‘At about two miles, I looked once again, but I was no longer thinking about taking a pre-merge shot, so I planned to merge with the bogey at 50 ft off of his left wing. As I crossed his wing line, I saw that he was a brown- and green-camouflaged Iraqi MiG-29!’ Capt Cesar ‘Rico’ Rodriguez, USAF F-15C Eagle pilot.
On the third day of Operation Desert Storm (Jan. 19, 1991), one of the war’s most dramatic air battles unfolded over Iraq. F-15C Eagle pilot Capt. Cesar “Rico” Rodriguez and his wingman, Capt. Craig “Mole” Underhill of the 58th TFS/33rd TFW were flying a fighter sweep ahead of a strike package of F-16s and F-4Gs when an AWACS controller directed them toward a newly detected, single threat.
Within a few minutes, Rodriguez was painted on radar by an incoming Iraqi Air Force (IrAF) MiG-29, forcing him to break away from the fighter to spoil its targeting solution. Underhill backed up his flight lead by launching an AIM-7 Sparrow, which tracked cleanly into the Iraqi aircraft. Rodriguez believes it was likely a mix of his electronic countermeasures, chaff, and support from other aircraft in the area that prevented the ‘Fulcrum’ pilot from ever getting a missile off at him.
After the AWACS controller identified a second sudden threat, Rodriguez turned back toward the burning MiG and picked up this new contact, as he later recounted in Steve Davies’ book F-15C Eagle Units in Combat:
“We then received another call from the AWACS. “Second group, north, ten miles,” at which point we executed an in-place check turn to the north. “Mole” and I were about 2.5 miles apart, and I was visual with him off my right wing and slightly ahead. I looked up and saw a smoke trail—not a missile trail, but engine smoke—so I put my Auto Acq out there and “Mole,” and I simultaneously locked him up.”
Underhill later noted that the MiG snapped into a sharp turn toward him when his Auto Acq mode set off the aircraft’s radar warning receiver (RWR). Rodriguez went on:
“We started going through our ID matrix, and the target displayed a friendly electronic return to both of us. I directed a broken lock and re-lock, but the same thing happened again. I now directed a VID pass and pushed “Mole” out to a five-mile line-abreast formation. The bogey was closest in azimuth to my nose, so I flew the pass. I brought the Target Detection box [a square symbol in the HUD that is overlaid onto the radar-designated target’s position] into view and looked at the contact at about eight miles, but it was just a dot, and I couldn’t tell what it was.”
“I looked again at about four miles and saw a western-looking silhouette that resembled an F-15 or a F/A-18, so I don’t declare him hostile. At about two miles, I looked once again, but I was no longer thinking about taking a pre-merge shot, so I planned to merge with the bogey at 50 ft off of his left wing. As I crossed his wing line, I saw that he was a brown- and green-camouflaged Iraqi MiG-29!”
The MiG was flying at around 8,000 feet, while Rodriguez executed a low-to-high visual ID maneuver into the sun, always keeping below his opponent’s plane of motion.
“I declared, “Hostile, MiG-29”, and began a hard left turn when he started his left turn so that we had what looked like a classic two-circle flight. Initially, his turn was level, so rather than stay horizontal with him, I transitioned into a split-S maneuver to cut across his circle [turn]. “Mole” was now in the high 20,000 ft regime in a covering position, looking for an option to enter into the fight.”
The fight soon devolved into a one-circle engagement, with both jets trying to out-turn each other in what appeared to be a continuous spiral. However, ‘Rico’ retained the upper hand because, within the first few turns, he had managed to maneuver behind the enemy’s 3–9 line—the imaginary line running from one wingtip to the other.
“He recognized that I was there, and I think that he may have even visually seen “Mole” up there. The fight now turned into a left-hand descending spiral, with me having an energy advantage that I converted into a WEZ (close to within firing parameters). I spent time inside his turning circle with a high heading-crossing angle, then I flushed to the outside of his turning circle before regaining energy, aligning circles, and coming back inside his circle, looking to use an AIM-9 against him. As I cut back inside for the shot, there was an opportunity for “Mole” to come in and take a shot too, but I opted to call him off and continue my pursuit. We were now below 1000 ft.”
“He tried to fly a split-S maneuver in what looked to me like a “cobra” [a high angle-of-attack pitch-up or pitch-down]. I came out of the fight and dipped my wings to pick up the Tally-Ho [visual contact], at which point he impacted the ground. He hit the desert floor and then tumbled with all the momentum he had for what seemed like several miles. Meanwhile, ‘Mole.’ and I were getting the “hell out of Dodge”. “Mole” called, “Snap south. I’m tactical right side,” and I looked left and there he was, directing our separation.”
Rodriguez took satisfaction in knowing that he had just flown the war’s only true turning dogfight—and, in doing so, had defeated the IrAF’s best attempt to shoot down a coalition aircraft. He suspects the MiGs launched from a secret highway strip known as F1, which functioned as an alert strip out in the desert.
F-15C Eagle Units in Combat is published by Osprey Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by U.S. Air Force
