TomCooper كتب:
Aha, and it does not contain any of Iraqi claims that were known at that time?
those were not actual IrAF claims, just propaganda communiques from the Iraqi press from the war period obtained through FBIS archives?
Just for your information: even back as of 1998-2002, when that book was written, something like 300 Iraqi air-to-air claims used to be known. Including those for no less but 20 or so F-14 Tomcats. For example, it was known that the IrAF has got pilots who claimed 14 kills in the first two years of the war, only two of which were ever confirmed. But, you find it opportune to ignore this, because it suits you to declare that book for 'simply a collection of Iranian claims'?
'Fascinating'.
So Iraqi "kill claims have to be cross referenced to Iranian losses... was the same done vice versa for all Iranian kill claims?
Frankly speaking, Haider: what is 'coming out'?
Old Iraqi officers rejoining the military are publishing some works inside Iraq.
Some Iraqi officers outside Iraq publishing their memoirs.
Some US studies and interviews that you know already.
The IrAF archives were destroyed. They do not exist since late 2002. That's a matter of fact. The Pentagon team has got few bits from private archives (I discussed this issue with them, first hand, so no need to explain me anything else), and has got much more time and opportunity (and the Pentagon didn't let me into Iraq when there was still enough to save), and our team has got some parts. The few documents and reports we've got in total are barelly scratching the surface, and it's certain that nobody got 'everything'. Not few of the documents in question are strongly contradictive, especially in regards of numbers. They are obviously based on poor methods of research, at least poor or incomplete statistics, and often on little more but myths.
Do you have access to Iranian official archives?
Practically all of surviving ex-IrAF pilots and their relatives (regardless what degree) are as sillent as a grave. Unless one meets them personally, and has the opportunity to really 'press & milk' them, nothing is coming out but few blurred photos and videos. Well, sorry: I simply can't afford my travellign any more. I practically bankrupted myself searching for them.
sure. the purpose of the forum is to build up an archive (slowly) from Iraqi sources. Since I am working all the time, I haven't really paid any attention to this topic for many years!
And the internet is not making things any easier in this case. The few fading memories are rather of annecdotal quality, and have to be cross-examined 50 times in order to ascertain their validity. Curiously, most of people suddenly appearing on the internet, disappear before soon. And most of them can't even rember their C-in-Cs, not to talk about their units.
Often officers are afraid of revealing their names , units etc... some are on the Iraqi AF facebook page though.
Is it 'better' in regards of photos? Should I now think it's 'great' that there are such things like that CD with photos taken during different MiG-25RB-missions in the 1980s and early 1990s, or the one with ATLIS-videos of various Mirage-attacks? You seriously think they are telling the 'full story'? Think for a while: what are they telling at all?
just eye candy, but nice to have!
And, heaven: out of 12 CVs written by most distinguished IrAF pilots for Saddam in 2001-2002 period, only two ever became available. And even they have been lost, meanwhile.
The Iraqi "war college" is being reorganised and rebuilding their archives as we speak. What useful info they will contain.. nobody knows, but it will certainly open up more info regarding the war.
Every single person that was ever making me grandiose promises like, 'I'm going to tell you how it was', 'I'm going to provide documentation', 'I'm going to bring my photos/send them to you'... and whatever else, all of them 'disappeared'.
well, that is the nature of the internet... anyone can claim anything... but there are plenty of "real" people out there too. Just that many are still afraid to speak out about their military years (even in private discussion).
The situation is rather such that state of research and knowledge about the history of the IrAF is now poorer than that of research and knowledge about the Egyptian and Syrian air forces. Mind this: 12-14 years ago, it was the other way around.
Do you have an idea what I had to do in order to reconstruct the history of the IrAF in 1958-1973 period? Could I rely on anybody's recollections? Could I make use of any Iraqi documents?
Well wasn't Abdul Razaq of any use? (he was a very old man at the time though!). Sadly I knew one former hunter pilot who flew in the 1967 war who is now dead, and he never spoke much about his exploits. But my father in law knew him well though... I will ask him if he wants to talk to you (again, since he didn't want to a few years ago).
No. Farzad had to work himself for two weeks through the British archives, our Czech co-worker (you'll see the results of his work in Arab MiGs Volume 4, due out in two months) has to work himself through Czechoslovak archives since more than a year, and I have to work myself through all the other possible archives and other sources of reference.
its not easy finding (accurate) stuff about Iraq!
