NARRATOR: The hostile
skies of Iraq. Air warfare will be transformed
in the fury of Operation Desert Storm. State of the art American
war machines go head to head with battle hardened
Iraqi pilots, flying French and
Soviet built fighters. As modern air combat is forged
in a high tech battle for air supremacy, experience
the battle. The dog fights of Desert Storm. January 17, 1991. In the early morning
hours, an EF-111A Raven penetrates enemy airspace
above Western Iraq. Operation Desert
Storm has kicked off. The air war is about to go hot. Captain Jim Denton
maneuvers the Raven through the inky blackness just
1,000 feet above the desert. JAMES DENTON: The EF-111 is
really a Cadillac of low flying airplanes. It was designed specifically
to fly very stable at very high speeds and down low. NARRATOR: In the
right seat next to Denton is Captain Brent Brandon. While Denton pilots the
Raven, Brandon's job is to blind Iraqi radar emitters
with the big jets powerful jamming gear. BRENT BRANDON: So we're like
the blocking fullback that goes through the line
and shuts down radars. So that the guys carrying the
bombs can come in behind us, pop up, and then
deliver the ordinance. NARRATOR: Denton and Brandon
are at the tip of the spear with a large strike
force in tow, targeting missile sites between
a pair of Iraqi airfields. If they succeed,
Denton and Brandon will carve an electronic swath
through which F-15E Strike Eagles will safely pass to put
laser guided bombs on target. F-15C fighters fly top
cover at 30,000 feet. Added protection in
case any American planes are jumped by the enemy. So we're embedded
with 22 fire eaters out there going to take
names and kick ass. NARRATOR: In the
cockpit of the Raven, electronic warfare officer
Brent Brandon goes to work. Well, it gave us 10
high powered jammers, and those jammers
are like flashlights. And when the radar tries
to pick up the good guys, we blind them with
this radar in bombay. The ALQ-99 computerized jammer
instantly zeros in on the radar frequency. Brandon releases megawatts
of radiated energy. You know, here it comes
up on the back your neck, and the jet starts
to crackle with all this electronic energy. It literally feels electric. NARRATOR: The Iraqi
radars are blinding. The strike Eagles
are cleared hot and begin hitting their targets. We're between the two
largest airfield at 5,000 feet. We are in the front row
seat in Desert Storm. NARRATOR: Their any
aircraft radar is gone. The Iraqis desperately scramble
jets against the intruders. About two minutes
later, two caps are airborne for the Iraqis. One of them comes out
of the H2 airport. One of them comes out of
the vicinity of Baghdad. NARRATOR: The crew gets an
unfriendly hit on their radar acquisition warning system,
and Iraqi Mirage F1 rolls in from above and
behind the EF-111. Denton and Brandon are
in serious trouble. The Raven was never
meant to dog fight. The EF-111A is an
electronic warfare variant of the F-111 aardvark fighter
bomber nicknamed spark bark. All armament was removed to
make way for the ray dome on the underside of the
fuselage that housed transmitter antennas and the pod on the
vertical stabilizer that housed receiving antennas. The Dassault Mirage F1 is a
French built single seat air superiority fighter. The Iraqis had over 100
F1's ones in their arsenal, and they used them with great
success in the Iran-Iraq War. In a dogfight, the Mirage
has every advantage. It has a faster rate of
climb, far greater agility, and is heavily armed
with 30 millimeter cannon and air to air missiles. The Raven is completely unarmed. The Mirage closes in
from five o'clock high on its helpless prey. Jim Denton will have
to survive by his wits. I felt based on our
training, we could beat it. Just straight up and
get away from it. And that was our primary
job to get away from it, to get our jammers back
on, and get back to work. So what I did was I just snapped
us inverted and just started a left turning slice
back to the left. NARRATOR: It's a simple
defensive move that will, hopefully, position the
American's jet engines out of the line of fire of the
Mirages heat seeking missiles, but the Iraqi jet is already
in radar missile range. The menacing tone
of a radar lock pulses into Denton's headset. Looking over his right
shoulder, Brandon spots the missile flash. It's like someone
looking in a dark night, and watching someone
light a cigarette, and then watching the
cigarette come toward you. I hear missile launch right
side, and I'm going, what? He says, missile
launch right side. Break right. So at this point, I'm completely
blind at 400 feet at night, and I've got a
missile coming at me. NARRATOR: Denton snaps the
big Raven to the right, pulling with all his strength. By breaking sharply
