"Nele_VII" wrote in message
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Tom Cooper wrote in message ...

wrote in message
.. .
who cares,

As I said read Janes, they have it all,

As a matter of fact, if at all, the Jane's has the least useful
information
about the Iranian Air Force: their recently published book of "World Air
Forces" is very poor to this topic.

To keep the long story short: no, it wasn't the "Irangate" nor Oliver
North,
but many other factors which kept the Iranian F-14-fleet afloat, in
working
order, and extremely useful and dangerous. Approx 60 airframes remain
serviceable: while a number is circled through storage, so to better
distribute the number of hours flown per airframe, and also always have
an
attrition reserve in peace, the IACI (Iranian Aircraft Industries) and
other
Iranian companies, as well as the so-called "Self-Sufficiency Jihad Team"
of
the IRIAF - meanwhile developed the capability to produce no less but 95%
of
spare parts for their Tomcats. Consequently, the fleet not only massively
participated in the IPGW against Iraq (scoring at least 130 kills against
Iraqi MiG-21/23/25s, Mirage F.1EQs, Su-20/22s, and Tu-22s), but is still
very much active and operational.

Hm. How was it from Iraqi side? I've read Somewhere that Mig 21Bis and
MiGs-23ML(?) took heavy toll of Iranian AF (mainly F-5s and F-4s, but also
got some F-14 in a dogfight).

98% of the Iraqi (and corresponding Western) claims about kills against
Iranian F-14s are wrong. Plain wrong. Nothing else. If we were to trust the
Iraqi claims, their fighters shot down something like 150 Iranian Tomcats
during the war alone. The problem with Western claims is only that the
FBIS - on which reporting most of the Western claims for Iraqi F-14-kills
are based - haven't forwarded all of the Iraqi claims....

In fact no Iraqi MiG-21s or MiG-23s ever scored a kill against any F-14. The
closest either type came to doing this was in early October 1980, when
pieces of exploding MiG-21 hit the Tomcat that shot it down (by a
Sidewinder), disabled the left engine and almost dismembered the left wing
(the F-14A in question was safely recovered, nevertheless, and later
repaired...). In another case several rounds 23mm from a MiG-23BN hit the
tail of an F-14A: that Tomcat was safely recovered too.

On the contrary, both types - regardless the version (and this includes
Soviet-flown MiG-27s) - were shot down in large numbers by IRIAF F-14s, and
by 1984 were not playing any important role in air-to-air war any more (i.e.
both were used almost exclusively for air-to-ground tasks).


As a matter of fact, just last year the Iranians started production of a
reverse-engineered AIM-54, which even the USN considers equal to its
latest
AIM-54Cs.

Hmm... how it was effective against 3m head-on RCS of MiG-21? During tests
of AIM-54A, one -missed- the drone because its 5m-RCS reflector failed...

No problem either, and regardles the range. The second kill scored by AIM-54
ever was against an Iraqi MiG-21RF, escorted by two MiG-23MS. The Phoenix
blew the 21 after travelling over 60kms...(the first kill was against a
MiG-23MS, on 13 September 1980). The shortest known range at which an AIM-54
destroyed the MiG-21 was only some 24km or so (close enough for the crew to
clearly see the giant fireball, caused by the fuel and bombs of the MiG).

In combat the problem with the AIM-54A was not the RCS of the target
(remember that these were created to down cruise missiles too), but rather
the reliability of the fusing: quite a few hit their target without the
detonation of the warhead. In the case of the MiG-21s this would make no
difference (;-))), but in three cases where MiG-25s were hit, only parts of
the fin and horizontal stabilizers were torn away (which did not make much
of a difference: two of these three Foxbats were lost nevertheless).

Tom Cooper
Co-Author:
Iran-Iraq War in the Air, 1980-1988:
http://www.acig.org/pg1/content.php
and,
Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat:
http://www.osprey-publishing.co.uk/t...hp/title=S6585