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

Story in the Daily Mirror 'US fighter jet in mid-air duel with Russian plane above Area 51' - true or false?
See here:
US fighter jet 'in mid-air duel with Russian plane above Area 51' sparking fears America is preparing for war - Mirror Online

True, see here:

Groom Lake Su-27 ? FighterControl ? Home to the Military Aviation Enthusiast

They bought 2 x SU-27s from the Ukraine in mid-2009. Widely reported in the aviation press at the time.

TVM Chaps.
Interesting nevertheless.

Nothing new, they've been doing it for over 50 years:

http://images.gr-assets.com/books/13...9l/3683199.jpg

Excellent book. Recommended.

" A terrifying sign that America could be preparing for war with Moscow"...
Gotta love the media.

Yep, more journo bollocks . . . .

Concur, a great read for anyone interested in the subject. Much of the focus is on the Red Eagles flying the MiGs at Tonopah (next door to Area 51/Groom lake proper) in the 1970's to the 1990's. Exposed scores of pilots to the MiG 17, 21 and 23. I found the parts on the MiG-23 especially interesting with pilots swearing it was trying to kill them every time....


Touches a bit on the earlier MiG programs at Groom lake. I hope Mr. Davies or someone else can do a companion piece on the evaluation side at Groom- the Red Hats. Would love more technical detail on how the maintainers kept them going, how the pilots got used to them, etc.

Much older types than in the OP, but these PDFs are worth a look if you've not seen them before:

Have Doughnut - Tactical Evaluation (MiG 21 Fishbed F) (22Mb file)

Also these sets of slides, hosted at George Washington University:

HAVE DRILL/HAVE FERRY - Exploitation of the Soviet MiG 17F

HAVE DOUGHNUT - Tactical Evaluation

Project HAVE DOUGHNUT - Exploitation of the MiG 21

The GWU archive from which those are taken is a fascinating place to browse further. An easy way is to change the last digit in the filename.

This is a rather intriguing one, apparently dated 1980. "Dobrynin" is presumably Anatoly Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the US from 1962-1986.

I agree. And apparently it did kill Lieutenant General Bobby Bond in 1984 and Captain Mark Postai 1982 according to Davies' book.

From Wikipedia, quoting from Davies:

Colonel Gail Peck's America’s Secret MiG Squadron: The Red Eagles of Project CONSTANT PEG is also a very good read about the Red Eagles.

Those were two-seaters. The Su-27 in the images is a single-seater. The sightings of Su-27s at Groom Lake go back to 2003. The claim is that at least two single seat Belorussian Su-27s were obtained during 1995.

Some footage from Groom Lake during 2003. You can see the unmistakable topside of an Su-27 from 1:07. Filmed from Tikaboo Peak.

Doubtless one of the Ukrainian purchases that were well documented back in 2009. But apparently dogfighting doesn't matter any more in Gen 5 so these must just be those poor Gen 4 guys :hmm:

Some interesting anecdotes from those early days of the Red Eagles. Any attempt to fight slow and in the horizontal against the MiG-17 would result in a loss, this included one fight against a seasoned F-14 crew. The early MiG-21 with the austere radar fit (low weight) retained nose authority at a mind boggling 70 knots and one pilot would delight in slowing to that speed, letting his opponent overshoot and then he would pull the nose up for a simulated Atoll shot. Compared to its contemporaries the MiG-21 was practically maintenance free - check the fluids, push the starter button, and away it went. USAF crews marveled at its availability rates. The early MiG-23 was regarded as a killer - of its own pilots. The engine was susceptible to all kinds of internal and external damage under g loading, and was capable of breaking away from its restraints. There were also some serious controlability issues causing many unintentional departures from controlled flight. The aircraft's acceleration was however stellar, and to universal amazement it was demonstrated to every pilot who flew against it (pity they never got hold of an MLD variant - that would have been interesting). I vaguely recall one story where a pilot exceeded Mach 2 and retarded the throttle, only to see the speed increase - something about a control kicking in that was designed to prevent engine damage by maintaining fuel flow if the pilot pulled back on the throttle too quickly. I seem to recall M=2.3 being mentioned. Maintenance Chiefs who could source or fabricate spare parts become somewhat god like and on one occasion one of their number was relieved from duty when his ego got the better of him. Opponent pilots were not told of what to expect when they flew out to the Tonopah area, and were amazed when they saw a real MiG coming at them. The general who was killed on a MiG-23 flight was responsible for his own demise and the loss of an aircraft regarded as a national security asset. As I recall there was little sympathy from the squadron for a General in his 60s taking a valuable jet on a high speed joy ride. I vaguely seem to recall something about his helmet being caught in the slipstream during ejection at Mach 2 when he lost control of the aircraft. Not pretty.

All from recollection - I really need to read it again.

Did the West ever get to test the MiG-19? We seemed to get the chance to evaluate virtually every other type of Soviet fighter.

Please forgive an intrusion from the civil side.

There were actually two USAF units that operated Soviet fighters. From what has been released publicly, it appears that the 4477th Test & Evaluation Squadron "Red Eagles" operated the MiG-17/21/23 from Tonopah.

The 6513th Test Squadron "Red Hats" appear to have also operated the same types from Groom Lake, but this unit was, and remains, deep black. There are rumours that this unit may have operated one of the early Sukhoi's (Su-7/9/11) but nothing confirmed. Nothing mentioned about the MiG-19.