into the threat, Denton is attempting
to overwhelm the missiles
electronic circuitry. It's a highly
dangerous maneuver. You're basically doing a high
rolling, high G turn down low. NARRATOR: Denton and
Brandon take five G's of abuse, the maximum
their aircraft can sustain. You can have soft
G, or you can have hard G. This was some hard G. NARRATOR: Brandon pumps out
chaff, strips of aluminum meant to confuse the warhead. The tactic works. The missile streaks
past the Raven and disappears into the night. But the Mirage is
still on the Raven 6 and not about to give up. Luckily, the cavalry
arrives, and F-15C piloted by Robert Graeter
is on a cap mission high above the dogfight. Graeter has already
bagged one F1 tonight and quickly locks
the second Mirage up, preparing for a long range
sparrow missile shot. Graeter is here. The Mirage is here behind
Denton and Brandon's Raven. The Iraqi pilot already
target fixated on the Raven, now, has to deal with the
piercing shriek of Graeter's missile lock in his headset. He momentarily loses his
situational awareness. A fatal mistake at 400 feet. In a sudden brilliant
flash of light, the Mirage slams
into the ground. We saw the fireball just
spit out in front of us. It slid and hit in front of
us about o'clock right at two o'clock. NARRATOR: Graeter,
the F-15 pilot, is credited with the victory,
but Denton and Brandon are awarded the Distinguished
Flying Cross for their role in the maneuvering kill. The Mirage F1 was more than
a match for an armed EF-111. But when they came down to
play in our environment, they paid the cost on it. NARRATOR: The mission on
the morning of the 17th is a complete success. The 671 combat sorties that
night are the first combat test of a bold new
strategy in aerial warfare. American tactics and technology
in the 1980s and '90s were shaped by the lessons
learned during the Vietnam War. The previous generation
of fighter pilots had not been trained in
air combat maneuvering, and they were forced to
fly aircraft that were not specifically designed
to dog fight. All of that had changed by 1990. LON NORDEEN: By 1990,
with the Gulf War, the Air Force and the Navy
had advanced on two fronts. One is they had advanced new
fighters, like the F-15 air superiority fighter and the
F-14 interceptor fighter. In addition, they had
much better weapons. The sparrow had improved. The sidewinder had improved,
and the pilot training had considerably improved. NARRATOR: When Saddam Hussein
seized Kuwait on August 2, 1990 and the drums of
war began to beat, American airpower faced its
greatest threat in decades. The Iraqis had to
make 29 interceptors. They had made 23s. They had French F1s, and
pilots and ground commanders had experience fighting
with the Iranians. Thus, the US really
organized in a way to create an overkill
situation, where we had to use all of our assets
against a prepared adversary. NARRATOR: Electronic
warfare aircraft could block enemy radars and
clear corridors of attack for bombers whose precision
guided munitions could take out command control centers
and anti-aircraft defenses. AWACS could monitor the
situation, calling out any airborne enemy aircraft
to American fighters, who could take them on. Tankers could feed the beast,
keeping the entire war machine flying for hours on end. Such combined force was
championed by Air Force fighter pilot and strategist
Colonel John Boyd, who created a
concept explaining how allied energy should
be used to defeat the enemy and survive. Collectively known
as the OODA loop. The OODA loop stands for
observation, orientation, decision, and action. What it really means is
that you out think and out act the adversary
by knowing more, by destroying his capability
to think at the same level that you are. What does this mean for warfare? What it means is,
if you can go out on the first night
of the Gulf War and you can destroy by
actively bombing or jamming the Iraqi radars, and then you
can actually bomb and destroy their command and
control centers. And you can scare the hell
out of the commanders that do survive by blowing up his
center and by disrupting it. That is what the
OODA loop means. You have scared the enemy, or
you have destroyed his radars. And you've destroyed
his capability to react. NARRATOR: The extraordinary use
of allied airpower on January 17 works exactly as planned. Air Force and Navy planes have
disrupted the Iraqis ability to gather information
and make decisions. Eight of their best fighter
aircraft have been destroyed. Radar stations command,
and control centers, and surface to air missile sites
have been reduced to rubble. But as the war goes on,
the Iraqi defense stiffens. More fighters rise to
