MKopackHere are another handful of Oceana shots, I’ve got to admit that I was pretty excited when I got back to the hotel that night – especially as I was shooting with a camera that I could carry around in my pocket. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then…
Mike
MKopackGiven the quality of the Soviet electronics / avionics that the MiG-25’s were delivered with, why wouldn’t the Iraqis upgrade the aircraft with French equipment?
Changing electronic components on aircraft certainly isn’t unheard of (nor is it terribly complex) does anyone think that all the Israeli aircraft are flying today as they were delivered? Iraq has always been a relatively well developed country and likely wouldn’t have even needed either French or Soviet assistance to do.
I’ve got a photo in front of me right now of a Libyan MiG-23, tail number 6916, equipped with four AIM-9 Sidewinders…
Mike
MKopackIf you build a radar powerful enough to detect at an effective distance, and track the small signature of a low observable aircraft, you might as well paint whatever it is mounted in orange – because everybody in the world is already gong to be able to see it.
Stealth is a matter of hiding. Blasting out enough RF radiation to detect it is like screaming, “Look at me! I’m here, I’m here!”
What was the easiest way to be shot by a sniper during WWI? By crawling up out of your trench and standing up to take a look around and see who is out there. Combat hasn’t changed all that much…
Mike
MKopackWhile a U-2 is undoubtedly a lot slower than the MiG-25 in question, but I do know of at least one instance when an early model F-104 intercepted a U-2 still at altitude while returning from a mission. The Zipper pilot reported that the U-2 pilot was pretty pissed when he blasted right by him – from the top – dragging a shock wave that didn’t do the Dragon Lady any good…
Miss you Sharkbait.
Mike
MKopackHow about an aircraft specific question (it’s been a long time singe I was around armed Mirages) – at the very aft end of the inboard weapons station on the Mirage, there is a small “attachment point” (seen at the link below). Is this a ‘bomb ring’ that attaches to an aft bomb fuse, which would indicate that carried weapons may have been jettisoned prior to landing?
http://www.airplane-pictures.net/image123028.html
Secondly – about the photographers. Talk about being in the right place at the right time?!?
Mike
MKopackWell, it looks like my Bhutan vs. Andorra thread is pointless now. And I was just trying to come up with a backstory…
MKopackIt’s been great to follow the X-51’s progress, but it seems to make the X-15’s M6 runs starting starting in 1961 – 49 years ago – seem even more impressive.
Mike
MKopackThanks all – it was an unforgettable experience and I feel unbelievably privileged to have been invited.
I’m not a writer, not by any stretch (as my high school teacher from all those years ago would undoubtedly confirm) but I hope I was able to give everyone an idea of what it was like. It was almost a sensory overload, the sound, the sights, the feeling – even the smell. Let’s just say I’ll bet they go through a lot of brakes given the smell and smoke in the cargo bay after the assault landing.
The entire flight, beginning to end, was exhilarating – in fact that’s not even a strong enough word. I’m still grinning like a loon nearly a week later!
You’re right – it probably should be referred to as ‘RATO’, although at least for the past thirty or so years that I’ve been watching Fat Albert from the ground, it has always been ‘JATO’. It’s sad to see that the supply of bottles is now gone, but as impressive as they were to see, I understand that the new J-model aircraft – flying the same takeoff profile, but without the rockets – end up at a higher altitude and airspeed. I am guessing that Fat Albert will probably remain a “T” for some time though.
Mike, Jr.
MKopackThe sand in Hawaii was much nicer than the sand in the Gulf!
While I’m sure Hawaii was great, the sand in the Gulf wasn’t all that bad (looking back over all the years…) How many people can say that they learned to windsurf (although not well) in the Persian Gulf?!?
The Doha Sheraton hosted us at least once a week for all the swimming, surfing and relaxing at the beach and by the pool that we could handle. Great people, starting right with their general manager, they made the entire deployment a lot more tolerable.
Mike
MKopackInteresting site.
I had issues with the one link as well. Got it to work with this
Thanks for all the views and comments. It’s great that someone still finds what we did back them interesting!
