals from at least ten different countries remained unaccounted for in Iraq. “One American pilot is among them.”
The American pilot was Lieutenant Commander Scott Speicher, the first U.S. casualty of Operation Desert Storm. On January 17, 1991, during the war’s first night of combat, Scott Speicher’s F/A-18 Hornet fighter was hit by an Iraqi air-to-air missile over the desert west of Baghdad. Speicher never activated his rescue beacon, and there were no sightings of his ejection or parachute. “Airplane disintegrated on impact, no contact with pilot,” read a Navy report. When the war ended, Scott Speicher was officially declared killed in action. And for ten years he remained K.I.A., until January 2001, when the secretary of the Navy—spurred on by Senator Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas and an unremitting advocate for deposing Saddam—changed Speicher’s status to missing in action. It was the first time the Pentagon had made such a reversal. An unclassified U.S. intelligence report made public in March 2002 stated that “Speicher probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis.” On October 11, the day after both houses of Congress authorized military force in Iraq, Speicher’s status was changed again. Navy Secretary Gordon England ruled that the pilot—who since his disappearance had been promoted twice, to the rank of captain—be reclassified to the “more appropriate” missing/captured, making Scott Speicher, almost twelve years after he was shot down, a prisoner of war.
Alongside arguments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Scott Speicher offered Americans a human and less abstract rationale for war. In the six months leading to war, there were at least 135 news stories about Speicher, speculating about his fate and the character of those who would keep him prisoner. In March 2002 the Washington Times ran a front-page article on Speicher for five consecutive days. One was titled “Bush denounces ‘heartless’ Saddam; He suspects Navy pilot is a live captive,” and another cited an informant inside Iraq who “stated that the pilot was being kept in isolation.” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer called Speicher’s situation “shocking,” and on MSNBC a former Pentagon official discussed the likelihood that the pilot was being tortured. When asked about the hypothetical treatment of the Navy pilot, President Bush said, “It reminds me once again about the nature of Saddam Hussein.” In this manner, Speicher’s case became an argument for the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Only a monster and a war criminal would hold a prisoner incommunicado for eleven years; and, so the syllogism went, surely such a monster and war criminal would acquire and deploy unconventional weapons.
From Harper’s, 2004: Scott Ritter on Scott Speicher
From “Missing in Iraq: The United States has not found Scott Speicher either” by Scott Ritter in the June 2004 Harper’s.
On September 12, 2002, George W. Bush made his case for war before the General Assembly of the United Nations, telling the world’s representatives that their countries faced dire threats from escalating regional conflicts, terrorist cells, and outlaw regimes. Governments with “no law of morality” possessed “the technologies to kill on a massive scale.” But only Iraq, assured the President, harbored “all these dangers, in their most lethal and aggressive forms.” Saddam Hussein had repeatedly defied U.N. Security Council resolutions, including a 1991 ruling demanding “that Iraq return all prisoners from Kuwait and other lands.” According to Bush, more than 600 nationals from at least ten different countries remained unaccounted for in Iraq. “One American pilot is among them.”
The American pilot was Lieutenant Commander Scott Speicher, the first U.S. casualty of Operation Desert Storm. On January 17, 1991, during the war’s first night of combat, Scott Speicher’s F/A-18 Hornet fighter was hit by an Iraqi air-to-air missile over the desert west of Baghdad. Speicher never activated his rescue beacon, and there were no sightings of his ejection or parachute. “Airplane disintegrated on impact, no contact with pilot,” read a Navy report. When the war ended, Scott Speicher was officially declared killed in action. And for ten years he remained K.I.A., until January 2001, when the secretary of the Navy—spurred on by Senator Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas and an unremitting advocate for deposing Saddam—changed Speicher’s status to missing in action. It was the first time the Pentagon had made such a reversal. An unclassified U.S. intelligence report made public in March 2002 stated that “Speicher probably survived the loss of his aircraft, and if he survived, he almost certainly was captured by the Iraqis.” On October 11, the day after both houses of Congress authorized military force in Iraq, Speicher’s status was changed again. Navy Secretary Gordon England ruled that the pilot—who since his disappearance had been promoted twice, to the rank of captain—be reclassified to the “more appropriate” missing/captured, making Scott Speicher, almost twelve years after he was shot down, a prisoner of war.
Alongside arguments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Scott Speicher offered Americans a human and less abstract rationale for war. In the six months leading to war, there were at least 135 news stories about Speicher, speculating about his fate and the character of those who would keep him prisoner. In March 2002 the Washington Times ran a front-page article on Speicher for five consecutive days. One was titled “Bush denounces ‘heartless’ Saddam; He suspects Navy pilot is a live captive,” and another cited an informant inside Iraq who “stated that the pilot was being kept in isolation.” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer called Speicher’s situation “shocking,” and on MSNBC a former Pentagon official discussed the likelihood that the pilot was being tortured. When asked about the hypothetical treatment of the Navy pilot, President Bush said, “It reminds me once again about the nature of Saddam Hussein.” In this manner, Speicher’s case became an argument for the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Only a monster and a war criminal would hold a prisoner incommunicado for eleven years; and, so the syllogism went, surely such a monster and war criminal would acquire and deploy unconventional weapons.