challenge the Americans. On January 19, F-15
Eagle pilot Larry Pitts will go head to head with
some of the best pilots in the Iraqi Air Force in one
of the most thrilling dogfights of the Gulf War. s soar high above a cloud deck
that obscures the desert sands of Western Iraq. Captains Rick Tuleni and Larry
Pitts are number one and two in the four ship
flight, providing escort to a massive coalition
strike package. LARRY PITTS: Well, as it turned
out, just as we were finishing up our refueling,
the AWACS called out at that time bogeys
approximately 60 to 80 miles North of us. NARRATOR: Before
Eagles break off to engage the threat,
within seconds, they have multiple
radar contacts. I saw two groups of airplanes. One straight in front of us,
which had been called out as MiG-25's at about 10,000
feet heading straight South, and another group about 30
degrees right of us at about 50 miles, which had been
called out as MiG-29's. And they were also
heading at us, so they were heading
South to Southwest. NARRATOR: The MiG-29's are
closer and present the greatest threat. Pitts targets the 29's, until
the bandits surprise him. They turned around and started
heading back towards Baghdad. So they turned cold, which
meant they were no longer a threat to us at that point. So my radar work went back
to the group of MiG-25's who were right in front of us. NARRATOR: The MiG-25 Foxbat is
a very high speed interceptor capable of mach 2.83. It was designed to catch up
to even the fastest American aircraft and take
them down with radar guided or infrared missiles. The F-15C Eagle is the premier
air superiority fighter in the US Air Force arsenal. A mixture of unprecedented
maneuverability and acceleration, range,
weapons, and avionics. The MiG has the
edge in raw speed. But the Eagles weapons,
radar, and agility far outclassed the Foxbat. At 25 miles, the
Americans used their radar to lock the MiG-25's up. But these Iraqi pilots are
skilled and aggressive. The MiG-25's actually executed
a Soviet based anti-Eagle radar tactic. NARRATOR: The MiG
pilot spits out chaff to cloak his maneuvering
as he dives low to blend in with ground reflections. They turned directly to the
West, and went down very low, and actually, broke
our radar locks. And we lost him
for a little while. NARRATOR: But abruptly,
one of the MiG-25's turns back into the Americans. The MiG-25 turns back
in, which is the tactic. Hopefully, he'll see
us before we see him. NARRATOR: And just
then, the second MiG-25 gets Pitts' attention. Pitts is here on the far right
side of the American flight. The MiG-25 is here,
passing across his nose at supersonic speed
along the desert floor. Pitts locks the
bandit up and waits for the OK from flight
lead Rick Tuleni before he presses the attack. He could say press,
cleared, or negative. What he said was
press, which means, now, he's going to support me. And I can consider
myself the flight lead and not to worry about him. I roll inverted and do a split
S maneuver from 10,000 feet. NARRATOR: Pitts' maneuver will
position him at the same level and behind his enemy. The perfect position
for a missile shot, but it's a risky move. Pitts pulls an
astonishing 12 G's. The force takes man and
machine to the absolute limits of survival. Well, obviously, the
integrity of the airplane is a big concern,
but I'll tell you. The Eagle's very
strong, and trust me. There was enough
adrenaline flow in there that it didn't even faze me. NARRATOR: For the first
time, the American pilot spots his prey. As I pulled down, that's
when I get the tally ho on the MiG-25, and there's still
that low cloud deck down there. So I can see him on
top of that cloud deck. NARRATOR: If the MiG-25
pilot lights the afterburners and accelerates straight
ahead, he could outrun Pitts. But the Iraqi decides to enter
a turning fight with his much more agile opponent. He's a MiG-25 doing 700 knots. His turn radius is
the size of Texas. I'm in an F-15 at fighting
airspeed in the mid 400s. My turn radius is
about 3,200 feet, so I'm very quickly
inside of his turn. Before he completes
180 degrees of turn, I'm in weapons parameters. NARRATOR: The desperate Iraqi
leans hard on the stick. He's turning very hard
to try to defeat me, which means he's bleeding off
quite a bit airspeed. NARRATOR: Pitts closes
to within 9,000 feet, carefully selecting his weapon. Because of the
big burner plume coming out of the
airplane, I chose to select a heat seeking
missile and aim nine sidewinder. When I selected that missile,
I got a good tone from it. I uncaged it to make sure the
seeker is tracking his burner plume. NARRATOR: But the Iraqi pilot is
well versed in countermeasures. The missile tracks
true to the target, and the MiG-25 puts out
