To: Ian Corrigible
'Course, not all of the Iranian Cobras rotted away. Seem to recall they claimed a 10:1 air-air record during the war with Iraq, claiming several dozen Hinds and Gazelles using TOW/M197, plus a handful of fast jets.
Based on my first hand experience I would assume if the figures are correct there were non-Iranian pilots at the controls. The Iranian pilots were trained to US Army standards. A US Army pilot would receive his wings after about 180 hours of training and then he would either be sent to an operational unit for further experience in the mission or possibly streamed into a training program on a specific aircraft.
The Iranian pilots most of which lacked high school graduation were subject to about two hundred hours of training. They would then receive two hundred hours of supervised solo and then be sent to an operational unit where they would receive another two hundred hours of instruction by a US Army pilot. Even at that point they lacked the skills of a freshly graduated US Army pilot.
It was for this reason that all of the AH-1Js were parked at the Isfahan airfield. I also based on conversations with Iranian fighter pilots feel that the Iranian helicopter pilots lacked the will to join in close combat. An Iranian Air Force F4 pilot lived in my apartment complex and he told me that in the war in Oman they would drop their bombs and fire their guns at 10,000 feet and return to Iran.
Iran also sent helicopters to Oman and in doing so they changed the tail numbers and did not log the operational time on them. When they returned to Iran the tail numbers were changed back and most were returned to the overhaul depot with bullet holes in them. All with no explanation to Bell Helicopter who was running the overhaul depot. When the Iranians saw the Bell personnel inspecting the bullet holes the Iranians cut the bullet holes out with a hole saw and in the process damaging the primary structure.
It was this mentality that led me to make my original statement about the AH-1Js rotting away in Isfahan.