Sorry about the typo on the link, and thanks for the correction!
Mike
MKopackMonday February 25, 1991
Hi Everybody!
What’s up in CNY? Everything here is fine. Almost 2 days into the ground war and we’re all hearing good news from CNN, BBC, VOA, and QBS. The ground war hasn’t really changed our life any – our pilots are flying CAS, but back here at the base, things are just about the same as they have been for the past six weeks.
The day before yesterday we had a SCUD alert about 5AM – we sat in the Canadian bunker for about 45 mins (they’ve got much better bunkers than we do.) The rumor was that a Patriot got it from Bahrain – although we also heard that it landed pretty close.
You can feel the weather here changing. We don’t need sweaters or long underwear at night any more, and the humidity is coming back – this morning the runway was closed due to fog. Hopefully we won’t be around to see 120 again.
The news from TJ is that the shutdown is really going on – the 613th (Gold) will deactivate in August, followed by the “Fighting 612th” (Blue) in October, and finally the Lucky Devils (614th – Red) in January. So far I haven’t heard anything official about what will happen to us – although we’ve heard Aviano for one squadron and Ramstein for another and possibly England for the third?
Mail here is pretty slow – we have a delivery once or twice a week – stateside mail takes from 10 days to three weeks to arrive (pretty good!), TJ mail takes 4-6 weeks (really bad), especially when that’s the only contact a lot of dependants have with anyone. When it comes to mail, I do pretty well, between you guys, Michelle Brisette, the SU crew team, and a couple of “Any Servicemember” people, I do better than most people.
They’re pouring concrete floors in our chowhall, so our dinners are catered from downtown all week. This is sort of a mixed blessing – the food is better, but other than dinner it’s MRE’s (icky poo).
Where did school get the tape from Colonel Emma, our ex-base commander made… (I’m starting an hour later – we just had another air raid warning – SCUD???) I’m really surprised that they got the tape – all his family is in Conn.
Well, it’s about time for us to get back to work, so I’ll sign off for now. We’re all still doing fine. Take care and write soon!
Mike
.
MKopackFebruary 11, 1991
Hi Everybody!
What’s up at home? Everything here is fine – we’re still flying hard and coming home safe. Our life here is slowly returning to normal. When we’re not at work, we’re now allowed to wear civilian clothes – but we still carry our masks. Work is still rough – I’m back on nights (finally)(6-6). We’re phasing jets like crazy – our normal three day (72 hour) inspection is down to 1 (about 26 hr.) The airplanes are flying so much we’re on our 10th jet this month (in Spain that’s equivalent to almost 2 1/2 months work.)
Our morale is pretty high – although we’re all pretty tired. That should be helped by the fact that we’re starting to rotate days off. Something else that helped our morale was that our officers were breifed that King Fahd (of Saudi Arabia) wants to give each of us $10,000 for coming to the desert – of course our government turned it down – but we understand that the King is pretty insistant (we weren’t supposed to know this, but it leaked)(of course we’re not actually expecting anything – but it did help our morale.)
Well, that’s about it from here – here are some stickers. One’s the Doha Air Base sticker (w/ the flags). Hang onto the other four – they’re the only ones I’ve been able to get my hands on – they’re the four Qatari AF sqdns (Alpha Jet, Mirage, Gazelle, Commando – Westland version of the Sea King.)
Take care, write soon,
MikePS – Dad, I’ve been able to get a few photos of Commandos, Alpha Jets and a few F.1’s – along with some CF-18’s – I’ll have to hand carry them back to Spain.
.
MKopackJanuary 13, 1991
Hi Everybody,
Well here it is Sunday night, Jan 13. Under the best of circumstances we’ve been told that it would take a month to pull all of the troops out of Kuwait – Iraq has until 5AM on the 16th (our time) so we’ve all got a pretty good idea what’s going to happen. We haven’t had an Intel briefing in about 10 days, but just watching the flightline tells the story. We have about 2/3 of our 16’s loaded up – 4 AIM-9’s and either Mk. 82’s, 84’s, or Cluster Bombs. The Canadians have almost everything loaded with 4 AIM-7’s and 2 AIM-9’s. Today the French loaded 2 Matra Magic’s (French Sidewinder) and 2 Super 530 (big radar A to A missile.) The Qataris are flying loaded F.1’s, Alpha jets with gun pods, Gazelles with HOT’s and Sea Kings with Exocets. We’ve also got a pair of P-3’s staying here with us.
