US fighter jet 'in mid-air duel with Russian plane above Area 51'

[Ewan Whosearmy]

The US is currently operating at least two foreign fast jet types - MiG-29 and Su-27. They have been doing so for quite some time.

The assets are owned by the Air Force Flight Test Centre, AFMC, and have been thoroughly exploited by the Red Hats. Ongoing tactical exploitation - and exposure for guys going through the Weapons School and Aggressor programmes - is conducted by Det 3, 53d Wing. The RAF has a pretty good relationship with both of these FME (foreign military exploitation) units...

It's amusing that the mainstream media are making such a big deal out of this, but hardly surprising.

[India Four Two]

On the MiG-21: "It had no gas – a point-defense fighter.

About five years ago, I was waiting for a flight from Hanoi to Saigon, when ATC shut down civil flights and six VNAF Mig-21s launched. A spectacular sight.

The airport remained closed and 20 minutes later, all the Migs returned! Point defence indeed.

Incidentally, Hanoi Nội Bài is the civil side of what was the Phúc Yên airbase during the war. It was a frequent target of US strikes and the airfield is surrounded by bomb craters, which the resourceful locals filled with water and turned into fish ponds. Just to the north of the airfield is the infamous Thud Ridge.

[MACH2NUMBER]

ABUBBA,
I was in training at Luke AFB at that time and the official line taken on the accident was exactly as you describe.

[mr fish]

ON a related note...did any info reach the wider world regarding western types evaluated by the soviet union?
I heard a couple of F4s and F14s made their way there from iran in the 80s.

FISH.

[hoodie]

There was a previous PPRuNe thread on that a few years ago.

[Red Line Entry]

Have a look at the comments on the Mirror article. Quite refreshing, as almost all recognise it as a non-story and berate the Mirror for poor journalism!

[Bevo]

"We didn’t know what 90 percent of the switches did. We changed the ASI and parts of the oxygen system. We had one switch that we just labeled BOMB EXPLODE.

Well he is laying it on a bit thick. A certain “agency” provided flight manuals and maintenance manuals translated into English.

[West Coast]

Before or after they first started flying them?

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by Bevo

Well he is laying it on a bit thick. A certain “agency” provided flight manuals and maintenance manuals translated into English.

I get the impression that the flight and tech manuals were indeed very sparse in the beginning of the project and weren't really an emphasis item until Lt. Hugh Brown's fatal crash in 1979. After that mishap Col. Gail Peck was relieved as CO and the outfit was 'brought up to Air Force standards' in documentation and demeanor.

Here's more on the claims of little initial MiG documentation in excerpts from Col. Gail Peck's America's Secret MiG Squadron: The Red Eagles of Project CONSTANT PEG:

Initially, there were no real documents or flight manuals. We learned from other pilots that had flown the jets and by asking questions like, “What should I do in terms of an emergency procedure if this or that happens.” I am told that eventually flight manuals were written, but I have never seen them. Hopefully they will turn up and be put on display at the National Museum of the Air Force alongside other memorabilia from CONSTANT PEG.

So, just like the pilots, crew chiefs had to learn an aircraft unfamiliar to any of them. Even less so than the pilots, as maintenance manuals were almost absent and training, necessarily incomplete and informal, gave each individual nowhere near enough clues as to what his jet would do next. Couple this with a randomly available parts stock and you get a small idea of the weight of responsibility on the shoulders of the ones who strapped in our pilots. Imagine the feeling if their pilot didn’t come back.

They took old MiGs and turned them into airworthy aircraft. Everything in the cockpit was in Russian, the few manuals we had were in Russian and many parts were not available and had to be made from scratch. What they did was miraculous. I stand in awe of them.

The MiGs we flew came from another land. They were junk, scrap, wrecks, and derelicts when we got them, having been sat in a swamp or a desert and left to rot. We brought them back, and without any tech manuals they were fully restored after many months of hard work by the crew chiefs with the guidance of Bobby Ellis.

In the early 1980s the Red Eagles dealt with an office in the CIA that supplied us with technical manuals. Our CIA contacts were more on the operational side of the agency rather than the analytical side.

