Free Republic

A brief paragraph in the mountain of Wikileaks documents shed a sliver of light on what officials claim is a viscious and coldly efficient Iranian campaign of revenge on Iraqi air force pilots who bombed Iran during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Many former Iraqi fighter pilots who flew sorties against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war were now on Iran's hit list (NOTE: According to [Name removed], Iran had already assassinated 180 Iraqi pilots. END NOTE)," the Dec. 14, 2009 confidential U.S. cable stated. The systematic elimination of Iraqi air force pilots by Iran was a little noticed vendetta...

Marcel Albert, who became one of the leading French fighter pilots of World War II, flying Soviet-built planes in duels with German aircraft on the Eastern front, died Monday in Harlingen, Tex. He was 92. His death, at a nursing home, was announced by France’s Order of the Liberation, founded by Gen. Charles de Gaulle during the war. The cause was complications of cancer, his nephew Jean Mavinger told The Associated Press in Paris. Mr. Albert was among four pilots of the Free French’s Normandie-Niémen fighter unit to be decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union, receiving the citation...

Imagine flying a fighter jet at a speed of sound and reaching out for your radio switch only to discover that the control you’ve hit unexpectedly triggers your speed brake. That points to just one of the many differences pilots in the 120th Fighter Wing have had to ask their bodies to memorize as they’ve switched from one aircraft to another over the last year and a half. “It’s a game of milliseconds and split decisions that you have to make up there,” said Maj. Matt Ohman. “We can fly the plane in relatively few hours, but to be able...

The U.S. Air Force has a morale problem with its combat pilots. The issue is lack of action for the pilots. That, plus the increased use of unmanned aircraft, and the very real prospect that the age of the manned combat aircraft may be coming to an end. This is made worse with hundreds of fighter pilots being assigned to operating Predator and Reaper UAVs. This was not popular duty, even though the pilots still draw flight pay. It is tedious work, although the UAV operators often saw more combat action than they did when piloting F-16s or F-15s. The...

Business is a dogfight. Your job as a leader: Outmaneuver the competition, respond decisively to fast-changing conditions, and defeat your rivals. That's why the OODA loop, the brainchild of "40 Second" Boyd, an unconventional fighter pilot, is one of today's most important ideas in battle or in business. The F-16 fighter jet is, as supersonic military aircraft go, a modest machine. It measures just 49 feet long and 31 feet wide from wingtip to missile-capped wingtip, and it weighs about half as much as its U.S. Air Force predecessor, the F-15. With a top speed of 1,350 MPH, it lags...

The Air Force is planning to give the A-10 Warthog an ignominious homecoming from the Persian Gulf. In early April, Maj. Gen. David Deptula of the Air Combat Command ordered a subordinate to draft a memo justifying the decommissioning of the A-10 fleet. The remaining eight active duty A-10 squadrons (in 1991, the number was 18) could be mothballed as early as 2004. This is a serious mistake. The A-10 was one of the most effective, lethal and feared weapons of the Iraqi war. Its absence will put troops on the battlefield in grave danger. The decision to take this...

COLONEL DON CONROY’S EULOGY by his son, Pat Conroy. The children of fighter pilots tell different stories than other kids do. None of our fathers can write a will or sell a life insurance policy or fill out a prescription or administer a flu shot or explain what a poet meant. We tell of fathers who land on aircraft carriers at pitch-black night with the wind howling out of the China Sea. Our fathers wiped out aircraft batteries in the Philippines and set Japanese soldiers on fire when they made the mistake of trying to overwhelm our troops on the...