Oldie but goodie, F-14A vs Libyan Mig-23

IMS, the guy couldn't get tone on the sidewinder because he hadn't armed it, or something? Amazing the stuff you forget when you're getting shot at. Good stuff.
 
Boris Badenov said:
IMS, the guy couldn't get tone on the sidewinder because he hadn't armed it, or something? Amazing the stuff you forget when you're getting shot at. Good stuff.
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When I was in training for the F-117, one of our civilian instructors....Mr Klaus Klause related this. First night of Desert Storm, he was one of the first wave of F-117s going into Baghdad to hit the command centers located deeper than the radar sites on the border the Army AH-64s had hit at almost the same time. It wasn't really known at that time if stealth actually worked. The F-117, being slapped together from miscellaneous odds and ends from the A-10, F-15A, F-16A and F/A-18A, it wasn't very ergonomically friendly in the cockpit in some ways. As Klause is getting over Baghdad, the AAA that was filling the air in a barrage fashion starts shifting his direction. So he begins to slightly change course, which isn't recommended for a number of reasons, and the AAA keeps tracking him. Finally he really starts maneuvering, thinking "this stealth crap is BS...", finds his target, drops his bombs and gets the hell out of there. Crossing outbound, he's getting his systems back on-line "Fencing out", and notices that his position lights are still on and thats how the gunners were seeing him: visually. Back then in the 117, there were 5 different switches controlling 5 different external lighting systems, located in 5 completely separate places in the cockpit. On fence-in, he'd forgotten the position lights switch. A few years later, the USAF installed a single "all external lights- extinguish" switch on the left wall panel for ergonomic sake, aptly named the "Klaus switch".
 
MikeD said:
When I was in training for the F-117, one of our civilian instructors....Mr Klaus Klause related this. First night of Desert Storm, he was one of the first wave of F-117s going into Baghdad to hit the command centers located deeper than the radar sites on the border the Army AH-64s had hit at almost the same time. It wasn't really known is stealth actually worked. The F-117, being slapped together from miscellaneous odds and ends from the A-10, F-15A, F-16A and F/A-18A, it wasn't very eronomically friendly in the cockpit in some ways. As Klause is getting over Baghdad, the AAA that was filling the air in a barrage fashion starts shifting his direction. So he begins to slightly change course, which isn't recommended for a number of reasons, and the AAA keeps tracking him. Finally he really starts maneuvering, thinking "this stealth crap is BS...", finds his target, drops his bombs and gets the hell out of there. Crossing outbound, he's getting his systems back on-line "Fencing out", and notices that his position lights are still on and thats how the gunners were seeing him: visually. Back then in the 117, there were 5 different switches controlling 5 different external lighting systems, located in 5 completely separate places in the cockpit. On fence-in, he'd forgotten the position lights switch. A few years later, the USAF installed a single "all external lights- extinguish" switch on the left wall panel for ergonomic sake, aptly named the "Klaus switch".
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You know you really ought to write a book, right? Unlike most things I say, I can't be the first to say so. Thanks for that. :)
 
MikeD said:
When I was in training for the F-117, one of our civilian instructors....Mr Klaus Klause related this. First night of Desert Storm, he was one of the first wave of F-117s going into Baghdad to hit the command centers located deeper than the radar sites on the border the Army AH-64s had hit at almost the same time. It wasn't really known is stealth actually worked. The F-117, being slapped together from miscellaneous odds and ends from the A-10, F-15A, F-16A and F/A-18A, it wasn't very eronomically friendly in the cockpit in some ways. As Klause is getting over Baghdad, the AAA that was filling the air in a barrage fashion starts shifting his direction. So he begins to slightly change course, which isn't recommended for a number of reasons, and the AAA keeps tracking him. Finally he really starts maneuvering, thinking "this stealth crap is BS...", finds his target, drops his bombs and gets the hell out of there. Crossing outbound, he's getting his systems back on-line "Fencing out", and notices that his position lights are still on and thats how the gunners were seeing him: visually. Back then in the 117, there were 5 different switches controlling 5 different external lighting systems, located in 5 completely separate places in the cockpit. On fence-in, he'd forgotten the position lights switch. A few years later, the USAF installed a single "all external lights- extinguish" switch on the left wall panel for ergonomic sake, aptly named the "Klaus switch".
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haha wow that would have made for some really entertaining jokes.....oh the possibilities :)
 