From Steve Davies' Red Eagles: Americas Secret MiGs:

“Trying to fly airplanes that had no original parts, no markings in the cockpit that you could read, no flight manual of how you could fly them” was tough, Oberle recalled. “We had to go through and teach ourselves all of this stuff.” There were some switches that they didn’t have to know – such as those of the SIRENA radar warning system that alerted the MiG pilot when he was being swept or tracked by an enemy radar, but for the most part it was in their best interests to know the aircraft as thoroughly as possible.

Geographically separated from Frick and the others for the time being, Morgenfeld worked on aspects of the program that required little interaction with the others. One such task was the creation of documentation, and in particular the creation of the first of many iterations of a flight manual for the MiG-21. As a template, he used an original, but “crude,” MiG-21 flight manual that had been translated into English by the Soviets for one of their customers. His focus was less on creating a document that would provide a complete step-by-step guide to flying and operating the MiG-21 – although the manual duly noted every switch in the cockpit and its function – and more about using his test pilot training to verify precisely “the basic numbers” of take-off, landing, and performance so that the MiG could be flown safely.

[West Coast]

Except from the book discusses a Jag pilot with what sounded like an aircraft issue landing at Tonopah and subsequently wrapping the cute around one of the mains. Anyone here fess up to being the guy or knowing who he is?

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by West Coast

Except from the book discusses a Jag pilot with what sounded like an aircraft issue landing at Tonopah and subsequently wrapping the cute around one of the mains. Anyone here fess up to being the guy or knowing who he is?

I can't find any mention of the Jaguar in Davies' book but Col. Peck says it was from No. 54 Squadron and there is a small picture of the plane with the checkerboard and rampant lion markings. I can't see the aircraft number, it seems to be discreetly (or mercifully ) hidden behind the wing in the photo.

Maintenance guy Don Lyon tells the story (now, this is no s**t...):

When the Royal Air Force Jaguar fighter aircraft landed without notice or clearance at Tonopah, the pilot deployed his drag ’chute to slow the jet. As he attempted to turn off the runway, the crosswind changed direction into a quartering tail wind and the ’chute blew through 90 degrees and wrapped itself around the left main landing gear. The pilot didn’t know this had happened, however. We quickly drove out to the Jaguar, frantically waving at him to stop. Bill and I quickly cut the drag ’chute into several pieces to extract it from the wheels, tires, and brakes. We then guided the pilot to a parking spot outside the MiG compound and he shut the Jaguar down. When the pilot de-planed, I sliced the Jaguar patch off his flightsuit!

Security showed up immediately and essentially took the pilot into custody. He wasn’t the least bit upset and only wanted to get to a phone so he could talk to his unit at Nellis and tell them what had happened, and that he and the aircraft were secure.

I believe George Thomas was the security guy that “bagged the Brit.” Security then came into the compound and found “Obi Wan” Henderson in his office and reported that some guy had landed a funny looking airplane on their air base and was talking some kind of funny English! “Obi Wan” dealt with the issue, and the next day a couple of maintenance guys and a pilot showed up, fixed the aircraft and the jet was flown out. Neither the Brit pilot nor the maintainers saw anything unusual because all our “toys” were out of sight.

Over the years I've heard a familiar yarn about 'the time I wuz at Red Flag and wandered into Dreamland airspace'. 'Why, they debriefed me for two days and I had to quit the Air Force and become an airline pilot'. This is a variation on the old 'they fired me because I knew too much' (in my case it was usually the opposite ).

You can check the schedule of the Janet 737 flights to Tonopah here:

Flight Finder McCarran Intl (KLAS) - Tonopah Test Range (KTNX) FlightAware

As you can see some of the flights apparently land there, others go somewhere else.

Reminds me of this court dialog from one of Richard Lederer's books:

Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in New York?
A. I refuse to answer that question.

Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in Chicago?
A. I refuse to answer that question.

Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in Miami?
A. No.

