| Would someone explain to me what use a fleet of fighter aircraft serves while buried underground?
This time he would bury the damned jets before he'd allow the air force to take off in them. |
About the same use as sending your air force to another country. Preserving it to fight another day.
Saddam honestly believed that he could wait us out.
| Would someone explain to me what use a fleet of fighter aircraft serves while buried underground?
This time he would bury the damned jets before he'd allow the air force to take off in them. |
Some were buried, while others were concealed in buildings and under camouflage netting.
Although with inspectors about, if you had used some of them in biochemical weapons tests, as Iraq did with modified Mirage jets years ago, it might be worthwhile to bury the evidence.
Iraqi jets wouldn't serve any use against the US aloft anyway. Iraq couldn't even scavenge them for spare parts if they were flying or on the surface in a conflict with the US like the first Gulf War.
Or some Iraqi bureaucrat ordered the planes to be hidden - "bury those planes so the US can never find them!", and some Iraqis, ever fearful of showing initiative, took the order literally and without question.
Or the people on site there thought it the best way to keep the area from getting bombed.
Remember in the first Gulf War how Saddam sent his aircraft to Iran to keep them safe? Well, what if that wasn't Saddam? What if it was a pre-arranged mass mutiny by air force officers who bugged out on him and flew to Iran for asylum, offering their fighter jets in exchange?