Do you think it would be any different in regards of the IrAF history for subsequent periods?
Yes, I think there is hope for getting much more insight into the iran-iraq war period and subsequent periods...
If your answer is positive, you're victim of your own illusions.
maybe
So, that's 'fiction'? Perhaps even 'science fiction'? It's a 'fiction' that the IRIAF flew a formation of two B747s and eight F-4E Phantoms over all of northern and western Iraq and attacked all three airfields of the H-3 complex - and that the IrAF did nothing to stop that operation? The Iranian aircraft were 'all stealth fighters'? Or they 'didn't matter'? Or what is your explanation?
And how many official IrAF documents about the damage caused by this attack can you show? 1? 5? 30? Or none at all?
As I told you, my father in law was based one H3 for over 6 years and he mentioned the attempted Iranian attack. The only notable thing he mentioned that the Air Defence Officer was executed or committed suicide for his failure to intercept. But the base itself was not damaged.
Is that my problem? Did I fail to buy such fighters?
no. But as a "neutral observer" your commentary should take into consideration the technological gap between combatants! Since that is an interesting facet of the initial air war where the heavy BVR US made fighters did not manage to have air supremacy over old soviet WVR fighters!
...which performed very poorly considering the massive technological gap between the combatants!
Did I order the IrAF to attack Iran?
huh? how is that an answer to the question posed? The point is, as a "neutral observer" of the air war... the fact that the high-tech US supplied and trained Air Force failed to overpower an "arab" air force armed with soviet antiques and trained "very poorly" would be a rather important diversion from the "accepted norm" about the competence of arabs and the capability of old soviet fighters!
But that point is at no point ever mentioned in the books...
'No', it's 'not mentioned'. There is 'just' a two-pages-long IrAF ORBAT making it clear what kind of fighters were operated by what air force...
The point is... the VERY important point of:
badly trained arabs in old soviet WVR fighters and poor soviet-style GCI
vs
US trained Iranians armed with high-tech BVR fighters and excellent ESM support
did not pan out as it should have!!!! That is a basic commentary about the early stages of the air war that was COMPLETELY MISSING... hence the accusations of very overt bias.
...and that IMHO would show that older soviet fighters like the ones Iraq operated could take on more modern US fighters in the air as long as those were not operated by the US or one of its close allies (i.e. with RC135 / AWACS support).
...with tragic consequences, without doubt.
It wasn't "tragic consequences" though... a tragic and "expected" consequence of such an "air war" would have been the complete annihilation of the Iraqi airforce within a few days of the start of the war... but that did not happen! which is why the above commentary about the beginning of the air war is very important... and sadly overlooked in IIWIA.
But never mind. It's also a 'well known fact' (well, at least in Iraq), that 'not a single bomb dropped by Iranian fighter-bombers' has ever hit any target. So also it is a 'well-known fact' that no IrAF fighter was ever shot down in air combat with Iranians, that the IrAF 'swept the skies clear of the IRIAF', etc.
no one ever wrote that
why diverting the topic?
'Strangely' enough, there are photos of wreckage of Iraqi MiG-25s shot down and thus lost (like the one shot down over Arak), but such losses are never mentioned in any of documents that surfaced in recent years...
Simply not true. the first page of this thread mentions all Iraqi MiG25 losses in the war.
and a MiG-25 written off because it was first damaged by an AIM-54A and then hit by 20mm cannon fire from an F-5E is also not mentioned. 'Somebody' (you and me know who), has 'inspected' that MiG-25... and later said to us he has found only 'very little damage'. But the plane was written off? And this write-off was not recorded as any sort of combat loss...?
All air forces record "write off" after landing as a non-combat loss, including IRIAF, USAF etc... however the "written off" airframes are still recorded as such on page one of this thread. So for brevity's sake we even took to include possibly all "write off" losses as potential shoot downs. Now about those 19 Iranian F14s written off...
But, the documents are 'complete', huh? ....and all the ex-IrAF pilots one can ask are still sternously convinced Iranian F-14s could't fire AIM-7s and AIM-54s, and were inoperational, practically 'non-existing' during the entire war...