flares and decoys the missile. I had a backup. I selected aim seven,
because it's radar guided. I see it in the heads up
display as a big circle. It's telling me to
shoot, shoot, shoot, which means it's in
a weapons parameter. So I launched this missile. NARRATOR: The Sparrow
guides to the target, but fails to explode. So, Pitts goes to a
second heat seeker. The Iraqi decoys the missile
with another batch of flares. Captain Pitts may
have met his match. This guy is fighting hard,
and I'm thinking to myself, if the missiles
aren't going to work, I'm going have to go gun
this guy, which is not an easy solution when he's
at 300 feet doing 500 knots and not in a turn. NARRATOR: Pitts unleashes
his last aim seven. This one has got to work. And I fire the missile
from 6,000 feet behind him, and it looks to me like it
goes right up his tailpipes and blows up the back
end of his airplane. NARRATOR: Dodging debris, Pitts
catches sight of flight leader Rick Tuleni high to his left. And about five miles
off Tuleni's nose, Pitts spots a glint. And I'm thinking it's
probably the other MiG-25. NARRATOR: The bandit is
nose to nose with Tuleni, and closing fast. But, Tuleni doesn't
want to take a shot. At this angle, the bogey
looks like an F-15. Rick decided he needed
to identify this airplane, and he did it in an
extremely unique way. He calls out on the
radio with the assumption that, if it's a bad guy,
he's not on our frequency. Is anybody in afterburner? Because we see a big
afterburner plume coming out of this airplane. NARRATOR: Tuleni's
gamble pays off. There's no F-15 in
afterburner, so that plume means he's facing a MiG. Tuleni fires an A9. I see the missile come off. I also see flares come
out of this airplane, and the heat seeking missiles,
once again, decoyed by flares. These two MiG-25 pilots
were fighting very hard. NARRATOR: But the Iraqi
pilot makes a fatal mistake. Now, the airplane turns
what we call belly up to us, so we're seeing the underside
of its belly, which is not a great place for the MiG to be. Rick selects an aim seven
Sparrow radar guided missile and fires it. That airplane just turns
into a ball of dust. NARRATOR: The Iraqis have lost
two MiG's, but the coalition has stirred a hornet's nest. Less than 100 miles away,
another pair of F-15 pilots are about to square off against
the most advanced fighters in the Iraqi arsenal. F-15C Eagles streak 19r through Iraqi airspace. Captain Cesar Rodriguez
leads the flight. He's known as Rico,
and his number two is Captain Craig Underhill. Call sign, mole. CESAR RODRIGUEZ:
Our initial mission was we were defensive
counter air. And our job was to protect the
high value assets, tankers, AWACS, rivet joint,
everybody who was in support of the offensive
counter air missions, which were moving forward. NARRATOR: But five hours
into their flight, command calls to inform them
their mission has changed. An allied strike package has
hit its target and needs fighter protection for the
push back home. CRAIG UNDERHILL: They had asked
us to help with their egress, so that when they're pressing
South, we can make sure there's nothing
chasing them out. NARRATOR: Rodriguez
splits his flight. He and Underhill will
cover the bombers, leaving numbers three and
four to protect the high value assets. On the way to the
target, the Eagles pick up some activity
on their search radars. A pair of planes to the
Northeast about 60 miles away. With the help of AWACS,
and other assets that are in the area, and through
a collective means, we were able to determine
that these are two MiG-29's. NARRATOR: The Soviet built
MiG-29 Fulcrum is a mock two capable air superiority fighter,
the most advanced fighter aircraft in the Iraqi arsenal. The Eagle has a better
radar and weapons platform, giving it the edge in
long range detection and destruction
of enemy targets. But the MiG's better
thrust to weight ratio gives it the advantage,
and maneuverability, and rate of climb. Eagle pilots were advised not to
get into close quarters turning fights with Fulcrum's, if they
could avoid it, especially since Iraqi MiG-29
drivers were known to be combat hardened veterans. They took their best pilots
out of their F1's and stuck them in the MiG-29 when
they got those from Russia. So we knew their pilots
were combat qualified. We weren't. Never been there, so
that's an unknown for us. NARRATOR: Rodriguez and
Underhill locked the MiG-29's up at 40 miles. The Iraqis break
off and head East, trying to lure the F-15's
within range of SAM sites near Baghdad. But AWACS quickly
reports a new pop up contact, Bogeys 330 for 13. Possible enemy fighters
are at the Americans nine o'clock barely 13
miles away and closing at the speed of heat. I feel, at that
