еще из Ахмада РушдиPosted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 12:06 pm Post subject:

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Tom,
I would like to point to the fact that the Iranian government never cared about the Iranian AF after 1979. It looked at it as an organization that was loyal to the Shah of Iran; there was a tendency to throw Iranian pilots to meet their fate at the hands of Iraqi AD and fighters.
It would be interesting to discover the reason why the Iranian government all of a sudden cared about what remained of its AF after 1983. The decision to use it for "defensive purposes" while the Iranian ground forces were committing offensive operations in 1983-1987 meant that the Iranian government had decided to let their ground forces be at the mercy of the Iraqi AF, if that decision ever occurred then it was a strange decision by any logic!
Even before 1983, the Iranian air force performance was mediocre by any standard. Take for example the celebrated raid on H-3 which is hailed by many Iranian contributors to this forum as a proof of Iranian efficiency and in fact was nothing but a dismal failure. No sane man, to speak nothing of a junior officer in the planning dept. of any AF in the world, would ever send eight F-4E aircrafts plus the tankers needed to refuel them for a trip of more than 1000 km either way and in the end the only thing you achieve is hitting a Mig-21 on the ground with two bullets. That Mig-21 was easily repaired and flew the next day. Again one of the F-4E that participated in the raid was damaged and landed in a Syrian AB. Ask LP, he knows about all the details but he pretends otherwise.
By 1984-1985 Iraqi CAPs were flying over Kermanshah, Ilam, Dezful, Ahwaz, and Bandar Khomaini... any other place I missed. Iraqi Mig-25 was attacking Tehran 6-8 times/ day unchallenged. Iraq started using Mi-8/17 helicopters to drop bombs on Iranian front troops. Iraq used unescorted IL-76 planes to drop napalm pallets on Iranian troops at the front. Iraq started a campaign to attack economical targets all over Iran; just name the place. For all of these actions; Please give me a name other than Air Supremacy for Iraq. In all of these cases where were the F-14s, F-4s and F-5s taking the "defensive posture"?
I don’t have to talk to Iranian war vets, these people knew that a trip to Iraq meant one thing; a free ticket to an Iraqi POW camp. Just see the caption on so many Iranian contributors to the ACIG "to those who didn’t return back" they meant to the Iranian pilots who didn’t return back didn’t that mean so much to you?
Now trying to explain a 95% empty glass as being full of 5% of water and then being optimistic, well that would be an interesting explanation.
I thought the job of an air force was to shoot as much enemy aircraft as possible and that the Iranian F-14 pilot could zap the "poor" and "less sophisticated" Mig-23 from a range of say 50 km outside the range of the R-24. No, the Iranians preferred the unescorted SU-22 and Mig-23BN. Another wrong statement by the Iranians, the Iranian F-14 didn’t shoot down more than 8 Iraqi fighters during the whole war. What the F-14 clique in the headquarters in Tehran did was is that they stole the shooting down of Iraqi fighters by other means and claimed it was by their F-14.
The Iranian strategy to counter the Iraqi air force was flawed from day one. The Iranian pilots were under motivated, under morale, under trained and under equipped.
Again the repetition of this myth of US support which is totally nonsense; excuse me for the expression. I don’t mean you in person but I mean this leverage the Iranian is using to cover their deficiency and in the meantime belittle the Iraqi AF efficiency. Again I thought that Iran gate was a Martian endeavor
As for the Mig-23BN you mention, the forty or so I summed to you covered the whole war and was shot down by all Iranian means. Only a trickle was by air to air.
Again this argument of yours of the Iraqi air force not taking off and fighting in 1991 is entirely not true and I didn’t mention or meant to mention the word "cowardice" so why do you put words I didn’t say in my mouth.
Tom,
There is no way you can compare the battle in 1982 between the Iraqi AF vs. Iranian AF with the 1991 USAF, USN, USMC and the RAF vs. Iraqi AF. The comparison is not logical in the ratio of numbers, equipment….etc.
You know that the Iraqi AF had a limited plan to intercept and that Iraqi fighters took of and were able to shoot down coalition aircrafts and were shot down themselves. In the end what stopped them was the collapse of the IADS.
Tom,
When I began posting in the ACIG I thought that it was a free forum where many would welcome what I write in an open minded way, and discuss it thoroughly, even if it contradicts what they know. We (I and you) managed some fairly balanced, frank and sincere discussion and reached some interesting conclusions. The way some people posted (and I don’t mean you) their full of hate reply in this thread would certainly confirm "that old habits hardly die".
The Iraqi Air Force had defeated its Iranian adversary piecemeal in the war 1980-1988. The lack of proficiency of Iranian pilots contributed greatly to this defeat, the reasons were both subjective and objective. Stories about this could fill a book.

