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Can we talk?Yep. Now we can.
Constant Peg was good, clean, old-fashioned fun. The pilots the USAF chose for this program – Air Force and Navy – were among the best their services had to offer, test pilots for the most part. I don’t know how the rest of them did in their careers, but the lieutenant commander I fought against back when I was a lieutenant is a hot-tracking flag officer today. He was a damn good stick back then, so I know that it’s possible to be both a good officer and a good pilot. I also know that while it’s possible, it’s hard. Or at least it was for me, anway. It was pretty cool to get “read in” to this program – you felt special, trusted. Cooler still was the day your name popped up on the flight schedule for an actual mission. After a high speed tactical intercept – you never quite get over that shot of adrenaline you get hitting the merge with an actual MiG-21 for the first time – came a side-by-side performance comparison and familiarization. For my own part, I only ever flew against the MiG-21 Fishbed, never the -17 or Flogger. Which was OK by me because the Fishbed was far the better performer in a knife-fighting pilot’s favorite room: The “phone booth.” As an adversary pilot we used the subsonic A-4 Skyhawk as a good slow-speed simulator of the Fishbed, and the F-5 Tiger II as it’s high speed equivalent. But there was nothing like hitting the merge on your full-up, high aspect hop agains the real item, himself doing 1.1 in a flash as he passed your wingline, climbing into a nose high, high g hard turn. We were taught in those days to try and keep the Fishbed at a distance, the better to use our all-aspect weapons. But that was a risky game plan too, for it was a real sportscar – little more than a minimalist cockpit atop an engine – very hard to see beyond three miles or so nose-on and not much more than that in planform. The MiG-21 had been a stern teacher of visual lookout techniques in the air war over Vietnam: It was the jet that had taught our our Vietnam predecessors that losing sight meant losing the fight – knowledge that they had passed down to those of us who followed them, after they got out of the POW camps. With a clear lane of fire and ROE satisfied the MiG-21 was no real threat against a radar and radar missile equipped Hornet or Tomcat – it was just a high speed missile sponge. But if for some reason the Fishbed survived to the merge for a close-in fight, manned by a pilot who knew what he was doing, it could be a handful, a highly potent adversary even for its much more expensive and high tech opponents. You didn’t get many mistakes. Even one could be humbling. That was the point. So, another program declassified. Maybe someday I’ll be able to tell you where they’re keeping Elvis. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. – Sun Tzu November 15th, 2006 | Tags: sea stories | Category: Flying
21 comments to Can we talk? |
Credo"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche "A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke "Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas "Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex Relocating? SponsorsNearly 60k hits and 130k page views per month - low rates! Advertise with Lex! Stinkin' Badges For the Effort!PopularPagesTags1st Amendment afghanistan Araby army Blogging buffoonery china culture economy education Flying Friday Musings geopol GWOT Headlines History iran iraq Israel issues media Memory Lane Military Navy norks Oz pakistan people piracy politicians politics Politics and Culture pundits Russia seals sea stories silliness Small Stuff SoCal technology UAVs UK usaf usmc weapons WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck requires Flash Player 9 or better. Spam Blocked |
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Some of this has been out before. Migs at a “remote operating facility” have been rumored for years, and I first saw confirmation of the rumors in Robert Wilcox’ book, “Scream of Eagles.” Pulling out the book, I saw the 1967 program was called “Have Doughnut.” Running Have Doughnut thru a search engine led me to pix of a MiG 21 with star and bar markings: http://area51specialprojects.com/migs.html
There’s a bunch of pix (what do you call it– plane pr0n?).
Enjoy.
One shot of the disposal of the CP jets:
http://www.amarcexperience.com/AMARCArticleMigs.asp
- SJS
Cap’n
Concur with BeachBum: SOV iron has flown at “Red Square” for many years (late 60s or thereabouts).
Much was learned: we overcame Phanton-II combat inadequacies and discovered Ivan’s weak spots in the process.
Ask Doc and Mad Dog.
SJBill
Very cool!
Has anyone heard of SU-27s being delived to Nellis via AN-124 in the 1990’s for training?
I’ve flown the MiG-21…it was a difficult a/c to land because of the high approach spped. Also, had the chance to drool over MiG-29s when I was in college.
As one of the few civilians who post here, I can only echo FbL’s sentiments…COOL, very cool indeed.
I’m still pretty sure I saw a Su-27 or Mig-29 (pretty similar profile) taking off from Albuquerque International (aka Kirtland AFB) back in late 1997…. unfortunately I was over a mile away from the runway and didn’t have a camera handy.