point, that group is the one that represents the
biggest threat to the strike package. NARRATOR: The Americans
turn toward the West to head off the threat. The turn puts Rico
about a mile and a half in front of Underhill, and
about 1,000 feet below him. Underhill quickly
gets a radar lock on one of the unidentified
planes trying to ID the bogey before the merge. There is a lot of things
you're doing with his hand and dialing gauges over here
to make sure you're not going to shoot a friendly down. We're all trying to do the
first thing, which is identify friendlies to
prevent a fratricide, and also, equally as important
is identify the hostiles. NARRATOR: With the opposing
planes closing at Mach speed, there's only seconds
remaining before the merge. At eight miles away, AWACS
finally calls the bandits out as hostiles. By the time hostile
is out of his mouth, I'm pushing down and
shooting an aim seven. It was just like a
freight train coming away. It comes under my nose,
starts pulling lead on the first airplane coming in. NARRATOR: At the same
time, one of the bandits locks Rico up, throwing
Rodriguez onto the defensive. My defensive mindset is
first to take my aircraft and get down below
his plane emotion. So I want to get
below 8,000 feet, so that his radar is now
looking at me or through me and includes the ground clutter. NARRATOR: Rodriguez cranks his
Eagle to the left and dives, pumping out chaff. About the time
he starts turning, I'm watching my
missile go, and it is-- here's Rico turning
in front on me. Here comes a missile
plus or minus 200, 300 feet right over
the top of Rico's jet. So I was eye opening for me
as I imagine it was for him. I hear him call Fox. I turn left in my cockpit, and
I actually pick up the engine, the motor of his aim seven. NARRATOR: Rodriguez
sees the smoke trail and follows it to
the MiG-29, now, three and a half miles
off his right wing. I'm really cod right now at
the mercy of what that missile is going to do. And sure enough, the minute
I picked up the silhouette, it couldn't have been more
than two or three seconds later and boom. It goes splash one, and I turn
my head back around and look. And sure enough, a
big brown cloud there. NARRATOR: Rodriguez climbs
to form up with Underhill. We're building
our mutual support, again, and to be
honest with you, my first thought process is
let's get the hell out of here. NARRATOR: The pilots are
about to egress to the South and hit the fuel tanker when
a new warning interrupts them. The AWACS comes back,
again, and tells us that there's another second
contact 10 miles to the north. Again, I make the
assessment here that we can't turn around
and put this guy inside of a weapons engagement
zone at our six o'clock, so back into the fight. NARRATOR: Circling back
toward the engagement zone, the Americans quickly picked
the bogey up with radar. Underhill is here at
8,000 feet about half a mile in front of Rodriguez. The bogey is here, five
miles away at 10,000 feet. Underhill uses his radars
auto acquisition mode to lock the bogey up. I lock him up in auto guns. He does a convenient turn
for me and breaks back left in a pretty hard G turn. NARRATOR: The bogey's left turn
exposes the aircraft's plan view to Underhill. A large target for a radar
guided aim seven sparrow. I lock him up. I turn. I put my nose on him. I go to shoot an aim seven. Lights up as a
diamond on my scope. It goes from a solid radar
contact to a diamond, which tells me he's a friendly. NARRATOR: Underhill's
heart sinks. If this plane is a friendly,
then his first kill may have been a squadron mate. January 19, 1991. After knocking down what he
believed was an enemy aircraft, Captain Craig Underhill is
facing the gut wrenching possibility that he may
have killed a squadron mate. I tell you, that is
just a terrible feeling. Fratricide was something
that the Eagle community took very seriously. NARRATOR: Underhill
and his flight lead Rico Rodriguez
are now closing on a second unidentified bogey. Without confirmation,
the plane is hostile. He can't fire. I go from aim seven to
aim nine, back to guns. And as I'm going through
about 4,000 feet on this guy, he rolls, and pulls, and does
about a 135 slice back into me. NARRATOR: The mystery plane
breaks hard into Underhill. Despite the aggressive maneuver,
Underhill checks his fire. He and Rico are being
forced into a classic merge with the unidentified aircraft. Underhill climbs, positioning
himself 9,000 feet above Rico. Rico works to gain
visual identification. Underhill keeps the
bogey locked up on radar, poised for a missile shot, if
Rico confirms the target is hostile. I will put my target
detection box that's generated by the
radar on the threat and see if I can VID this
