Former F-15 Eagle Pilot Describes Desert Storm MiG Kills

30 years of service combat medals citations only man to down three enemy aircraft in the last 40 years ha wrong ed harris hey everyone my name is vincent aiello i'm the host of the fighter pilot podcast and no it's not me it's retired united states air force colonel caesar rodriguez callsign rico and he down two enemy migs in desert storm and a third in allied force and it's all on his f-15 eagle and he stopped by the show to talk about it last summer 2020 we had a two-hour discussion and what i want to play for you now for about the next 40 to 45 minutes is some excerpts of that so you'll see some chops and cuts but uh this is rico talking about his experiences check it out and i'll talk to you on the back end hope you enjoy it recording all right hello rico how are you jello how are you doing my friend i'm doing great all right welcome to happy hour let's see what have you got i've got a tecate oh well that is appropriate you're down in tucson right that's right okay i've got a local coronado brewing company islander ipa very nice so cheer sir cheers oh man anyway i wanted to do some research on you but the only thing i know leading into this conversation is top gun maverick trailer begins with ed harris saying a bunch of things about tom cruise and one of them he says the only man to shoot down three migs in the last 30 years and that's not true is it well it's definitely not tom cruise well i know but don't don't we know somebody uh here who has uh done something like that yeah i i have been credited with uh with three airliner kills in the last 30 years post vietnam era wow and so uh yeah i i heard that trailer and i actually said oh they're gonna say my name and then they screwed it up yeah exactly well you're just as good looking uh as tom cruise if i may say so sir but anyway all right well that's awesome let's let's talk about it and i i think i have a book over here with at least one of your stories but you have kills in the f-15 which is behind you there nice uh background thank you yeah so uh courtesy of of some very very close friends that i can't reveal their name because they're actually in combat operations today um once a year i get a nice postcard uh from the uh the dedicated crew chief and the pilot whose name is on my jet so 114 is right behind me uh she is currently flying combat operations uh over the uh centcom aor and that's the one you got some kills in that's the one i got uh two of my kills in uh on the 19th and the 26th of january in 1991 okay and then my third kill uh was in 169 when i was with the grim reapers we called her the love machine and uh and uh so uh and that was on the 24th of march of 1999. okay so for our non-history students in the crowd 1991 was desert storm 1999 was allied force correct operation allied force nato's first air campaign all right okay so all right so let's start at the beginning uh where are you from so i'm an army brat born in el paso texas uh traveled all around the world mostly uh south and central america when my with my dad okay um after we uh we did the whole army tour uh i went to the citadel and then went to the air force from there graduated from the citadel in 81. so you go to flight school you do sufficiently well do you pick eagles right away or do you do a fake i guess they call it or what do you do no i actually uh i miraculously completed flight school didn't do very well in the first phase of it t-37s was a little bit of a rough start uh t-38s uh i was lucky enough to get uh an instructor uh former f4 pilot wheels wheeler uh was my instructor and he uh he sat me down on day one and said what do you want to do and uh i said i want to go fly fighters and my my seat mate next to me he says i want to go fly 141s and the other guy said hey i think i want to stick around and be a t-37 or t-38ip or a fate and then he very quickly said well uh i don't know what what i'm going to do for you guys because i i don't uh you know i'm not a heavy pilot i'm not uh not a fan of being a fake or a ip here the rico you and i are going to sit together we're going to walk this path and so a long hill climbed together with wheels and uh i was able to select an a10 uh when the draw came down for my uh for my drop no kidding yeah okay so i started out the eight step yeah i flew it for two years okay um went to holloman for fighter lead in and then i went to davis-monthan for a-10 training okay and then uh so i went to korea and started out in the hog down there and uh what was normally a one-year assignment turned out to be a two-year assignment because uh uh everybody we had just built that squadron uh literally from scratch everybody arrived almost at the same time so everybody was going to pcs at the same time and so uh my squadron commander said hey uh you know you've been here a lot uh for a full year you've done a lot of good things as a lieutenant um if we upgrade you to ip and and make you you know mission commander and everything else would you stay around as a pro for another year and i said sure i'll take that uh that that job any day and so uh in in the course of two years i accumulated a little over almost 900 hours in the a-10 holy cow i was uh i was as a lieutenant i was the deco for four deployments down to the cope thunder in the philippines and then uh so i i flew i flew my tail off when i was there on uh all day yeah i mean guys are lucky to get 150 hours a year right now that's 450 hours holy smokes there's not too many guys that go from 810s to f-15s are there no actually