I saw a Mig once at an airshow here in Cincinnati about 5 years ago. It was SO damn cool. I have no idea which model it was, but it was f’ing LOUD and HAWT.
Oh.. no wait. The HAWT part was the pilot. *grin*
Late 98, in preparation for the Air Wing change of command, I was closing out our CAG’s log book. Mostly because I’m nosey, but also because of professional curiosity, I thumbed through the book to look at a pretty outstanding career. A few years prior, he had a couple of months worth of flying from a field with an identifier I didn’t recognize. The A/C type was listed as “A-7″ he had more than a few hours in it. Later, at lunch, I asked him about his A-7 time. He replied “I never flew the A-7″
Oh.
I had a neighbor who was in a previous life a USMC F-4 pilot. Since he could ‘habla Russki, he was put on a team that debriefed a couple of defector Fighter Pilots. Pretty cool how that program worked. Kept those buggers pretty isolated so as not to “pollute” their tactical thought processes with our capitalist tactics.
N
as a college student, I had the chance to meet Victor Belenko (he flew a MiG-25 across to Japan in 76?). He currently resides in St Louis and still flies an L-39 when he gets a chance.
Imagine how much that program would cost to operate today- 2006 (sure it did a lot more neat things, too)?
Try implementing something like that nowadays. in the 1980’s we were just in Cold War. More irony? Skippy? got an opinion on that?
B2
USNavy wants to buy Russian Sub:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=99990
USNavy buys KH-31 as target:
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/9/9/170025.shtml
..and the BG’s name is “Hawk” Carlisle??
come on, tell me ya didn’t get this from Scrappleface or Iowahawk…
“Scream of Eagles” is an excellent read, a great companion to “On Yankee Station”, both of which are included in my little library. Yes, I read about the very black dissimlar combat hops out in the desert as well. Damn good thing we had them to help prove the concept of Top Gun.
Hey Bob,
It wouldn’t cost anything today. The program would be proposed, leaked, and published in NYT before it could get off the ground.
N
Adversary Training – The Real Deal…
For you military aviation buffs, Lex has an interesting post regarding a recently declassified program involving ACM against MiG’s.
…you never quite get over that shot of adrenaline you get hitting the merge with an actual MiG-21 for the fi…
I was fortunate to have participated in both “Have Drill” and “Have Doughnut” flights in 1968 while a member of VX-5 out of China Lake. I flew both the A4F and A7. We would meet our AF F4 escorts at 20k on the Nellis 350 deg
radial at 30nm. They would lead us in and we would await the “test aircraft”. The A4 did ok below 15k, the A7 was awful. The -21 is really hard to see, the-17’s somewhat better. The test aircraft were gifts from the Izzies, thanks to the 67 war. We also had, at China Lake, from the same gentlemen, a complete SA-2 sam site. If you Google “have doughnut” there are some great photos and write-ups. By the by, Groom
Lake in those days was known as “Apex Tower”, but you were really forbidden from going near the place, hence the escorts in and out of the area.
In the time frame noted in the post, the aggressor aircraft in Red Flag were, in large part, Israel’s version of the French Mirage: “25 of the upgraded Kfir-C1s were leased to the US Navy and the US Marine Corps to act as “F-21A” aggressor aircraft for “Red Flag” training.”
http://www.mirage4fs.com/review2.html
http://www.airtoaircombat.com/detail.asp?id=98
BTW, test program at Tonopah does not equal Red Flag flown from Nellis!
In reply to Jason, about Major Belenko, his book, MIG Pilot, is kind of dated but is pretty neat. Is more a political discussion of the Cold war differences, but does talk about hardware some.
http://www.amazon.com/Mig-Pilot-Escape-Lieutenant-Belenko/dp/0070038503/sr=8-2/qid=1163695253/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/103-9545612-8103066?ie=UTF8&s=books
Joe: Funny story about that book. I read the book while working at my job in college and someone, who saw me reading it,asked me if I wanted to meet him. Funny how that worked out.
Belenko is a super nice guy. I told him I was in college and hoping to become a Navy pilot and we spent hours talking hardware. It was an unforgettable experience.
Jaon: My favorite part of the book was where they ask him how fast a Mig-25 could go. I don’t remember the figures, but we thought it could go about a Mach number more than the reality. He laughed and said we’d probably had one on radar (from Turkey) that had an engine runaway and blew up over the horizon.
Just too cool that you got to meet him.