guy from beyond visual range. If I can get a VID
before we hit the merge, that gives mole an
opportunity to take a shot and then get this over with. NARRATOR: Underhill's F-15
is still IDing the bogey as a friendly. 9,000 feet below
him, Rico closes head on with the mystery plane,
eyes outside the cockpit. I was committed to
the merge and to get as close as possible so
as to establish the ID. NARRATOR: As the jets
thunder past each other, Rico catches sight of
the full silhouette. I could see the Iraqi colors
of his tail fin, the flag, the MiG-29 silhouette. We call those a MiG-29. I start a left hand turn. He starts a left hand turn. NARRATOR: As each
pilot struggles to turn inside his opponent,
the fight descends. The MiG-29 pilot is
at a slight advantage in this kind of fight. But with the ground
rushing up at him, he may not be able to turn
long enough to exploit his one strength. So, Rico and him are now off
to the races going downhill. As Rico slides in, the
guy rolls and pulls again. And now, they're probably
heading North West-ish in a 135 slice as Rico is trying to get
the position fire on this guy. NARRATOR: It's a
classic dog fight. Not what the F-15
was designed to do, but well within its capability. From 8,000 feet, the fight
spirals towards the deck. As the fight migrates from
the 8,000, 7,000, 6,000, below 5,000, and continues
to drop down lower, the desert floor starts to
become a definite factor. NARRATOR: Too close
to use an aim seven, Rodriguez fights to position
himself for a heat seeking sidewinder shot. The ground rushes
toward the Iraqi pilot. He knows he must break
in some direction. Abruptly, he rolls over
and dives into a split S, daring the American
to give chase. Rico doesn't bite. He skillfully coordinates
the stick and rudder, pitching the F-15 vertical
into a perched position to pounce on the Iraqi
when he pulls out. And before he actually
hits perpendicular, he hit the desert floor, causing
the fireball that just tumbles, and tumbles, and tumbles for
what seems like an eternity to me. NARRATOR: Splash Fulcrum 2. We find ourselves in
two, what I would call, less than traditional scenarios
for what the F-15 was built to do in the sense of long range
beyond visual range shooting. NARRATOR: Regardless,
the victories demonstrate that in
almost any scenario, the F-15 is a superb
fighter aircraft. As the air war marched
on, F-15 Eagle crews continued their dominance
in the skies of Iraq. With their protection,
strike aircraft continued pounding command
and control bunkers, radar installations, and
antiaircraft gun and missile sites. F-15 pilots accounted for
13 air to air victories in the first two
days of the war. Nearly all achieved thanks to
the Eagles unmatched capability for beyond visual
range or BVR combat. The culmination of
nearly a century of technological breakthroughs
in aerial warfare. As a result of
all the advancements in electronic warfare, and
systems, and surveillance, the Gulf War was
the first time where we saw 2/3 of the air battle
kills on the part of the US and allied forces were done by
beyond visual range aim seven missiles. NARRATOR: In the early
days of air combat, dog fighting was done
close in with guns. As the missile age
dawned, air combat became a more remote experience
as the kill range skipped from yards to miles. Introduced during
the Vietnam War, identification friend
or foe equipment became a mandatory tool
of modern air combat as dog fighting slipped beyond
the range of human vision. Both the US and the
North Vietnamese aircraft had IFF systems, which were
transponders that said, hello, I'm a friendly,
or I'm not a friendly. And that would help
figure out who's what we call red and blue. Because the worst
thing you would want is for a blue friendly to shoot
down a blue friendly, which actually did occur a couple of
times at the Vietnam air war. NARRATOR: A transponder
inside the plane is set with a code that
transmits a certain frequency. If you're not squawking
the same frequency, you're probably not a friend. When used in conjunction
with E3 Sentry AWACS planes, IFF was highly effective,
making BVR kills possible. With your setup,
you would make sure that the AWACS understands
where the friendlies are and where the bad guys are. And you would do
a screen concept, where you'd move
forward and knock down any of the adversaries. NARRATOR: On
January 26, a flight of Eagles on the hunt
over Western Iraq will utilize this
advanced technology to spectacular
effect in a thrilling beyond visual range dogfight. January 26, 1991, four F-15C
Eagles soar over Western Iraq. The flight lead is Captain
Rhory Draeger with his wingman Captain Tony Schiavi. Element lead is Captain Cesar