uh very not many uh and uh and the real you know there was many of the the leadership team in holloman who questioned my sanity and my uh my logic my thinking is that why the hell are you asking for for an f-15 out of holloman you know you're you're going to get whatever you want and i say well i wanted to fly an f-15 from the very get-go uh so i want to do it again try it um and uh so uh sure enough uh uh got an f-15 uh got it to eglin and i went to tyndall for uh for for f-15 train oh cool what year did you first fly the f-15 or go to tyndall then uh 1980 uh the fall of 88. okay so by the time desert storm kicks off you're not a new pilot by any stretch but also you've got a couple years in the eagle at that point i mean do you do you go to a deploying squadron after your training or what do you do yeah so we uh i went to eglin uh with the 58th fighter squadron down at england the gorillas so in august 1990 i was at um at gulfport mississippi okay um i was leading a detachment of six f-15s against the missouri guard who were getting ready to retire their f-4s and then eventually receive the f-15 okay and so we uh we were we were fighting uh for a week on the last day i want to say it was a thursday uh there was this big huge blowout plan for that evening uh we went out and did a 6v i want to say 14 it could have been 16 but we smoked them there wasn't a single one left and they're like going damn you know this this f-15 is badass and we're glad we're getting and so as we get back and we're coming back uh up initially i get a call from the from the top three on the desk and he says hey rico need to talk to you when you shut down and he says uh tell everybody not to open a beer and i go okay so i pass it on to the guys and said okay something's going on but we get down we lay in the the top three says hey the squadron wants you to uh uh to to put the jets back on take the jets back to eglin tonight um and uh so we need to pack up get everybody out of here and then we'll we'll get everybody home tomorrow as once we get you guys out of here so i called back to eglin and uh i talked to the eglin guys they said yeah bring it on in so sure enough we'd land about 7 30 8 o'clock at night um and the entire ramp was lit up with lightholes and everything you can imagine weapons trucks were flying left and right delivering weapon live weapons to the jets and so we were we were loading the jets uh to go to uh respond to uh to the iraqi invasion that's where we were in august um you know my my daughter was born in july oh geez uh yeah so uh and and by the end of the month we were on the road uh headed to desert shield you said i think earlier january 19th let's talk about 16 through 18. are you flying patrol missions uh the first few nights of the war yeah so um for us the night of the 16th in in the region um i flew the last four ship that was desert shield oh wow okay and so we we we took off and uh uh basically we had a lot of what i would call uh cat and mouse type of uh runs to see if anybody was awake okay um we um we we we were checking you know to see if anybody if the iraqis were doing anything were they doing anything out of the normal uh that that our sensors can pick up so we did that and uh and the normal uh you know six or seven o'clock in the evening um we are you know checking out and heading headed north or headed west back to our base uh and again not trying to elevate or raise any awareness you know and so by that time a lot of the airplanes had already started to launch um to the south and then they were they were headed to the refueling tracks for the eventual night one push you know the the first few days it was really from uh i was on a dca rotation um and so uh uh you know on this the morning of the 17th of you know that day i flew three times uh on the 18th i flew three times yeah all right so uh you started talking about the morning of the 19th yeah so the uh that we took off like at four in the morning uh it was an initially uh you know that that vault period was started at uh six in the morning so took off uh hit the tankers took over relief of the cap we did about two hours of cap time and then uh awex called us up and said hey you guys uh uh you're the the oca for uh this strike package that's being picked up uh is is stuck on the ground they were langley birds they were weathered out and so we uh uh so a wax asked us you know uh the they came up and said hey uh the the new oca is scrambling out of to book and they're asking for you to send the two ship to the tanker to be ready to be the post strike suite so i sent three and four first to the tanker to to to manage to get as much gas as they could and they would manage the the dca cap and then craig underhill and i took uh after they got back on station we went to the tanker and started uh you know refueling and then getting on frequency with the new strike package and what they were going to do and this strike package uh outside of the ato they had found a large munition storage area southwest of baghdad about 60 or 70 miles and they've been tracking some vehicles going underground and all that so they said okay we it wasn't on a normal target list so they scrambled all the strikers air-to-air arm shooters uh you name it uh they were all part of the this strike package and and so they were we were going to be the two-ship post-tribe sweep uh for this event um and then so uh it just so happened that rick delini's warship was the one who was on alert they scrambled uh rick and i you know obviously we're in the same squadron we