MikeD said:
When I was in training for the F-117, one of our civilian instructors....Mr Klaus Klause related this. First night of Desert Storm, he was one of the first wave of F-117s going into Baghdad to hit the command centers located deeper than the radar sites on the border the Army AH-64s had hit at almost the same time. It wasn't really known is stealth actually worked. The F-117, being slapped together from miscellaneous odds and ends from the A-10, F-15A, F-16A and F/A-18A, it wasn't very eronomically friendly in the cockpit in some ways. As Klause is getting over Baghdad, the AAA that was filling the air in a barrage fashion starts shifting his direction. So he begins to slightly change course, which isn't recommended for a number of reasons, and the AAA keeps tracking him. Finally he really starts maneuvering, thinking "this stealth crap is BS...", finds his target, drops his bombs and gets the hell out of there. Crossing outbound, he's getting his systems back on-line "Fencing out", and notices that his position lights are still on and thats how the gunners were seeing him: visually. Back then in the 117, there were 5 different switches controlling 5 different external lighting systems, located in 5 completely separate places in the cockpit. On fence-in, he'd forgotten the position lights switch. A few years later, the USAF installed a single "all external lights- extinguish" switch on the left wall panel for ergonomic sake, aptly named the "Klaus switch".
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This is not recommended.
 
Boris Badenov said:
You know you really ought to write a book, right? Unlike most things I say, I can't be the first to say so. Thanks for that. :)
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That same night, another of the F-117s was heading to its target.....alone like all F-117s fly. The Nighthawk is a very busy aircraft for the single pilot. We spent the majority of time on autopilot, because our head was buried inside the cockpit and in the SD, or Sensor Display, a TV screen of sorts thats taking imagery from the Forward Looking IR located in the nose, and the Downward Looking IR located underneath the nose. Thats where we look both for our targets, as well as our OAPs, or Offset Aiming Points......prominent landmarks that act as "confirmers" for the target under the crosshairs being the actual target we were looking for......and also useful if the actual target is obscured by WX......we can drop on the OAP, because if the OAP is good, chances are the system is tight on the target as well. Anyhow, that first night of Desert Storm, one of the other guys is heading to his target with his head buried in the SD and the jet flying its routing on autopilot via the nav computer and the jet making random altitude changes per the flightplan. There was a partial moon out, and of course his jet is externally blacked-out and the cockpit lighting turned down to near-dark. As his head is buried in the SD following what its looking at, the jet....in a climb at the time...levels off. Within a second or two, the pilot "feels" a "shadow" come over the cockpit......something blocked the partial moon that was high and off to his right. He looks up to see at that VERY moment, two Iraqi MiG-29s in a welded-wing formation and with lights-out crossing RIGHT over his cockpit from right to left and not more than 50'-100' above him, flying a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) and obviously looking for US aircraft. It was SO close, he saw the leader's head looking down into the radar scope, and wingman's jst passed right over him....with the lead jet slightly ahead of him. His F-117 bounced a bit from the jetwash as they continued off to the left and he saw the glow down their exhaust of their engines as they disappeared into the night on their patrol, oblivious to his having ever been there, or the midair collision they almost had. Had that autopilot not leveled off when it did, there would've been a midair of probably three aircraft, and neither the Iraqis nor the USAF would likely have ever known it occurred, much less where the F-117 disappeared to after crossing the line into bad guy territory.
 