The 6513th TS eventually became the 413th Flight Test Squadron, who appear to be solely involved in testing for the AFSOC fleet.

The unit designation for whoever is currently using MiG-29's and Su-27's is not known, although they are rumoured to be Detachment 2, 57th Wing or Det.3 53rd Test & Evaluation Group but this has never been confirmed officially and may be folklore rather than fact.

I don't believe the MiG-19 was ever evaluated in spite of its huge popularity with the Chinese. I think the MiG-21 was so close on its heels and such a capability step that the 19 was discounted.

I have had an air force veteran tell me to my face that the Russians were fascinated with the Shenyang F-6 copy of the 19 because the Chinese were able to design it with replaceable engines, he honestly believed that the Russians built the original MiG-19 with fixed engines, and that an engine fault on the delivery flight meant instant disposal. He was a pilot too. :rolleyes:

Can't remember where I read it (probably here) but the F-117 guys were doing night shifts, the guys flying the Eastern kit were doing days and neither knew what the other was doing. Until they were allowed to have a party together...

Just to put a real spanner in the works for you. There is a privately operated two seat "warbird" Su-27 in the US. YouTube is your friend...

DaveW - that stealth in Kiev thing is bizarre, though it reads more like a practical joke than anything.

The book discussed here talked about the rivalry the two groups had. By nature of the operations they had sleep cycles 180 from one another. The MiG pilots would boom the airport while the 117 pilots were trying to sleep, while the 117 guys would do whatever they could to wake the MiG boys. Per the book, they were read in on each others programs, not a casual meeting at a party.

The Area 51 File: Secret Aircraft and Soviet MiGs

"We didn?t know what 90 percent of the switches did" | Ares

".....Some details of the program were declassified in 2006. It was codenamed Constant Peg, Constant after the callsign of Maj Gen Hoyt Vandenberg Jr and Peg being the wife of Col Gail Peck, another of its founders.......

Recently retired as the USAF's director of test and evaluation, Manclark gave an hour-long extempore talk at the Air Force Association this week. ("The computer puked on my slides.") From beginning to end you could have heard a pin drop in the audience. Here are a few of his comments: "In 1985 we had 26 MiGs -- MiG-21s and MiG-23s. We had had MiG-17s originally but phased them out early, and by the end of the program we still had more MiG-21s than anything else.....

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

"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.

"It was fun to fly. You could see out pretty well. The limitations included the throttle – there were two rpm gauges, and if you got them too far apart, and to 80 percent rpm, it would take you 17 seconds to get military power. When you flew it a long time you found a little notch that was there to remind you not to do that.

"The A/B would not light until you were at 100 percent. But it opened the nozzle immediately, so it killed all your thrust.

"The '21 had maneuver flaps and would depart on you if you did not put them down below 250 knots. It had two buttons – down and up. If you pushed the wrong one, it would depart.

"It was a great aircraft to fight if you wanted to fight slow – maybe not against an F-18. You’re at 120 knots and still pointing at him and all he’s looking at is your nose… you get down to 80 knots, dump the nose, go to 120 and from 30 deg nose low to 40 deg nose high and you didn’t go up, but the other guy goes 'holy smokes, here he comes'." Evasive action against this deceptive maneuver often put the unwary student inside the MiG-21's weapon envelope.

"Later we got newer MiG-21s and retired the old ones. The reason was that in the morning, you’d fly an airplane where, if you pulled the handle between your legs it ejects you, and in the afternoon if you pulled the handle in the same place it undid your harness." (Manclark did not say so, but a photo of one of the new jets showed that it was a Chinese J-7, with the early MiG-21F nose and two-piece canopy.)

No such affection was earned by the MiG-21's brutish follow-on. "The MiG-23 was a nightmare, maintenance was a nightmare. The guys hated flying it, and we checked people out when they had 3-5 months left.

"We had eight MiG-23s, two of them the air-to-ground version [MiG-23BN]. At high AOA (angle of attack) they were not as stable as the radar nose types.

"It would accelerate until it blew up. The limit was 720-710 knots, but guys would look down inside and see they were going 850-880.

"Everyone who flew it spun it at least once. You’d be in a separation maneuver at 1.4 and the nose would start searching from side to side. The stab-aug was terrible – although it was faster than anything we had, you weren’t ever comfortable.

"At Red Flag in the 1970s we were told that the MiG-23 would sweep its wings [forward] and kill you. Ron Iverson [4477th operations officer 1975-79, retired as a Lt Gen] flew one of the first ones. He said, “don’t worry about it -- most of the time it’s trying to kill me”.

Overall, the operation was hazardous. Tactical Air Command "asked us for our accident rate. TAC average was three to four major accidents per 100,000 hours, Five to six was a concern. We had a rate of 100/100,000, and that wasn’t counting all of them. We spun one and we never flew it again, because you got a fire light every time you started it.".......

Perhaps ironically, the MiG's were used as cover for the even more secret F-117's. According to Davies' book the F-117 Bandit numbers originated with the Red Eagles' callsign:

After General Bond's MiG-23 mishap rumors quickly spread that he may have crashed a stealth test aircraft on the Nevada Range. This was a little too close to the truth since he had apparently taken a couple of YF-117A flights earlier at Groom Lake. Within days, details of the MiG story were leaked to the press to tamp down speculation that might expose the F-117's.

From a New York Times article:

GENERAL KILLED IN NEVADA CRASH FLEW SOVIET JET - NYTimes.com