Question for "an Iranian F-4 pilot"

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

I will answer your question as soon as possible, now i'm busy...wait
Iranian F-4 pilot (Retired)

I will answer your question as soon as possible, now i'm busy...wait
Iranian F-4 pilot (Retired)

In reply to your question, I must tell you that Iran used a lot of F-4s
during Iran-Iraq war, because Iran has had the largest fleet of F-4s
after USA and in fact F-4 formed the backbone of our airforce during
Iran-Iraq war.
I can explaine for you many of stories in which I took part including
air battles, bombings, cooperation with our tomcats and so on. So
listen to one of them that is unforgetable for me.
In November 1982, I was coming back from a mission in Iraq, while I had
no air-to air missile, at this time the ground radar informed me of
approaching an F-1C Mirage to me .Because I had no air-to-air missile
so I decided to escape and went on high speed, but it was coming very
fast and very soon I realized that I would be shot down, if I didn't
do anything , so I reduced my altitude but that Mirage had intercepted
me and I was afraid.So I and my RIO requested an air support from our
base and also our distance was very far frome there.
I was thinking of being shot down by Mirage'missile that suddenly our
F-14 pilot - who was my friend- made radio contact with us and asked
our situation, only in a few seconds our F-14 Tomcat while sweeping
approached us from our head and passed upon us like a flash, in fact
it was intercepting that Mirage, ultimately we arrived our base and
landed safely while F-14 hadn't come back.
After that, my friend- the pilot of F-14 - told me that after passing
us he had gotten radar lock on Mirage and Mirage with seeing our F-14
had decided to leave the scene but it was too late for him because our
F-14 had fired an AIM-54 missile before it,which resulted in crash.
So if you have any idea about this my memoy I will be glad to answer.
Iranian F-4 pilot ( Retired )

also see:

Cooper, Tom. and Bishop, Farzad.
Iran-Iraq War in the air, 1980-1988.
Schiffer Military History, 2000. ISBN:0764316699

Mike

There's probably little you can say about this because it's so generic
- I mean, sometime in the early 1980's? "Something like" 10-15 downed
planes? There must have been tons of reports like this.

There are no "tonns" of such reports - but those that are available are much
more specific.

See - Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat
http://www.ospreypublishing.com/titl...hp/title=S6585 - for few good
examples (including HUD-pictures)...

I can't be more specific - I had a clearance at the time and I have no
idea if the details of these events are still classified. That is why
I made a non-specific request; I believe there are few, probably only
one, occasions that would fit the information that I provided in my
initial post.

v/r Gordon