Boris Badenov said:
You know you really ought to write a book, right?
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I'm thinking of compiling my "MikeDs Accident Synopsis" series into an aviation safety book when I have about 25 of them written up, each being its own chapter focusing on a specific subject of accident prevention.
 
Hah! Oh man, that brought back some memories. The audio from that encounter was used in the intro for the Falcon 3.0/4.0 video games from the '90s. :eek:

[YT]36Z6pWZcoYE[/YT]​
 
MikeD said:
That same night, another of the F-117s was heading to its target.....alone like all F-117s fly. The Nighthawk is a very busy aircraft for the single pilot. We spent the majority of time on autopilot, because our head was buried inside the cockpit and in the SD, or Sensor Display, a TV screen of sorts thats taking imagery from the Forward Looking IR located in the nose,
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Meh.


Wasn't that much of a challenge in Flight Sim. I don't know what you're complaining about there man. I'd even fly it for free.



































































































:) :sarcasm: :)
 
Minuteman said:
Hah! Oh man, that brought back some memories. The audio from that encounter was used in the intro for the Falcon 3.0/4.0 video games from the '90s. :eek:

[YT]36Z6pWZcoYE[/YT]​
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Yeah, I knew I'd heard that conversation somewhere else before. Good find.

(particularly ironic that a Tomcat engagement was used in an F-16 simulator...)
 
In my initial F-15E training, the instructors used a reconstruction of that intercept as an example of...how shall we say...poor interpretation of what was seen on the radar.

If you plot out the intercept course and the theoretical course of the bandits, the bandits weren't actually doing anything except stooging along unaware. They're not really hot-nosing and threatening the Tomcats. All of this "they're checking BACK into us for the 3rd time" jazz was basically the F-14s S-turning across the essentially straight-line course of the MiGs throughout the engagement.
 
Hacker15e said:
In my initial F-15E training, the instructors used a reconstruction of that intercept as an example of...how shall we say...poor interpretation of what was seen on the radar.

If you plot out the intercept course and the theoretical course of the bandits, the bandits weren't actually doing anything except stooging along unaware. They're not really hot-nosing and threatening the Tomcats. All of this "they're checking BACK into us for the 3rd time" jazz was basically the F-14s S-turning across the essentially straight-line course of the MiGs throughout the engagement.
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Yes, but it worked out in our favor with two Mig kills :pirate:
 
This is funny, coming from AWI's, to see how crap their comms were. I wonder if when this video became public, someone finally said "yeah we should probably sound a little more professional than that" :)

That isn't even getting into Hacker's point about them not even properly differentiating between hot nosing and not.....good on em though, at the end of the day they bagged some MIG's
 
///AMG said:
This is funny, coming from AWI's, to see how crap their comms were. I wonder if when this video became public, someone finally said "yeah we should probably sound a little more professional than that" :)

That isn't even getting into Hacker's point about them not even properly differentiating between hot nosing and not.....good on em though, at the end of the day they bagged some MIG's
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I was in college when this happened and the video/comms were on the news right away. I remember listening to the whole thing on KISS FM in the morning.
 
bunk22 said:
The video was posted on FB the other day by the Naval Aviation Museum. I guess it was the anniversary of the 2 Jan 89 fight in which VF-32 Tomcats blasted a pair of Libyan Mig-23's out of the sky. Again, old but good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj0HctAs8TA
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This was my uncle's old squadron - something most don't know, they were the first Tomcat Squadron to go to Vietnam.. The war ended before they got there and they came home..
 
Tram said:
This was my uncle's old squadron - something most don't know, they were the first Tomcat Squadron to go to Vietnam.. The war ended before they got there and they came home..
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The first Tomcat squadrons to visit Vietnam were VF-1 and VF-2 during the withdrawl of Saigon in April of 75, before VF-32's first Tocat deployment; they were also the fist Tomcat squadrons in the Navy. VF-32 was an East Coast squadron with with the Tomcat.
 
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