have the same squadron standards so the basic briefing was everything is standard um and uh and off we went um when the strike package pushed uh rick tulini's uh four ship uh a series of migs and an f and one f one two big thirty ones and an f one for it was the final uh count that we had uh a wax had at some points tended to think that there was more in the air but that was really all that we had radar data on uh rick and uh and and uh um cherry pitts end up scoring two two kills uh in that group uh the f1 that uh kind of cut through the formation and then dove into the into the clouds uh below the uh below the the where the guys were flying was never we never targeted him again nobody ever saw him again okay um but uh what bottom line is rick and his four ship and jettisoned all their fuel tanks and they never made it to the target area wow so uh strike strike leaders said uh we're gonna press anyway uh and it made sense uh you know they they were also carrying uh air-to-air amrams uh with the f-16s um and so uh but at the time once we got that word we mull and i pushed it up into the high 50s and and pushed out front of the strike package to get caught up with them and then get out in front of them and as we were getting out in front of them we started to build the radar picture that had a one group way out to the west uh which really wasn't a factor per se and then one group that was starting to generate outside of baghdad and came on a direct vector towards the the leading edge of the strike package so that's the group that we pretty much uh focused our attention on yeah hey can i interrupt you said make 31. did you mean 23 or 25 i don't think iraq had make 31. no excuse me 25's 25. okay i thought so very similar but uh okay anyway all right now up until this point hold on let me interrupt again sorry up until this point had there been other kills so the flight right ahead of you got two what about like on the opening night or two or three of the war were other other guys getting kills was it fairly common or fairly rare still no i would say uh you know so opening night jb kelk got scored a kill we had three kills in our squadron on opening night wow um and then lightly had one kill on opening night so there was a total of four uh that were credited on opening night now day two um sly mcgill and uh rory drager uh scored uh sword air-to-air kills um and then so here we are going into day three and uh so we get two ship first and then mole and i will eventually get two more that day um so there was there is definitely opportunity um but when you think about it you count all the f-15 and all the air-to-air shooter noses that were in the aor uh it probably felt like uh a very limited opportunity for for most folks so mull and i we we concentrate our efforts on the mig-29s we don't know their mig-29s at the point but they're they're coming out of baghdad but what becomes very clear in what they end up doing they they come at us in a red cell i.e we can't break them out on the radar uh very tight formulation when they start to break out out of their red cell into a tactical formation so now they're flying about a mile a line of breast they take it down they start out around eight to ten thousand feet they take it down we're still now in the high 30s we're ramping down from 50 to 30. uh they take it down at exactly uh 12 nautical miles boom they take a beam maneuver which uh for you know for those who are on the call this that was a known not a publicly known but it was a known tactical deficiency in our radar that we had some blind zones and they hit the blind zones exactly you know on the number and so mull and i break lock we knew what to do uh we start to pick them up as they're in their beam maneuver and then as they're in there being maneuvered and they start to drag they literally are dragging right outside initially right outside of the ragged edge of an h7 shot like a sparrow shot okay um but as we're ramping down we're starting to you know get put to pull them into the wes but as you well know with a sparrow you got to hold the missile until impact it's not like an amram which you can shoot and launch and leave and so literally as uh as as the migs are starting to uh i mean they're they're in the heart of the envelope for a sparrow period dot i hear the strike package leader call uh miller time which was the code for the last last uh guys uh is down the chute okay and then i'm getting ready to hit the button for mullenite to abort when my original a wax controller remember when i started out dca i was in western awax i flowed into now an oca mission inside of central a wax's control my original western awax controller mark boner white he calls out on guard citgo pop-up contacts 330 for eight so mathematically i've got to make 29s dragging in front of me at about 11 miles and and uh they don't have opening v subscribe but i can catch them if i want to but i i also know that i'm also going to now enter into the mez for baghdad okay the strike package has done their business so i really don't need to be here anymore and now off of my left nine o'clock which is three three zero for my from my formation eight miles my original a wax controller says somebody is there that you don't want to be there so immediately i turned hard left to three three zero i don't remember this is now habit patterns taken over i don't remember reaching down and jettisoning my fuel tanks but when i jettison my fuel tanks and i turn to 330 i generate a huge con around my jet which my wingman who's two and a half miles