August 5th 05, 03:33 PM
During the early 1980s, I heard about a nasty air battle between the
Iranians and Iraqis that supposedly ended in a massacre of Iraqi
aircraft. Something about 10-15 downed without significant loss to the
Iranis, with most of the crash sites in or near a vast marshy area.
The final chapter to the story was that neither air force could accept
the outcome; the Irani pilot's claims and vast amounts of expended ord
didn't convince their masters and on the Iraqi side, the commanders
were piqued because no one reported back to base. So within hours of
the clash, the Iranis sent a Cobra to check out the claims - the Iraqis
sent an early model Hind as well as an armed, French-built scout helo.
The Iraqis came upon the Cobra and attacked it from behind but the AH-1
spun around and flamed the scout immediately. The Hind-A attacked the
Cobra head-on (with what, I no longer recall) and the Iraqi returned
the favor; after a few moments of sustained accurate fire, the Hind
crew was killed and the gunship went down on fire. For the second time
that day, the Iranians were the only survivors.
My question to you is, what can you tell us about these events? I have
a pretty good mental list of the jets that were in action, but I would
be greatly interested in hearing about this from the perspective of
someone that would obviously have had a briefing on it.
Thanks in advance,
Gordon
Iranians and Iraqis that supposedly ended in a massacre of Iraqi
aircraft. Something about 10-15 downed without significant loss to the
Iranis, with most of the crash sites in or near a vast marshy area.
The final chapter to the story was that neither air force could accept
the outcome; the Irani pilot's claims and vast amounts of expended ord
didn't convince their masters and on the Iraqi side, the commanders
were piqued because no one reported back to base. So within hours of
the clash, the Iranis sent a Cobra to check out the claims - the Iraqis
sent an early model Hind as well as an armed, French-built scout helo.
The Iraqis came upon the Cobra and attacked it from behind but the AH-1
spun around and flamed the scout immediately. The Hind-A attacked the
Cobra head-on (with what, I no longer recall) and the Iraqi returned
the favor; after a few moments of sustained accurate fire, the Hind
crew was killed and the gunship went down on fire. For the second time
that day, the Iranians were the only survivors.
My question to you is, what can you tell us about these events? I have
a pretty good mental list of the jets that were in action, but I would
be greatly interested in hearing about this from the perspective of
someone that would obviously have had a briefing on it.
Thanks in advance,
Gordon