[Bevo]

Initially, there were no real documents or flight manuals. We learned from other pilots that had flown the jets and by asking questions like, “What should I do in terms of an emergency procedure if this or that happens”.

Now who do you suppose those “other pilots” where and what documentation do you suppose they were using?

Geographically separated from Frick and the others for the time being, Morgenfeld worked on aspects of the program that required little interaction with the others. One such task was the creation of documentation, and in particular the creation of the first of many iterations of a flight manual for the MiG-21.

Now how do you suppose Tom Morgenfeld, who was assigned to VX-4 prior to his tour with the 4477th, was able to write the flight manuals without access to the aircraft. Perhaps he had access somewhere else.

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by Bevo

Now who do you suppose those “other pilots” where and what documentation do you suppose they were using?

Now how do you suppose Tom Morgenfeld, who was assigned to VX-4 prior to his tour with the 4477th, was able to write the flight manuals without access to the aircraft. Perhaps he had access somewhere else.

Are you alluding to the HAVE IDEA MiG-21 work Morgenfeld did at VX-4?

[99 Change Hands]

I worked with a pilot who said he took a jag into Tonapah, name of S**** L***. IIRC, he said he was held in a blacked-out caravan until road transport could arrive and it took a while to get a team up to recover the aircraft. The locals had had it to bits before the team arrived. He told me all this in 1983.

Ironically, on my next tour I worked with another jag pilot who was then posted to Tonapah on the F117.

[Ewan Whosearmy]

Airbubba

Bevo is alluding to the Red Hats (his bio states he was a commander of this squadron).

The stateside technical exploitation of the MiGs always preceded the tactical exploitation. So, when the Red Eagles (TAC) were formed, they hired their maintenance folks from the ranks of the Red Hats (Air Force Systems Command). Most of the Red Eagle initial cadre had already been checked out on the assets by the Red Hats prior to the formation of the 4477th TEF.

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by Ewan Whosearmy

Airbubba

Bevo is alluding to the Red Hats (his bio states he was a commander of this squadron).

And, I think he was at VX-4 as well...

I was TDY doing some early digital engineering work at the Naval Air Development Center in Warminister, PA when we got news of Hugh Brown's crash. We knew Lockheed was hiring for some black work out West and assumed the crash was somehow involved. One of the Have Blue prototypes crashed around the same time and for years I thought that this was probably Brown's mishap.

VX-4 had some great paint jobs on their F-4's back in the day including a couple with the Playboy bunny logo.

[West Coast]

Indeed, I remember some pretty snazzy paint jobs. I suspect DACOWITS took care of their bunny at the same time they axed VMAQ-2's rabbit ears and call sign.

[OMG Itz Fulovstarz]

Folks,

Re. some of the above comments concerning manuals etc. a quick check of released CIA documents showed many English language flight and maintenance manuals for the Mig-17, MiG-19 and MiG-21F.

What's interesting are the dates the CIA circulated them....

MiG-17 - 10th May 1965
MiG-19 - 15th January 1962(?) - last digit is blurred, but resembles a "2"
MiG-21F - 4th January 1963; further manual released 13th January 1967 - this latter version appears to be produced by the "Red Hats"

Link:-

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/

[Airbubba]

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.

[OMG Itz Fulovstarz]

Hi Mr. Airbubba,

Apologies, got distracted after typing Oxcart, Tagboard, Kedlock and Earning into the search box!

The link in my earlier post takes you to the initial search page, just type in whatever you're looking for in the search box and see what comes up..... which is quite surprising in the amount of material available.

The MiG-17 manual (English) is the one you have linked to.


MiG-17 manual (Russian):-

https:www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81-01043R004000110001-0.pdf

Mig-19 manual (English):-

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...00380001-8.pdf


Mig-21 Manual ( poss. "Red Hat" 1967 version) :-

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...00170001-4.pdf


Mig-21 manual (1963 English version):-

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingr...00070001-8.pdf

Hope these links work okay.

I wonder if they have anything about the 160th SOAR "re-allocating" a "Hind" back in the day......

As you say, I'm sure the really interesting stuff is yet to come?

All the best!