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Modern aces
Associate asked interesting question. Is there any kind of listing of "modern" jet aces? And are any of those in service today? I'd guess best bet are the Israelis. Elsewhere some are from Vietnam (US, Vietnam, Russian?) and what else? There was air to air fighting at Eritrean-Etiopian war but I'd dare to guess that total losses can be counted with one hand? I'd limit the list to piloted aircraft also (no missiles, drones or choppers). jok |
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Associate asked interesting question.
Is there any kind of listing of "modern" jet aces? And are any of those in service today? I'd guess best bet are the Israelis. Elsewhere some are from Vietnam (US, Vietnam, Russian?) and what else? jok There are several websites and a number of books. The Israelis have over 35 pilots who qualify as ace with scores from 5 to 17. There last ace probably qualfied in the early 1980's. Some of them are certainly still in the reserves if not active duty. Giora Even who scored 17 was still flying reserve fighter missions in the F-16 in his late 50s just a few years ago. There are apparently quite a number of aces in Iran from the war against Iraq. I am not sure how historians or other experts greet their claims which are apparently only recently known in the west. The US had two pilot aces in Vietnam, one Navy and one Air Force each claiming five and three Weapons Officers two Air Force and one Navy. As important as the rear seater is in a two seat fighter aircraft there is to me something a little disengenuous about crediting them as aces. For example both Navy aces flew together as a team. To compare their claims at first glance it seems they downed ten aircraft together and there is a photo of thier aircraft with ten victory markings but in fact together they only destroyed five. Of the Air Forces Weapons Officer aces one scored four with the one pilot ace. The Vietnamese had at least a dozen aces and maybe more. The Vietnamese did include drones in thier victory claims. At least one Vietnamese ace has had his 7 claims studied and there is a corresponding American loss for every claim. I don't think there is a valid claim for a fighter ace since the early 1980s. For Desert Storm and the campaigns over the Balkans the highest total appears to be 3. For the Fleet Air Arm in the Falklands I think the highest score was 4. One last area is the Peruvian aerial drug smuggling interdiction campaign where dozens of aircraft have been shot down. I hardly think this qualifies as air combat though. John Dupre' |
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(JDupre5762) wrote in
: One last area is the Peruvian aerial drug smuggling interdiction campaign where dozens of aircraft have been shot down. I hardly think this qualifies as air combat though. An interesting note on that: http://lacc.fiu.edu/PUBLICATIONS_res...vol6num2/menze l.html "A two year tally by early 1992 indicated that some 124 aircraft had been reported as shot down (out of an estimated total of some 2,000 flights) and things were thought to be going reasonably well until May 1992, when the Peruvian Air Force shot down one of SOUTHCOM's C-130s on a clandestine reconnaissance mission." Regards... |
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The US had two pilot aces in Vietnam, one Navy and one Air Force each
claiming five and three Weapons Officers two Air Force and one Navy. As important as the rear seater is in a two seat fighter aircraft there is to me something a little disengenuous about crediting them as aces. For example both Navy aces flew together as a team. To compare their claims at first glance it seems they downed ten aircraft together and there is a photo of thier aircraft with ten victory markings but in fact together they only destroyed five. Well, the RIO gets the same grave or prison cell if you screw up. It seems only fair he shares the credit for the kills. A good RIO is worth his weight in gold. A fair to middlin' one isn't worth 300 pounds of JP. I've experienced both. I've never seen a publicity shot of the Cunningham/Driscoll jet with ten kills displayed, just the five. R / John |
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Howdy John.
