Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Red Eagle Reminisces, The Story Of An Aggressor Pilot

https://warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/red-eagle-reminisces-the-story-of-an-aggressor-pilot.html

By Stephen Chapis

“After a few minutes of waiting, Colonel Chuck Holden called me into his office. He was in a flight suit with his feet up on his desk and a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. I saluted and as he returned a half-ass salute he leaned forward and shook a piece of paper at me. He growled, ‘Z-man. How the [expletive] did you get this job?’ I replied, ‘What job would that be, sir?’ He congratulated me as he handed me the paper. It was a letter, on 4477th letterhead, from George Gennin notifying my wing commander that I was being reassigned to the Red Eagles as of October 1983. That’s how I found out I got the job.”

Interesting read, thanks for that!

Great article.

Brings up a question - Does Russia have any American jets it uses for training like this?

+2 ...

Of the two pilots killed, one a Lt. General. Heard he was advised not to fly, pulled rank, flew anyhow. Uh oh.

I notice in the last paragraph of the linked article his call sign was Bandit 39. I've always associated the Bandit call sign with the F-117, but perhaps all the Air Force black ops use it.

We flew against the 4477 guys before we went on cruise in ‘86. Very professional guys and very good classroom instructors. We staged out of NAS Fallon and some of the Navy guys that flew with them gave us some lectures about what to expect…1V1 tactics that worked and those that didn’t.

I had fought VF-43 aggressors at NAS Oceana and Key West many times but talking with guys that actually had experience and time in the airframes was just different. The F-5, A-4 and A-4 Super Foxes and Kfirs that I had fought were good simulators but it’s not the same as seeing a REAL Mig across the circle from you.

At that time in the Tomcat, we were having lots of failures of the torque tubes that operated the leading edge maneuvering slats. That made a big difference in slow speed maneuvering and instantaneous turn rate/radius. We decided to go “worst case” and disable them by pulling the slats circuit breaker because that might be what we’d have to do later on cruise. We also decided to fight with two tanks, again for a worst case scenario.

All the JOs were really bummed because they didn’t want to get their butts kicked against the Migs, especially the Mig 21.

So I got together with my wingman and some others that would listen to an old F-4 geezer and did some chalk talk, what ifs, etc. I tried to get across that if you got “in the phone booth” and a slow speed fight with a 21, he would probably have your lunch.

I tried to get them to think energy management vs instantaneous turn rate/radius….what we had called the “rate fight” and the “step fight” in the Phantom. Keeping your knots up with a good sustained turn rate, forcing the bogey to deplete his speed and THEN using the instantaneous turn to get a valid shot.

Since we had a lot of gas compared to either of the two Migs, the plan was that the 4477 would launch a Fishbed when we got on station NW of Tonapah. Then the wingman would orbit overhead and while the first a/c could get two engagements. After that the wingman could get a couple of setups.

The next morning I had the first range time for our squadron with a Mig 21. On the first engagement I used the energy/rate fight we used to do in the Phantom. Not a problem and had a good shot after a couple of turns. The next fight I used a step fight and it worked as advertised too.

Then my wingman set up for his two fights and he tried to fight like you would with a slick jet with no tanks with predictable results. He lost them both.

When we debriefed ovr the phone with the aggressor pilot, the first thing he asked was, “did you fly F-4s?” When I responded with “yeah, almost 1100 hours”. He said, “I thought so, I’ve seen those tactics before.” 😁

In debriefing with my wingman, he said, “that was amazing to watch, it looked just like the moves you drew on the board.”

I asked, “OK, what happened on yours?”

“Well, I got a few angles on him and I thought I could out turn him. So I went for it and the next thing I knew, it turned into a knife fight.” 😊 It took a lot, but I didn’t say, “I told you so…”

The Flogger was really no contest if he turned, but we also got to see how quickly he could get away if they did a head on pass. By the time we got turned the 23 was out of range. That reminded me of the Kfirs that VF-43 at Oceana had.

The biggest takeaway for me was how teeny, tiny both the Mig 21 and Mig 23 were.

Very cool story!

Thank you for sharing the article. Well worth your time.