off my right wing when he's looking now to the west to 330 he sees three fuel tanks flying off off my jet he sees a big huge con ball and he's like going oh my god rico just get hit um as i roll out the 330 i take the f-15s auto gun system throw it out of the 330 heading and immediately i get a lock and it's at eight miles um the good news is i've got good correlation and i've got uh some radar essay as to what's there the bad news is the rules of engagement that we had still at that point in desert storm uh required anything inside of 10 miles to be visually identified why did we have that in the rules of engagement the rules of engagement were written for all of the platforms that were in the aor to include the 117 at night in certain scenarios we could have found them we wouldn't have known it was them so that's that that rule of engagement was put in place for protection okay it didn't have a clause that said day or night it just said the rule was uh if you get an auto locked auto gun system lock inside of 10 miles you got a vid so kind of stuck between a rock and a hard spot yeah and did not opt to uh to to wing it and take a bvr shot even though i was carrying a mig-29 spike on my rwr and i had not completed my id matrix so i had didn't had no idea of uh mode 1 mode 2 mode 4 or anything else the spike you were talking about is coming from the 330 bearing yeah all right and then just for everyone who might be listening later the mode 1 2 and 4 you're talking about are the different transponder settings if you will of an iff and that's a whole we haven't even touched on that here on the show yet but different ways to identify friend or foe as iff stands for okay so when i get spiked um i uh give as much radar data to my wingman verbally excuse me verbally and uh and then i do a beam notch if you will i i roll inverted pull straight down to to the dirt and and i am pointing straight at the ground uh my goal there is one to get below the radar plane of motion of the mig-29 so i can start becoming part of the ground clutter i start pumping out a bunch of chaff to try and uh you know decoy my airplane so that the airplane the meg has a hard time looking at me it's not a hard solution for his airplane because he's he's got a blue sky background so i got to make it hard for him he's at 8 000 feet so i'm i'm passing through 35 and screaming uh straight at the dirt uh and then as i'm starting my level off and i start to level off about you know two or three thousand feet and eventually get down to about 500 feet on the on the deck uh but now the the spike continues to follow my airplane uh off now off my right wing so i at least i know it's on the right wing somewhere but i i just can't find this guy um and i am doing the funky chicken in the cockpit trying to find this guy in the sky where as you remember at top gun you would say hey don't don't scan this guy look in one spot look for some contrast and then you'll pick up the early tally hoe but if i had a a go camera on my head at that point it would have looked like the spinning top um going crazy trying to find this guy because the audio of the mig 29 was obviously getting tighter and tighter what i didn't know at the time obviously while i was flying was that our total package team the the ec 130 team was aware of what had just happened and they were on his on his frequency and they were jamming the piss out of him so he was getting both radar jamming and audio jamming um which complicated you know his his uh eventual shoot solution um when i hear my wingman uh confirm he's completed the the id matrix uh rivet joint gives him a declaration also that it's a make 29 hostile uh at the time i'm still going straight downhill when mull calls fox 3 or calls fox not fox 3. so when i look up over my shoulder at high 7 i see his his missile come off his airplane start to generate a huge smoke trail and the smoke trail is trailing across my tails to eventually my uh just gonna be pointing to my right three o'clock completely out of the wild blue as i see his missile stop smoking i use that little pencil beam of smoke and and follow the line and boom i pick up a mig-29 uh the silhouette pointing straight at me about three to three and a half miles off my right wing uh he's he's pure pursuing me the whole way and then next thing i know boom uh big huge sparkler in the sky moles um moles the missile uh hits uh hits that uh that mig-29 smack in the nose uh i don't know if you've seen the pictures that are out there but there there's several pictures of of the hud field of view um they were they were recovered by some special ops guys and the hud field of view shows the aim seven sparrow uh the rods of the h7 expanding literally you know feet in front of the hud uh so you know what's coming it's just going to rip the pieces out of that air rip the p r rip that airplane to pieces all right so that was uh that was one mig-29 was there more than one i take it yeah so um at that point uh i am at 500 feet uh mole is about 25 000 feet uh we're both kind of going same way same day on a westerly kind of heading and then again uh boner comes up on on guard and says sitko second group north 10. so at that point i go if i if i get the math wrong that puts the guy seven miles of my tail if i if i check the south so i boom check the formation to north um and we both get a hit right at about 10 nautical miles on our radar scope we both start to do the id matrix i get a i get a hostile indication when i complete my id matrix my wingman gets a friendly as it turns out he actually