Rodriguez with his wingman Captain Bruce Till. West of Baghdad at the
northernmost portion of their cap rotation,
AWACS picks up activity over H2, a busy Iraqi airfield. TONY "KIMO" SCHIAVI:
The first call we get is there's four aircraft
taking off from H2 and sort of heading to the Northeast. NARRATOR: The Americans
point their radars to the West in the
direction of the airfield. We basically each do a sort
of delayed 90 degree turn, so now that our four ship wall
is now running to the West Northwest. NARRATOR: They form
a wall of Eagles, flying line abreast
across a span of 10 miles. This allows the Americans
to mass their firepower, while giving them the most
coverage with their radars. Everybody has their
responsibilities. Some guys are looking
low at the radar. Some guys are looking
high with the radar, so that we can make sure that
we're covering anything that's flying from the surface of
the ground to 50,000 feet. NARRATOR: Sure enough, four
long range radar contacts. There are no known
friendlies in the area. These guys are probably MiG's. The Americans throttle
up full military power. The deafening roar of eight
Pratt and Whitney turbo fan engines echoes above the clouds. Though the enemy is far
beyond visual range, the Eagles have
spotted their prey. Draeger wants to maintain
the element of surprise. He issues a key
order to his flight. Let's keep our
radars and sweep. Let's make sure we have
everything sort of figured out and know how many
of them there are and what we need to do from
a targeting perspective. NARRATOR: A premature radar
lock is a sure fire way to scare off the enemy before
they're within missile range. Just like we have a radar
warning receiver, like a fuzz buster in a car, they
have the same thing. So if you lock onto a target,
that system is activated. NARRATOR: One of the
Iraqi jets bugs out with mechanical difficulties. The remaining three ship flight
stays low, less than 1,000 feet above the deck in a V formation. Combined force intel
lets the Americans know what they're dealing with. By this time, we have
multiple IDs from the variety of different sources
are involved, and all of them confirm MiG-23. NARRATOR: The MiG-23 Flogger is
a twin engine fighter bomber. Envisioned as an all
weather interceptor, its sturdy design made it
stable at extremely high speeds, especially at low altitude. The bandits are IDed,
and the Americans are cleared hot to shoot. We basically had met
our rules of engagement in order to be able to take
action, and that's what we did. NARRATOR: Draeger
assigns targets. He'll take the lead Flogger. Schiavi will take the
northern most trailer. Rodriguez, the southern most. The Americans locked
the MiG's up on radar and pushed the button. Aim seven Sparrows launch. Missiles are flying
in every direction making sure that we
take these guys out. NARRATOR: Three huge
explosions light up the sky. The F-15's dive through
the clouds just in time to see their
missiles strike home. It's a textbook DVR mission. Three bandits shot down
from beyond visual range. This particular
engagement was, I think, very well done in the
fact that not only did we get three kills. But as we started to
egress out, everybody was checking each other's six. Everybody was doing
what they needed to do to make sure
that we carried this thing to its
full conclusion, and were safely
across the border, and then back home again. NARRATOR: In just over a
month, allied air power broke the back of the fifth
largest Air Force in the world. In late February
1991, the air war is effectively over having
cleared the way for ground forces to retake Kuwait
and chase Saddam Hussein's remaining forces back
within their borders. Victory is declared
in only three days. The coalition's triumph was an
emphatic boost for current air war strategy, multiple aircraft
with specific roles working in concert to achieve victory. Air warfare in 1990 as it is
today really is a team sport. Multiple weapons disrupted
the Iraqi capability to deal with it. It was like a
information overload. They just couldn't deal with
the simultaneous strikes and the fact that their
radars went offline. Their command and control was
shut down, jamming deception. It was like having essentially
a war nervous breakdown. NARRATOR: With Desert
Storm, aerial warfare took a giant leap
into the future, but Larry Pitts speaks
for every man who has ever flown an aircraft into combat. An aerial victory
against an enemy airplane is a career highlight for me
and something that I'll never be able to beat. But you know, in my mind, I did
what any fighter pilot would have done had an enemy airplane
been put in front of them. I relied on my training,
engaged the airplane, protected my wingman, as he
protected me, and came out of it alive.
