PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - US fighter jet 'in mid-air duel with Russian plane above Area 51'
Old 25th Jan 2017, 19:58
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Airbubba
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Rockytop, Tennessee, USA
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The link above takes you to a generic search page for the FOIA releases, here's possibly one of the documents, dated May 12, 1965:

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...00180001-5.pdf

Do you have direct links to the documents you've found?

Hopefully Bevo and others will be writing their books when some of their work is declassified. If it ever is...

The Red Eagles are depicted as a bunch of talented renegades with loose military discipline prior to George Gennin's attempt to clean things up. Small units tend to have a lot of personality in my experience. In the civilian world the Pan Am Berlin base was that way with Chicken Man, Elke, and like the Red Eagles, a guy named Weird Harold.

This excerpt from Steve Davies' book comments on the allegedly fractious relationship between the Red Eagles and the Red Hats:

At various times in the Red Eagles’ history, the squadron worked closely with AFSC’s 6513th TS, Red Hats, and its test pilots at Edwards AFB to conduct testing that fell outside of CONSTANT PEG’s original remit. “The airplanes were used not only to validate tactics, but also to do initial tests,” Matheny explained. Some 4477th TES commanders disliked such collaborative efforts, perhaps because they had little say in the matter and because the assets and their pilots were sometimes sequestered by Systems Command, but most probably because they took exposures away from the TAF – the frontline squadrons. However, these tests were usually of great value. Sometimes, AFSC wanted more, and “borrowed” assets from the 4477th TES when it needed them.

White recalled that Gen Fischer particularly disliked having to share the assets with the Red Hats. “He hated them with a passion. Several times, the only reason we did testing with them was because we were ordered to do it by HQ.” Whether Bond’s mishap had influenced Fischer’s view is not clear, but White said this: “He thought that they were unprofessional, that their facilities were shabby, and that they didn’t go by normal maintenance standards or practices.
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