has friendlies as high as he is he's got friendlies uh way beyond the radar line of sight so he's getting uh a an error that is conservative which is the right thing for me i'm looking uh purely at the beam uh looking up and i don't have anything in the background so that was the lesson learned in in the debrief why did this happen like this but the the the end result was i had one friendly declaration i had one hostile i declared myself as the the eyeball on a shooter eye formation and then so at about four and a half miles i started to do a pure pursuit from 5000 feet to 8000 feet put the make 29 on the td box and the first time i could see him visually because that was really now the requirement he looked like a f-18 he looked like an f-15 he looked like everything that we flew because i couldn't see the the background of the the color background so as it turns out i continue my my my lead pursuit on him i crossed about 50 feet off of his left wing at a very high angle of it i'm doing about 120 degrees nose up and he's pretty much wings level when i cross him right there is the first time i see the iraqi flag and the brown and green camouflage and i call you know hospital make 29. wow um then i start a hard left turn climbing left turn in my from from where i was coming from and when i look over my shoulder he has started a level turn on right on the horizon hasn't changed his plane of motion um i don't know if he sees my wingman but so when i see that he starts a level turn i literally flip the airplane roll inverted and do a split s to the inside of the circle um to now uh cut meet him at the first 180 with the 98 of the 90 degree heading crossing angle so i've already gained 90 degrees of angles on him um and then he still doesn't see me or at least he's not responding to me so i'm on the outside of his circle i pull for everything that the eagle has and and i probably think there was more but when we got home i had several pulls on on the airplane in excess of 10 g's on this particular fight but i pulled to the inside of the circle and when i crossed his extended tail and now get to the inside of the circle i still have over 200 knots of closure on him so he's not flying a very aggressive jet but that's the first time he puts his lift vector on my jet and starts to turn in my direction so i know now that he's aware uh at this point my wingman has sanitized the air space around us and uh he actually has a short window to say hey rico i can come in and i just go stand by you got yours yeah you got yours on this so yeah uh that turn that that fight starts to you know obviously deteriorate closer and closer to the ground uh we do two 360s from about 6000 feet to about a thousand feet agl um at about a thousand feet agl i pull to the inside of the circle to try and get one uh what i call uh really hard of the envelope h7 sparrow shot just to bring the the the asc circle in and take that shot you know other people have told me and i believe it you know when when you're at an eagle and you know you're inside of two to three thousand feet and you pull that much lead it literally looks like you're going for a gun shot so he's at about 800 to 600 feet he rolls inverted and starts the classic split s or what i thought was going to be the the mig 29 cobra maneuver um when he rolls inverted i was not going to follow him through that point because i can already sense that what i see in the desert uh these aren't you know big trees these are little bushes and the bushes are getting big so i pull a quarter plane to the high six of the uh of the mig-29 uh roll inverted start to put my nose back into him and and he literally hasn't even hit perpendicular his afterburners are now cooking and they weren't cooking before and he hits he hits the desert floor and starts to tumble for what seems to be you know several miles of maneuvering from there wow um and so very quickly after that my uh you know my weightman comes up and says hey uh tactical right side so i look off to my right side sure enough for two miles there he is and then we snap to south and we start to get the hell out of dodge wow yeah you know when we uh when we did our check-in with ops back home um you know a wax had already called in that we had uh the j uh the first two ship had two kills and we had two kills and and so we were coming back and and then uh so i call in that the only expenditures i had was fuel tanks and uh then my crew chief's like going well then obviously got something wrong and i go well it's a little different than the standard uh you know mission but you know we did get two kills yeah uh he was he was a very proud crew chief to put that first green star on the jet so you come back what's it i mean when you guys come back into the overhead are you faster than normal lower than normal or you just kind of hey this is what we do and we did it and i mean was there a lot of celebration and jubilation or is it kind of another day there wasn't a lot of celebration because uh the bottom line was it was another day coming and you knew that you were going to be flying in not too many hours again um but yeah so my wingman and i we had this chat a couple hundred miles out and i said uh somo uh what do you think he goes um this is when we're allowed to do and you know an aileron roll right and uh i go well that's kind of the way they did in vietnam so let's do it so we came in uh normal speed normal you know overhead speed for us but just as we hit uh you know right right before you before the wheels would touch down you know i