Perhaps because they flew thousands of missions without ever encountering one? On a rare day the F14 would climb up into the sky... maybe for a flypast at an airshow over tehran, or CAP over bushehr and shoot down an unlucky Iraqi fighter (or get shot down, as those 19 airframes illustrate aptly)... point is, the F14 really had no noticeable effect on the iran-iraq war... and that is a fact which was misrepresented in earlier publications. Fine it shot down some Iraqi planes! what was the effect on the war? even the "air war"?? I would say the Iranian AH1 and Iraqi MiG21s had far more effect on the air war than any F14 (or MiG25!)
and this because their (the IrAF) 'Intelligence' told them so... and this Intelligence based that assessment on the 'facts' provided by Reza Moradi, an Iranian defector...and 'Intelligence is always right'...even though when using information from a source as 'irreliable as defectors are, as everybody knows' (I'm just citing various Iraqis I interviewed over the last 20 years).
OK. so some intelligence the Iraqis obtained was inaccurate. Why don't you contact Wafiq Al Samarai' (he has written his own memoirs too, and is available for interview) and ask him about Iraqi intelligence gathering etc... (he was a double agent for Iran as alleged?)
Shall I go on?
Yes!! preferably in a new publication about the Iraqi AF
Hayer, seriously: you still think these few documents are complete and providing a 'definite picture'?
oh, we won't know a "definite" picture ever... but at least we can slowly get a clearer view.
Man, if you do so, then you also believe Tehran's latest set of 'conclusions about lessons from air warfare during Iran-Iraq War' - which 'decided' that the IRIAF never shot down any Iraqi MiG-25, but the IRGC did so... and this at the time and place where there were no IRGC at all...
why conflagate blatant propaganda with "data"... by now you should know what stuff to read and what to ignore...
Lets hope that more accurate works are published in the future...
Oh, but sure. We can hope about this as long as we like. 'Inshallah' it's going to happen, right?
inshallah!
I'm the least to brag or whatever else. As said above: I practically bankrupted myself researching about Arab air forces. But perhaps I'm really 'fanatical' in what I'm doing, and so I came to a crazy idea of establishing an own publisher that would publish such books. What do you think, how comes? I did so because I had nothing better to do?
Its your hobby.
Or would you come to the idea that there might be other reasons 'why'? Perhaps it is so that because if anybody would come to the idea to sit down and write a corresponding manuscript - nobody would publish it.
yes I believe it.
You don't believe it? No problem. Do us both a favour: present yourself as an aspiring author of a manuscript of anything related to some 'Arab' air force, and try to offer it to any publisher. Then see what's going to happen and what kind of answers are you going to get.
I can guess!
And please: don't tell me I didn't tell you.
tell me what? I am an Iraqi. I am perfectly aware about these things.
Thanks, but sorry - and without and disrespect (even though I've got so much disrespect from you now) - I have to correct you here: I don't think you have the slightest idea of how much effort was invested in every single of any publications I authored or co-authored.
Actually I have made my own publications in peer-reviewed international scientific journals. So I am aware to an extent about this.
Furthermore, I strongly doubt you have any trace of knowledge about publishing business, in general, and about many other things.
that wasn't nice.
Thus, again: sorry, but you've lost me here.
why? peer-review is important. Just ignore the ad-hominems and focus on any real "critique". Your later publications are certainly very good by comparison. and IIWIA was also good as an "Iranian Perspectives" book.
If you're angered by somebody parading around with the first ever book I co-authored, then it's your own fault you can't 'hit back' - for example by one of our (I'm talking here about 'us' as the team in which several authors are working) more recent publications.
I am perfectly aware of all your newer publications which did clear up a lot of the false info from the first book... but the argument by the posters here is that the first book is still used as "reference" to spread false info by other people.
So, if you're out of counterargumentation, sorry, not my problem: they are available, but you're not using them.
I'm not out of "counter-arguments"! We are just hoping for a new IIWIA book with all the latest info, perhaps co-authored with some Iraqi AF officers?
It's no evidence he crashed during training flight, and was not shot down in combat.
The only such evidence would be that pilot's log book, or the official IrAF report about 'that' accident (provided it was an accident).
OK. Where was the official kill claim for it? Has it been corroborated? Any evidence for it?
And, from experience with other IrAF reports of such nature, this would then have to be cross-examined 'wide and far', simply in order to make sure, that the post-accident report was not filled by one of Saddam's crownies, who didn't want his boss to be coupped away by leading IrAF generals, mad about there being a clause in Super Etendard contract, that the French have to pay 'penalties' to Saddam (yup, straight into his pockets) for every of aircraft they have built and delivered to Iraq, if this would be shot down in combat with Iran.
That is a rather strange "clause"...
Never heard of that? Oh, what a surprise...
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