In 1991, an Iraqi Fighter Pilot Bravely Faced American F-15s

By Tom Cooper,War Is Boring

U.S. Air Force captain Steve Tate — call sign “Tater” — scored one of the first aerial victories of Operation Desert Storm, downing an Iraqi air force Mirage F.1 during the night of Jan. 16 and 17, 1991.

Few people have heard that story from the Iraqi pilot’s perspective.

Tate took off with three other F-15C pilots at 1:30 in the morning from King Abdul Aziz air base in Saudi Arabia. After refueling from a tanker, the formation headed north, escorting a strike force including F-4Gs, F-15Es, F-111s and B-52s.

Once on station southeast of Baghdad, Tate split his formation into two pairs that flew along counter-rotating racetrack patterns for mutual protection.

Around 3:20, the crew of an E-3 radar plane called out a possible bogey heading towards Tate’s numbers three and four – and the strike package. Tate turned around and locked onto the Iraqi fighter — a Mirage F.1 — which was heading west at 8,000 feet. After confirming the Iraqi jet’s identity, Tate fired a single AIM-7 Sparrow from a range of 12 miles.

The missile hit the Mirage four miles from Tate’s aircraft, causing a huge fireball. This lit up the nocturnal sky so well that Tate was able to see the Iraqi aircraft breaking up into “millions of pieces” and then burning after crashing to the ground.

Above — an F-15D from 1st Tactical Fighter Wing as seen inside a hardened aircraft shelter at King Khalid air base in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. U.S. Air Force photo. At top — the Mirage F.1BQ with serial number 4001 was the first of about a dozen of such two-seaters acquired by the Iraqi air force between 1981 and 1989. Tom Cooper Collection