plugged in the burners i was pretty light as it was already you know got the nose jacked up 30 degrees started to accelerate did a nail run roll and pitch back out um needless to say we both got our asses chewed uh course my boots my boots were not very shiny when the wing commander came out and ripped me a new one so he he got me for my boots he got me for my uh for my aileron roll uh and i think he also got me for the fact that i hadn't shaved in three days because i hadn't seen a razor in three days so he was also insanely jealous i'm just gonna say right now because he wasn't were you a captain or a major at this point okay so he wasn't a captain anymore which is young and fearless he wasn't flying all these missions he might have flown one or two occasionally and he didn't get a kill so i'll just i'll just exonerate you on his behalf if i may all right so this was the 19th i forget what you said 21st so a couple days later 26th 26th okay a week later yeah so you're exactly flying all week right uh fine all week and uh and so actually i'm flying 114 again um and that's why she has her two stars excellent and uh so this day is uh is is a terrible weather day all the strikers are grounded on the coalition side the only uh airplanes that are flying are you know obviously a wax rivet joint uh f-15s tankers and then so it was really more of a dca environment uh we were flying a very non-traditional formation in that we were literally 50 miles in a lead trail formation um and we were just doing big huge caps uh that that covered as much ground as we could um at one point uh we had just come off the tankers um we were uh we were we had probably done one or two turns in the cap and then awax comes up and says hey need you guys come up on secure voice and uh and so we come up secure voice at that point uh rory says okay they want us to go secure voices start looking like a formation and so i start to close the the distance between myself and and his element and then uh a wax tells us that uh we're getting some signals from the h2 air uh airfield far western iraq um and uh and and the signals that you know the the comms that we're on is a you know we're being told that there's engines being started um and and what we ended up finding was that there was uh uh one of the nations uh i don't want to reveal the nation but one of their people was in a in a secure location uh and he had observation he had eyes on oh wow and so he was confirming that there was engine starts on the runway um and he he went one step further and also confirmed that this was a cousin of of saddam who was one of the guys in the jets um and uh and so uh so we've reformed the formation and we start to head uh west southwest in what we call the wall of eagles and so rory has directed nobody to lock anything just you just do radar search and so everybody's got their radar responsibilities uh basically uh rory's got the low look uh i've got a high look rory's wingman has the high look my wingman has a low look as we divided up the radar responsibilities for the four ship um we start to build a radar picture they did not ever go into a red cell they basically stayed in a vic in a leader with two wingmen formation and then they were also basically navigating off of the main highway that was coming out of the h2 h3 airspace okay um and so we are uh up at you know 35 000 feet it's it's walks off all the way down to the surface um and as it turns out about 20 miles we see this big huge sucker hole in the in the cloud deck and we go hey you know let's jump through the sucker hole and you know maybe we'll see uh we'll have a visual on the shots we come down through the sucker hole the cloud deck is right around 18 or 19 000 feet so we drop down to about 14 000 feet so we're not highlighting ourselves against the deck and and the formation stays the same it's a big formation so at that point rory calls the the targeting he's got leader his number two's got the northern uh wingmen i've got the southern whitman and my wingman's got a search responsibility okay um we we sorted out and then we start seeing missiles firing uh rory launches at about 11 miles uh at 11 miles i can start to break out the the wing formation of the mig-23 i can see that my specific mig-23 in the in the td box and so i'm i'm going to be waiting until about nine miles to take my shot uh rory's shot doesn't detonate on the mig but uh as i'm watching his missile come off the rail and go towards the mig it's very clear his missile gets really really close to the fuselage so i think the missile actually goes into the intake of the engine um so it doesn't fuse but what you see about two or three seconds later is the airplane starts an easy left-hand turn to the north and then starts to smoke and then starts to turn into a ball of fire in that process rory has already pulled lead on his mig as it's turning to the north he's getting ready to take another shot and of course uh that that big eventually blows up so he turns into a ball of fire when kimo and i both shoot uh we still got about a one five aspect on our shot uh and so when we shoot and the mig 20 uh make 23 the lead mig-23 turns to the north the two wingmen both check to the south and they heat up the intercept on our missiles to basically appear head aspect shot and sure enough uh both of them nearly hit nearly simultaneously on those two migs there was a major highway that that they were navigating on and on on the north side and on the south side of that highway they're flying at about 300 feet agl the fireball that was