Red Eagles: America's Secret MiGs

382 Pages·2012·6.29 MB·English

by  Steve Davies

RED EAGLES
America’s Secret MiGs
STEVE DAVIES
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
PART 1 ACQUIRING “THE ASSETS”
Chapter 1: HAVE MiGs, 1968–69
Chapter 2: A Genesis for the Red Eagles, 1972–77
PART 2 LAYING THE GROUND WORK
Chapter 3: CONSTANT PEG and Tonopah, 1977–79
Chapter 4: The Red Eagles’ First Days and the Early MiGs
Chapter 5: The “Flogger” Arrives, 1980
Chapter 6: Gold Wings and the Admiral, 1981
PART 3 EXPANDED EXPOSURES AND RED FLAG, 1982–85
Chapter 7: The Fatalists, 1982
Chapter 8: Postai’s Crash
Chapter 9: Exposing the TAF, 1983
Chapter 10: “The Air Force is Coming,” 1984
Chapter 11: From Black to Gray, 1985
PART 4 THE FINAL YEARS, 1986–88
Chapter 12: Goodbye Indonesian Fishbeds, 1986
Chapter 13: “Red Country,” 1987
Chapter 14: Intelligence & Analysis
Chapter 15: Arrival Shows, 1988
POSTSCRIPT
ENDNOTES
APPENDICES
GLOSSARY
DEDICATION
In Memory of Red Eagles Lt Commander Hugh “Bandit” Brown (left), Captain
Mark “Toast” Postai (right), and Technical Sergeant Rey Hernandez.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This is a story about the Red Eagles: a group of men, and a handful of women,
who provided America’s fighter pilots with a level of training that was the stuff
of dreams. It was codenamed CONSTANT PEG.
In a departure from the books that I usually write, this story is not grounded in
absolute historical certainties, but rather is an amalgamation of the memories of
35 of a total of 69 Red Eagle pilots whose names appear on the unclassified pilot
roster of the 4477th Test & Evaluation Squadron (TES), United States Air Force
(USAF), between April 1977 and March 1988. In addition, I interviewed six
maintainers and several other non-flying Red Eagles.
I would love to have had a range of contemporary documents for reference,
but sadly many have been lost, others were deliberately shredded in 1988, and
those few that were preserved for declassification were burned in a safe when a
hijacked airliner hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Simple arithmetic
dictates that even the freshest memories were 20 years old when this book was
first written in 2008, and that the oldest have now had more than 40 years to
dim. This fact is important, because in the course of the 75 hours of taped
interviews I conducted and transcribed, there were many contradictions and
disagreements about what happened and when, at the hands of whom, and why.
Throughout the text I have relied extensively on quotations taken from these
interviews, which were conducted in person or over the telephone between
January 2007 and February 2011.
It is an honour to have been given the opportunity to write this second edition
of the book, not least of all because the Air Force has been productive in its
response to my Freedom of Information Act requests since 2006 – declassifying
six important “black programs” as a result. Regrettably, many of these arrived
too late to be included in the first edition, and some have taken four years to be
released, but these programs are now accurately referenced in this new edition.
At the time of writing, February 2011, there remain five or six additional FOIAs
that are still awaiting a release determination, and I hope to include them in a
future edition. In the meantime, I thank the US Air Force for working hard to
declassify as much of the story as possible.
So what of this second edition? It includes an additional 23,000 words of new
material, some of it revealing for the first time more information about the MiG
flying exploitations that led up to the creation of the Red Eagles, but most of it
focused on detailing the intelligence side of the story and adding additional
narratives from Red Eagle pilots and maintainers. In short, it fills a number of
gaps and adds critical detail and clarity to other aspects of the story. Corrections
have also been made to a small number of errors in the first edition.