Everybody here is a little nervous, but overall in good spirits. We were relieved to hear that Congress passed the “use of force” resolution – at least they’re not going to keep us here for another six months to let “sanctions” work. From what we hear the Iraqis can get just about anything they want from the Jordanians and Iranians. We got a hospital in the day before yesterday – a 14-bed field hospital from TJ – so we’ve got about 50 new faces around here.
Well, enough talk about that – now on to important stuff. We’re all restricted to base – so I missed out on some shopping that I wanted to do – oh well. I doubt we’ll get off base again while we’re here – we’re just too big a target. I watched yesterday’s Bills vs. Dolphins game on tape – looks really nice there – snow in Buffalo – looks like no sun either. Ha ha you suckers – guess what it is here – overcast with rain. We’ve had rain 3-4 times this week (all last night) and pretty much the whole week has been cloudy. We’re having highs right around 70, although when the sun peeks through it’s still bright enough to cook you on the spot. It’s still cool at night – but not as bad as Christmas week – after I called you it got really cold – I now believe that the Qataris have said that they’ve had flurries here before. We got wool blankets to go with our sleeping bags – it’s not that cold, I use the bag as a mattress and sleep under the blanket. It looks like I won’t be able to call again; they’re going to stop all morale calls (this is war – you can’t have morale) but I’ll keep trying.
Other than that, I’m trying to think what else is going on – hmm, not too much. Oh yeah – I got the package from Miller – no beer (damn!) but everything else – I’m set for candy until 2000. They also sent a couple pairs of nice (expensive) sunglasses, a great bright pink Lite t-shirt, a Lowenbrau hat, cookies, sunscreen (please – no more sunscreen!) writing paper, envelopes stamps, rubber bands (?), a first aid kit (already come in use a couple of times), mixed nuts, skin lotion, foot powder, Slim Jims, Kool Aid, Gatorade, microwave popcorn and brownies, Lifesavers, tissues, vitamins, Q-Tips, chapstick, pens and pencils, post-it notes, felt-tip markers, batteries, a pencil sharpener, a wallet, a rain poncho, keychains, scotch tape, along with a couple of magazines (like gold here) and an entire Syracuse Sunday paper – oh year, and an Elvis Christmas cassette tape – is he working for Fred Miller now? (All copied off the customs tag…) It made for a happy day in our tent. Thank everyone up in Fulton for us.
Well, that’s about it from here – it’s time for bed. I’ll write again soon (although I think it’s going to get kind of busy around here.) Take care and write soon. Don’t worry about me – our main worry is warm water for the showers in the morning!
Mike
.
MKopackRussians claim the wreckage the Georgians claim is a plane is actually a satellite which crashed there several months ago.
Sounds like a wierd claim, even visually it would not be difficult to tell the difference between a satellite and an aircraft – although they both fly, they are constructed entirely differently.
From CNN: Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that Georgians had shot down two Russian aircraft…
Russia does have a surplus of aging weapons which they intend to replace soon, better to use them than to let them go to waste.
This old veteran would rather see them just go to waste…
Mike
MKopackI saw that too. Any idea on the type? Seems like it would be a waste of money given the lack of defense they’re fighting against. Just drop another bomb.
Just a shot in the dark here, and my only expertise on ballistic missiles would be my misfortune of being targeted by them back in ’91, but I would guess something along the line of a ‘next generation’ SCUD-like short or medium ranged missile. Probably used against fixed location military targets (bases, ports, etc…)
While the missiles are not ‘precision’ as such, at shorter ranges they can carry a large payload and can be as effective as a ‘terror’ weapon as they may be to conduct actual strikes, in that there really isn’t anything that you can do to stop them.
Mike
Sign In