I've never seen a publicity shot of the Cunningham/Driscoll jet with ten kills displayed, just the five. neither have I - if it was painted that way, chances are that it was for a one-time photo op. Cunningham's jet is portrayed in flight at the San Diego Aerospace Museum, trailing a suspended MiG 17 in NVN colors - Duke's bird is painted with five stars, just the way I have seen in VN air war books. v/r Gordon ====(A+C==== USN SAR Donate your memories - write a note on the back and send your old photos to a reputable museum, don't take them with you when you're gone. |
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Jukka O. Kauppinen wrote in
message ... Associate asked interesting question. Is there any kind of listing of "modern" jet aces? And are any of those in service today? I'd guess best bet are the Israelis. Elsewhere some are from Vietnam (US, Vietnam, Russian?) and what else? There was air to air fighting at Eritrean-Etiopian war but I'd dare to guess that total losses can be counted with one hand? I'd limit the list to piloted aircraft also (no missiles, drones or choppers). jok Perhaps the Iranians and Iraqis may have generated some high-scoring pilots? There's a recent Osprey book about Iranian F4 units but I haven't looked at it in detail. John --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.556 / Virus Database: 348 - Release Date: 26/12/03 |
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"John Walker" wrote: Jukka O. Kauppinen wrote in message ... Associate asked interesting question. Is there any kind of listing of "modern" jet aces? And are any of those in service today? I'd guess best bet are the Israelis. Elsewhere some are from Vietnam (US, Vietnam, Russian?) and what else? There was air to air fighting at Eritrean-Etiopian war but I'd dare to guess that total losses can be counted with one hand? I'd limit the list to piloted aircraft also (no missiles, drones or choppers). jok Perhaps the Iranians and Iraqis may have generated some high-scoring pilots? There's a recent Osprey book about Iranian F4 units but I haven't looked at it in detail. John --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.556 / Virus Database: 348 - Release Date: 26/12/03 I have the Osprey book. On ACIG.org it has a list of IRIAF kills: an A. Hoda of the IRIAF's 61st TFW in an F-4E scored five kills; but it took the man eight years to do it. Another pilot, J. Zandi, scored five kills as an F-14 pilot with 81st TFW (3x Mirage F-1, two MiG-23), over the eight-year war. Perhaps others made ace, but still a lot of gaps in info. Posted via www.My-Newsgroups.com - web to news gateway for usenet access! |
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"Jukka O. Kauppinen" wrote in message ... Associate asked interesting question. Is there any kind of listing of "modern" jet aces? And are any of those in service today? I'd guess best bet are the Israelis. Elsewhere some are from Vietnam (US, Vietnam, Russian?) and what else? The Israelis should have the leading ace of the last 30-35 years, Giora Epstein, with 17 confirmed kills, as well as several additional jocks with more than 8 or 10 kills to their credit. The leading ace of the last 24 years was (then) Maj. Jalal Zandi, IRIAF, an F-14 pilot with 8 confirmed and three (or four) probables to his credit, scored between 1980 and 1988 (Zandi rose to the rank of Lt.Gen., before dying of "heart problems", two years back). Although many infos are still missing, so far at least ten Iranian aces from the war with Iraq were identified, most of which scored between 6 and 9 kills. A single Iraqi (MiG-21 and MiG-25-pilot) with five confirmed and up to eight "probables" (i.e. certainly unconfirmable) kills is known too (as well as approx a dozen of other Iraqi pilots with everything between two and four kills), but it appears at least one of his "kills" was actually an Algerian biz-jet. More infos about Iranian F-14-kills will become available in the book "Iranian F-14 Units in Combat", which is to follow in Osprey's "Combat Aircraft" series, sometimes later this year. Officially, the top Iranian ace of that war - Lt. Gen. Abbas Baba'ie - however, should have "scored" up to 32 kills. The "problem" in his case is that he never qualified as a pilot of even an F-5 but was always sitting in the back, controlling pilots considered "disloyal" by the regime in Tehran, and taking care these to obey Mullah's orders. Aside from this, between 1979 and 1986 he was presiding different sorts of courts responsible for executions of over 300 Iranian officers and pilots: consequently, the surviving IRIAF officers and pilots do not want even to hear his name, nor to think about talking about him or crediting him for anything (except the deaths of so many of Iranian pilots). Eventually, Baba'ie might have indeed been there when 32 different kills were scored by (qualified) IRIAF F-14- and F-4-pilots (after all, the IRIAF scored over 450 air-to-air kills against Iraqis), but there are more than "few serious doubts" about his ability to help them at all - and thus be credited for any of the kills in question. There was air to air fighting at Eritrean-Etiopian war but I'd dare to guess that total losses can be counted with one hand? Actually not: there was a total of approx a dozen of air-to-air combats, with both sides losing planes. It was a fairly vivid air war with serious contest for air superiority. More infos are now available in the book "African MiGs", see he http://www.acig.org/afmig/ Tom Cooper Co-Author: Iran-Iraq War in the Air, 1980-1988: http://www.acig.org/pg1/content.php Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat http://www.ospreypublishing.com/titl...hp/title=S6585 Arab MiG-19 & MiG-21 Units in Combat http://www.ospreypublishing.com/titl...=S6550~ser=COM |
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