I take great pride in the fact that the first edition of Red Eagles: America’s
Secret MiGs has been placed on the 2011 US Air Force Chief of Staff reading
list. I am, of course, under no illusions about this being more to do with the
incredible story of triumph over adversity than it being to do with any literary
talent of mine, but it does please me that Gen Norton Schwartz believes that the
book can function as a learning tool for the men and women in the US Air Force
today. Indeed, the vast majority of the feedback from the first edition has been
positive, and from the Red Eagles themselves there has been strong praise.
I would, however, like to take this opportunity to be clear to readers about
what this book is really about. 1) It is fundamentally about people, not airplanes.
It is about talented, tenacious officers and NCOs who worked against the odds
and risked their lives to create what is arguably one of the most successful
programs of the Cold War. I therefore make no apology that it “drops” a lot of
names. Naming the protagonists in this story is part and parcel of giving
individuals a voice, and of recognizing their contribution to the program
afterdecades of secrecy; it is not an indication of any sycophancy on my part. 2)
This book is not an objective, technical analysis of Russian-designed fighters. It
is simply the recollections of Americans who flew and maintained them in a
vacuum in which they had to make up their own maintenance, training, flying,
and tactical procedures from scratch. It is therefore “accurate” in the sense that
what you read on these pages is what these men believed at the time. 3) This
book was written with the intention that it be accessible and digestable by a wide
audience – I did not want it to be a hardcore discussion that would alienate the
majority of readers. Specifically, I wanted to know that the wives, sons,
daughters, and friends of the men mentioned on these pages would be able to
understand what their husbands and fathers had done. In doing so, I have
avoided highly complex technical discussions (much as I enjoy such things
myself), and have expounded wherever possible in order to make sure that key
concepts are easy to understand. 4) Finally, at no point did I intend this book to
be an investigation of the sources of the MiGs. I have, where enough solid
information is available publically (albeit not always obviously), presented more
information about sources than any other person or publication to date. But that
is the extent of my interest in that aspect of the story. It was made clear to me
that revealing sources was not in the interest of the United States, a precondition
of my access to the Red Eagles that I was happy to honour.
While the Red Eagle maintainers were largely unwilling to give interviews for
the first edition of the book, they opened the door ajar for the second edition.
Even so, this books remains biased towards the actual flying of the MiGs. The
reality is that everything you read about in the pages that follow happened
because of the extraordinary talent and dedication of these maintainers. I regret
that their collective role appears to be far less prominent in the text than it
actually was.
There are lots of people to thank, but none more so than LtCol (ret.) Earl “Obi
Wan” Henderson and Col (ret.) Mike “Scotty” Scott, who read numerous
iterations of the first edition of the book and spent tens of hours proofing and
offering suggestions. Earl was a stoic supporter from the outset, and he provided
me with his office (and car) when I visited Nellis Air Force Base to conduct
interviews that he had set up on my behalf. He also gave me his backing, and
that helped open doors that had remained shut for decades. Earl’s son, Neil, was
also a fine host who helped smooth my visit to Vegas. LtCol (USMC ret.) Lenny
Bucko, and Col (ret.) Paco Geisler were also prominent supporters who helped
with my research and constantly answered questions without once complaining,
while Col (ret.) Ted Drake provided a raft of corrections for the second edition
and provided a significant amount of additional input regarding the MiG-23. A
special mention must go to LtCol (ret.) Charles “Smokey” Sundell, who helped
me with the first edition, made a special effort to bring beer to our meeting, but
who I missed out of the acknowledgment last time around. Sorry, Smokey! I also
thank Jerry Bickford, Rick Wagner, Rob Geer, Brad Fisher, and Don Lyons,
maintainers who lent me their individual support and expertise for the second
edition, and who shared stories for inclusion in the text. I would also like to
thank Col (ret.) Jack Manclark, without whom the 4477th TES would never have
been declassified. Jack also gave me his support, putting me in touch with Earl
in 2006, thus lending this project a seal of approval that also helped open doors.
Finally, Osprey Publishing have been a joy to work with on this project, starting
with the original editorial team of Anita Baker and Ruth Shepherd, and moving
to Kate Moore and Emily Holmes for the second edition. I thank them all for
their patience and support.