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Ahmad Rushdi
Honourable Member


Joined: 17 Jan 2005
Posts: 376
Location: BAGHDAD
Posted: Sat Oct 08, 2005 12:08 pm Post subject:

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Cold0,
If this is your idea of argument then how are we going to find the truth? If we stick to declared losses during the war then all air forces during the history of air warfare were nothing but groups of liars. The USAF have declared during the 1991 war that its F-15C had shot 40 Iraqi aircraft then after several years the USAF lowered the number to 31 and that was due to extensive research, analysis, and the availability of new information, so you are now accusing the USAF of lying during the war. The real number from the Iraqi side is 17 aircrafts only, but then I didn’t call the USAF lying. This is how it goes in the real war, during the war one side declares a certain number of enemy casualties, and then after the war the number is revised and goes down. Then if the opportunity is available; the two former adversaries compare notes and we might end with a new number; even lower. This has been the case in all wars, and it is very evident in this forum if you kindly read the October 1973War thread. The USAF interestingly and only a couple of years ago revised its Korean AA kills, the number was dramatically changed.

Crossiathh,
A very good question, the performance of the R-24R against maneuvering targets wasn’t that good. The soviets seemed to have known this fact. After two or three combat incidents when F-4E and RF-4E pilots performed sharp horizontal turns and then a steep dive the R-24R lost track. That was usually in the airspace over the north Gulf where the Iranians had GCI coverage. To counter the enemy aircraft maneuvering, soviet written instructions in the R-24 manual; was to let the enemy target move to the middle of the killing zone boundaries of the R-24R as displayed on the Mig-23ML HUD( a sort of No Escape Zone) then the R-24R was to be launched followed six seconds later by the R-24T. This ensured a higher Pk.
Iraqi Mig-23MF/ML were equipped with Serena-III RWR which was capable of detecting lock on by F-4 and F-5 radar, however not by F-14 radar. Here it is interesting to note that there were very few encounters between the Iraqi Mig-23MF/ML and the Iranian F-14. In summer 1984 when the Mig-23Ml was introduced it managed to shoot down an Iranian F-14, 80 km inside Iran using an R-60 MK. This occurred in August 1984, when 1st Lt. Amer managed to shoot down the F-14 flown by Colonel Hashim Ali Agha over the Iranian town of Bandar Mahshahar.
The Mig-23MS was a terrible aircraft. The version exported to Iraq in 1974 was equipped with Almaz-23 radar (an entirely useless piece of equipment) and R-3S missile (not the R-13M). Iraqi AF was discouraged by its performance and that’s was one of the reasons why Iraq went to the French in 1977 and bought the Mirage F-1. In 1980, when the war with Iran broke out there was one squadron of Iraqi of Mig-23MS, the 39th and the Iraqi AF had to commit it to combat. Iraq lost only3 Mig-23 MS during the war. With the introduction of the Mirage F-1 in summer 1981 the Mig-23MS was withdrawn from CAP duties over the front line and was performing CAP deep inside Iraq. With the arrival of the Mig-23MF in late 1982 the Mig-23MS was transformed into an OCU squadron and no longer performing combat duty of any form.
As for the number of Mig-23MF/ML losses in the whole war, I can assure you that there was one Mig-23MF lost and another Mig-23ML lost only. However nobody seems to be interested in going into a dialogue that would eventually lead to the revision of the grossly inflated numbers of Iraqi shot down aircraft.

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