21 years on: Iran Air Flight 655

This day (July 3rd 2009) twenty one years ago the American missile destroyer the USS Vincennes fired a missile murdering all 290 passengers on the Airbus A300, the captain later testified stating he had thought it was an Iranian F-14A going in to attack him.

Unless the F-14 was going to perform a kamikaze reminiscent to the war in the Pacific against Japan there was no way it could have caused any harm to the Vincennes, the model of F-14's given to Iran (under the Shah) were the A models not capable of engaging ground targets, it wouldn't have been able to carry say an Exocet ship missile like the one fired from an Iraqi Dassault Mirage F-1 (Iraq at the time working with the United States) which crippled the USS Stark the year before.



So what is really was was a horrible act of terror, an act of piracy, as a flotilla of Iranian boats went into the Gulf in the following days to retrieve the bodies the crew of the Vincennes were given medals for extraordinary achievements!

George HW. Bush then Vice President said this and I quote:

"I'll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever, I don't care what the facts are."

We know you don't George:

And what compensation did the families of the victims who ended up in a watery grave in the Persian Gulf get, well $61.8 million nearly ten years after the actual event, and to this day 21 years later the US still hasn't taken responsibility nor apologized for the tragedy they caused.

I'm sure if President Obama's diplomacy approach to Iran was worth a damn he would at least apologize and admit that they were in the wrong!

The Sultan Strike

The IRIAF (Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force) isn't credited as much as it should have been for its victories in the Imposed War on Iran (otherwise known as the Iran Iraq War), under arms embargo the personnel in this organization managed to keep their F-4's, F-5's and F-14's in the air in (extreme cases) having to cannibalize other air frames and parts as spares to keep the others that were in better condition in the air.

When the war started on September 22nd 1980 when Saddam Hussein attempted to destroy the Iranian Air Force on the ground, at the time most of the Iraqi Air Force was made up of obsolete aircraft like MiG-21's, MiG-23's and Chengdu J-7's (example seen below).



Saddam's major air attack proved futile as Iran had built several concrete bunkers to store its aircraft (having learn the mistakes of the Arabs in the Six Day War), so the Iraqi Air Force was only successful in crating a few runways.

Iran responded the next day with Operation Kaman 99 was launched as were 146 Iranian F-4s and F-5s for a bombing raid on Iraq, 60 F-14 Tomcats where scrambled to defend Iranian airspace against a possible Iraqi retaliation, they managed to down five Iraqi MiG's, the bomb raids inflicted damage on the air bases but the Iraqis had flown most of their air forces to neighbouring countries (such as Saudi Arabia) before the Iranian attack, however they were then out of action for several weeks.

As the Iranians were putting up stiff resistance against the Iraqi invasion (Saddam vowed they'd reach Tehran in three days!), the IRIAF had total air supercity over them making it impossible for the present IrAF at the time to support ground units.

The Sultan strike was born after the Iranians had obtained very precise information about 47 French technicians having arrived at an air base near Mosul along with several of the new Dassault Mirage F-1's that the Iraqi's had ordered back in 1977 now ready for delivery giving the IrAF a newer fighter jet for their inventory.



However the Iranians weren't going to allow that happen and were eager to "welcome the French" to the war since they had obviously chosen the side of the aggressor, unlike the Israeli bombing of a nuclear reactor in 1981 (Operation Opera) in 1981 in which they attacked on a Sunday to avoid killing foreign workers on the plant the Iranians were readying to strike when there were several French workers in the area!

A total of six F-4's were put to the mission each carrying twelve Mark 12 bombs along with a KC 707 tanker along with two F-14's from the 81st TFS flying shotgun, they would be flying a total of 187 miles to strike their Iraqi targets.



Zig zagging past Iraqi radars and entering Turkish air space before re entering northern Iraq, refueling several times from the low flying tankers watched over the F-14's, they came across a patrol of four MiG-23's, covering the strike force both F-14's engaged one (with an AIM-54), and the other engaged two right away destroying one instantly and knocking the other out of control, engaging a third the fourth obviously returning to base being low on fuel.

The Tomcat's had protected the strike package that had broken 300km into Iraqi air space and bombed al-Hurriyah air base destroying two MiG-21's and three Mi-8 helicopters on the ground, a single French technician was killed, the rest of the French were ordered home.

It was a small tactical victory and proved to Saddam Hussein that the Iranians were a formidable foe!

What the IRIAF consists of today

It seems that Bush has not attacked Iran, tensions have been rising since 2006 when it was even suggested that nukes be in such an attack since it was too big to invade!

What I always wanted to know was whether or not the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) would have posed a credible threat to USAF aircraft?

Back in the 1970's in the Shah's Iran the Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF) was spending millions on high technology from the United States, by 1979 the air force had over 450 modern aircraft even a match at the time for the Soviet Union, these aircraft included 120 F-4 Phantom II jets, 79 Grumman F-14 Tomcats (out of a scheduled 80) and even F-5's.

These were later transferred into the successor of that the IRIAF after the 1979 revolution, for the next year alot of these were grounded due to maintenance problems with several Tomcats, but on September 1980 after the Iraqi Air Force launched its invasion by using the IrAF to strike IRIAF aircraft on the ground they failed the main objective since most IRIAF were sheltered in concrete bunkers.

Iran launched the largest air operation in the whole Iran Iraq War and in the countries history, less than 24 hours later Operation Kaman 99 was launched, 60 F-14 Tomcats were launched to protect Iran some armed with the AIM-54 missile system, 30 F-4's then hit back at Iraqi air bases taking out 55% of it there and then.

For the rest of the war Iranian F-14's were used for protecting the Khark Island installation, over 300 air-to-air engagements against IrAF fighters, fighter-bombers, and bombers, were fought in these areas alone between 1980 and 1988.

The IrAF had acquired some French Dassault Mirage F-1's which downed a total of three Tomcats.



In Operation Desert Storm in 1991 several Iraqi planes fled to Iran to avoid being destroyed by coalition craft, these included several Mirage F1s, MiG-25 Foxbats, MiG-21 Fishbeds, MiG-27s, Su-24MK Fencer-Ds, MiG-29 Fulcrums, Su-20s, Su-22M Fitters, Su-25 Frogfoots, MiG-23s and a number of Il-76s.



Also in 1993 Russia sold Iran a number of MiG-29 Fulcrums, Iran only bought a handful of them and have not yet decommissioned the older US built F-4's and F-14's.