BUFDRVR wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:

Barnett yelled for his lieutenant to clean up his airplane and go
home. And, that's when Bill Ricks began to drink.


Thanks Ed, that gave me a good laugh. Now for a "Buffoonary" type combat tale.

snip

And just to show that even Israeli uberpilots can have finger trouble, the
following is from Shlomo Aloni's Osprey book "Israeli Mirage and Nesher aces", with
IAF ace Reuven Rozen recounting a mission he flew on 21 May 1969 with his 119
Squadron CO, Ran Ronen. Ronen was, by general consensus, the finest IAF Squadron
CO in the Six Day War as well as the IAF's second ace, and almost was chosen as IAF
CinC (rather than David Ivri):

"We had difficulty jettisoning our external tanks, for you had to be flying at
precisely 350 knots with the nose lifted, and no loading on the wings, otherwise
the seeker heads of the AAMs would fall off with the shock of the tanks coming
away. So he [Ronen] did it just fine and he ordered, 'Full power, ready to
jettison external fuel tanks, jettison external fuel tanks!' Suddenly, I saw his
AAMs launched straight ahead. I was amazed! He said nothing on the radio. Ran
then pushed the _right_ switch and jettisoned the external fuel tanks."

Rozen goes on to describe his kill, his third, and Aloni also says that Ronen got
his sixth with his cannon. At the time the loss of the missiles wasn't that big a
deal, as the IAF only had the R.530 (almost certainly not carried on this mission),
the near useless Shafrir I, 60 or so AIM-9Bs they'd bought from the US along with
the first F-4 batch, and a couple of dozen Atolls which they'd captured (along with
9 launchers) when they took Bir Gafgafa Airfield in Sinai during the '67 war.
Cannons were still the preferred and far more effective weapon, although the
Shafrir II entered service shortly thereafter and got its first kill in July, with
the AIM-9D also entering service the following year.

Guy