that ensued scorched those two those two air pieces of ground right below right around the highway um so as we're coming out of that uh rory directs me to to flow west and sanitize west he flows north and sanitize north we both sanitize the airspace there's nobody left and then he says all right rico uh snap south and uh let's go to the tanker so sure enough i snapped the south and i i go to a 20-mile scope and sure enough in about 16 miles i get this big huge blob hit at the center of my scope and i'm going what the hell is that so i lock it up i do a real quick mode uh three look and it's our tanker guy and i go uh hey do you realize that you're you know you're inside of iraq and he comes back and he goes yep and do you realize that you don't have enough gas to make it to the original tanker track and i go yep i go thank you start your turn and sure enough i'm carrying about 600 knots uh he starts his turn you know he's got 13 14 miles in front of us when he starts his turn i'm literally just pulling right into the boom position and start getting gas roto gets gas and then rory and chemo come in behind us and they get their gas and they head out so i'm guessing no aileron roll when you return on this one no no aileron rule uh we had already been reprimanded severely yeah you'd be able to do that let me ask you this how many how many people if any at this point have two kills in the war uh there is four of us in our in my squadron oh wow that have two kills okay um and uh and so uh and i think there was one one guy up in schusterberg up in the northern northern watch turkey operations okay that had two kills so i just want to ask you this i i mean when you come inside with the tapes and the amazing experience you just had on the first one obviously i can imagine everyone's huddled around watching the tapes asking you questions you're you know excited on the second one is it the same or is there an element of people saying oh i can't believe how lucky you are or it's old hat i mean i'm not saying are you like a different person suddenly are you playing it down but i guess i just wonder what the different feeling is on a second one in that case so i'll be very honest with you you know because of the ops tempo that we had as a squadron i didn't see many people other other folks and flight suits except my four ship and then whoever was the top three on the day when you landed you didn't get to see a lot of folks you were literally we called it you know we called it leadership by yellow stickies because the squadron commander would put yellow stickies on uh on our on our uh on our life support uh peg if he wanted you to do something different um because he he was fine too yeah you know we were we were you know all hands on deck everybody fly your butt off and uh and we did not uh you know we had the highest number of of ours uh per per eagle squadron and the highest number of sorties and we also had the highest fmc rate of all the eagles in the aor and so you know we were when we started to see the ato break out and see what they were asking us to do um we started to scream for for more bodies and of course that didn't happen coming from the uh uh we didn't get more relief from the folks down uh downrange they said hey uh you know the relief comes when you guys get relieved you guys got to fly your your goals yeah and and to the credit of uh the squadron commander and the leadership team we didn't turn down a single uh air tasking order mission nice um well we picked up a lot and you know some i mean i i know one of my missions uh and again purely in a dca world uh ended up being a 16-hour mission because the saudi f-15s didn't come and manage their vault period so when i was finished with my pb and j's and my water and my piddle packs ready to go home the the answer from aywax was standby uh you're now the second cap and the only thing i had left was a go pill and water so now i got to take a go pill so yeah it was uh they were those are some of the days all right well what did i tell you is rico the man or what that dude is awesome now i know you're counting one two eight jello you said three kills that's right come on sorry guys i don't want this video to go on forever plus you can watch the entire unedited two hour video talking in more depth about all those kills and the third one in allied force right there on our patreon page go check out patreon.com look for the fighter pilot podcast and there will be a link to the two hour video you can support the show and enjoy rico and a lot of other great content so check it out thanks for stopping by and we'll see you on patreon

Channel: The Fighter Pilot Podcast

Views: 256,267

Rating: 4.8756046 out of 5

Keywords: Military Aviation, Air Combat, Fighter Pilot

Id: getlNBgBwjs

Length: 46min 35sec (2795 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 13 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/arkroyale048]

Yea that trailer could have been worded better. It should have been 'only man to down 3 aircraft in a single engagement in the last forty years'. Then it would have been more correct. I can see why Jello and Mover had an eyebrow twitch over that line.

[u/omg-bro-wtf]

this goin be gud...

[u/TIMELESS_COLD]

The Eagle is a beast! Taking the clues we got over the last forty years, it would seem the eagle excel when the training or safety limitations goes out the cockpit.

Give me a clicky Charly already!!!

[u/nealius]

Saw that kill-mark bird sitting on the ramp at Yokota at last year’s “airshow.” Was cool asking the crew about it.