In addition, I thank the following for contributing their time and energy in
helping make this book possible: Adm (ret.) John Nathman, R/Adm (ret.) Jim
Robb, LtGen (ret.) John Hall, Capt (USN ret.) Cary Silvers, Col (ret.) Wendell
Shawler, Col (ret.) Phil White, Col (ret.) George Gennin, Col (ret.) Tom Gibbs,
Col (ret.) Ted Thompson, Col (ret.) Sam Therrien, LtCol (ret.) Paul Stucky, Col
(ret.) Mike Simmons, Col (ret.) Mike Press, Col (ret.) Denny Phelan, Col (ret.)
Gail Peck, Col (ret.) Joe Oberle, LtCol (ret.) Bert Myers, Col (ret.) George
Tullos, Cdr (USN ret.) Tom Morgenfeld, Col (ret.) “Kobe” Mayo, Col (ret.) John
Mann, Col (ret.) Tom Boma, Tony Mahoney, Mark Cummins, Cdr (ret.) Marty
Macy, Col (ret.) John “Sax” Saxman, Zarah Newton, LtCol (ret.) Rob “Z-Man”
Zettel, LtCol (ret.) Jim Matheny, LtCol (ret.) Larry Shervanick, LtCol (ret.) Dud
Larsen, Bob Sheffield, Maj (ret.) John Nelson, Maj (ret.) Dan Futryk, Maj (ret.)
Bob Drabant, MSgt (ret) Robert Breault, Doug Robinson, Chico Noriega, Linda
Jung, Linda Hughes, Pat Sanders, Thomas Newdick, Tom Cooper, Peter Merlin,
and my good friend, Col (ret.) Doug Dildy, who proofread my first edition
manuscript and told me what a great guy Mark Postai had been.
If you would like to learn more about the Red Eagles, or would like to interact
with some of the Red Eagles’ pilots and maintainers, please visit:
www.fjphotography.com/constantpeg
Steve Davies
Cambridge, England
February 2011
FOREWORD
The names are legendary among generations of fighter pilots: HAVE
DOUGHNUT, HAVE DRILL, CONSTANT PEG, Red Hats, Red Eagles, and the
4477th. The people are also legends: Frick, Peck, Iverson, Oberle, Manclark,
McCloud, Nathman, Ellis. These programs and people, and many more revealed
in the following pages, were part of the revolution in tactical thinking that took
place in the years between the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War of 1991.
In the winter of 1969 I began pilot training in the F-4 Phantom; it was a low
point in fighter training. I remember a cover of the Air Force safety magazine
that highlighted 44 F-4 accidents due to “Loss-of-Control” during maneuvering
flight. This was before computer-aided flight controls, and the venerable
Phantom needed careful handling at high angles of attack. Rather than address
the problem by properly training for high AoA maneuvering, air-to-air training
was stopped for F-4 crews in the pipeline for Vietnam. While this policy
reversed the mishap rate, it also produced a generation of Phantom pilots who
could not learn the basics of roll, turn, acceleration, aspect angle, angle off and
closure before going to war.
In the following pages you will learn about the loss of focus on air superiority
training, the impact it had on our early performance over North Vietnam, and the
effective programs adopted by the Air Force and the Navy to overcome these
deficiencies. The most compelling programs to emerge from the tough lessons of
the Vietnam years exposed later generations of Air Force and Navy pilots and
crews to a level of realistic training we never dared dream would be possible.
My first exposure to our MiG program was as an instructor in the Fighter
Weapons School, the 414th Fighter Weapons Squadron, 1974–77. It was a
magical time. My fellow instructors included Dick Myers, later Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff; Ron Keys, who later commanded Air Combat Command;
Dick Anderegg, now the Air Force Historian and author of Sierra Hotel; and Joe
Bob Philips, who fathered many formations and tactics that replaced the Korean
War era tactics of Vietnam. These were the formative years of the Aggressor
programs, Red Flag, the F-15, F-16, and the A-10. One highlight of my career