I wrote the above article in early January, just prior to the commencement of the Air War there. Interestingly, the Iraqi Air Force, for all its potential threat proved to be a bust. From the information I was able to gather, only during the first two weeks was there any attempt to engage coalition aircraft and these were not well coordinated resulting in some heavy losses. The utter loss of command and control caused by the attacking and jamming of their GCI and defense headquarters crippled intercept attempts. The pilots proved to be lacking in air combat techniques and suffered accordingly. Some Iraqi Mirage and MiG pilots did engage and maneuver with coalition jets getting shots and there are reports of night intercept attempts. They may have even been responsible for downing the AC-130 that we lost as well as one or more of the A- 6's. However, our pilot's reported clumsy Iraqi maneuvering in air combat, mistakes and many missiles fired out of parameters at them. A friend of mine in the Air Force who has buddies over there, reported MiG-29's had on two or more occasions fired radar missile's but immediately broke off failing to guide them all they way in. By the end of the second week of the air war, the Iraqi's ceased intercept attempts and started dispersing their aircraft. Shortly there after, well over a hundred of their best jets were flown to Iran. They conceded Air Supremacy to the coalition and as a consequence, the army in Kuwait was destroyed. Back to Table of Contents -- Air Power # 13 Back to Air Power List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1990 by J.D. Webster This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com