On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 12:00:04 -0500, "Tony Volk"
wrote:

I'd forgotten about that series of engagements. You've told me about
them before. Thanks for the good comments guys. I'd be happy to hear more,
but perhaps more subjective and interesting question is what's the most
memorable a-a waxing you've ever given (or gotten)? There's got to be some
great stories about bagging an ace, or like you said Ed, taking out an Eagle
in a Talon. Or a Scooter bagging a Hornet. Or even an Intruder or 'Vaark
getting the drop on someone! So let me grab you a pint, pull up a chair,
and let the bragging begin! "There I was..."

Tony

p.s.- I assume that the best is probably coming home alive after doing your
job, but I wanted to open the floor to some shameless and entertaining
bragging


Well, pshaw. But, since you asked.

Maybe the most fun I ever had in a Talon vs Eagle engagement was a
2-v-2 out of Holloman. My wingman was Capt. Mike Scott (son of Lt Gen
Winfield Scott who was Supt of AFA at that time and previously an
F-105 driver.) Mike had been an F-4 type before coming to AT-38s and
was definitely not a "my dad is so-and-so" kind of guy. He was very
good at the job.

The Eagles were led by the Western US F-15 demo pilot--the hand-picked
whiz-kid to go to airshows and fly the low level demos of the Eagle
everywhere W. of the Mississippi.

At the time, the 49th wing at Holloman had a wing commander who was
much more administrator than fighter pilot. His greatest concern was
that an accident, particularly with his relatively low-experience wing
full of young drivers, would ruin his opportunity to make general. He
mandated that all dissimilar engagements flown by his guys would be
with "continuous mutual support--radar, radio, visual and formation!"
This meant that his guys would be effectively tied to the 1950/60's
era fighting wing tactics that he himself had been trained in. On the
other side of the airdrome, the AT-38 instructor cadre had much higher
average fighter time and no such restrictions.

ROE were visual engagments, 5 thousand foot altitude block separation
until the merge, and rear-aspect weapons. With dual UHF capability,
the Eagles had the advantage of radar, GCI support and monitoring of
the Talon's frequency. The AT-38s had small size.

Setup was 20 mile separation and head-on into the merge. Cleared to
leave the block on visual. I chose to take the block above the Eagles
and rather than a traditional spread, I told Mike to stack as close to
directly above me as possible (4000 feet higher). "Fight's on."

As I expected, the Eagles and GCI picked us up and provided vectors,
but the couldn't discriminate the two aircraft and so couldn't
allocate weapons on the pair. We could see the huge airplanes long
before they saw us and consequently called visual on the pair who
immediately entered a defensive turn, dragging the Eagle wingman into
low-aspect trail. I engaged the trailer for high-angle guns, Mike
offset laterally and maintained his altitude advantage. With a top
planform on the turning wingman, I filmed the gun shot then zoomed off
opposite the defensive turn. Mike dropped to press and stop the
reversal, I continued counter-fight and high-angled the leader on the
opposite side of the circle. Mike got his shot on the wingman and I
called the egress. We split, got 10K feet of separation and knocked it
off.

Second, third, fourth engagements repeated. Finally during the fourth
engagement I lamented on the radio that I was out of film on my second
magazine and wished I'd brought more.

The poor Eagle driver accused us on debrief of "lacking flight
discipline" because we were split-plane throughout and eating their
lunch unfairly. I simply pointed out that we were always in "detached
mutual support" and he might want to check out the latest tactics
manuals.

But, in fairness, had the Eagles been able under the ROE use their
Limas, face-shot WVR with AIM-7Fs and been allowed the same freedom
of maneuver, we would have been very small threat.

Still in all, a great fun day.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org