There can be few aircraft in the modern era of aviation, that are as enigmatic and interesting as the US Aggressor Squadron aircraft – a real case of a ‘Sheep in Wolf’s clothing’. Aircraft wearing dissimilar markings are a pleasant change from the traditionally bland designs of front line squadron aircraft and as a consequence, tend to be highly photogenic and extremely popular with the aviation enthusiast. There is, however, a very serious side to these role-playing aircraft – one which might just save a pilots life in a future combat situation!
Aggressor Units were formed in the aftermath of US air involvement during the Vietnam War, in an attempt to address the relatively high combat loss rates suffered during this conflict. The intention was to provide a more realistic combat training environment for pilots, by mimicking not only the potential aircraft type they might expect to meet in any future combat, but also by adopting tactics often employed by enemy pilots. Indeed, so serious are Aggressor Unit pilots about their role, that they almost take on the persona of a foreign air force, which certainly allows the opposing pilots to gain the maximum benefit from any simulated combat scenario. By nature, it is designed to be as authentic a combat experience as can possibly be achieved in a training environment, to allow pilots to be much more prepared and certainly less apprehensive about an overseas deployment.
TOP GUN School – Bandit Country!
The idea of adopting Aggressor Units for dissimilar aircraft training first came to fruition in the late 1960’s. It was obviously not going to be possible to obtain reasonable numbers of foreign aircraft from a potential adversary for this new task, so readily available service aircraft were used as surrogate airframes, but presented in such a manner as to imitate an enemy aircraft. Wearing distinctly different camouflage markings and adorned with large RED aircraft numbers, in many cases, these aircraft took on a much more sinister persona indeed. Units tasked with providing this type of training took great pride in studying the tactics, operational idiosyncrasies and military procedures of the enemy they were trying to emulate and if you thought that they were going to give you an easy ride, you were in for a nasty surprise.
Made famous by the film of the same name, the first formal use of Aggressor aircraft in a training role was by the US Navy Fighter Weapons School, better known as ‘Top Gun’. They employed the venerable Douglas A-4 Skyhawk in the role of enemy aircraft, which was intended to emulate the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-17 fighter, which was in use with a great many foreign air forces. The programme proved to be so successful, that it was soon adopted more widely by
both the US Navy and soon after by the US Air Force. Stationed at Nellis Air Force Base, in the Nevada desert, the USAF used the Northrop T-38 Talon and F-5 Tiger II for the same task, as these aircraft also emulated the small, low wing fighters often flown by likely potential adversaries. These ageing Northrop and Douglas aircraft served faithfully as enemy aircraft for many years, proving to be a resounding success for their respective air arms and providing many hundreds of pilots with invaluable combat experience. By the mid 1980’s, it was felt that these older aggressor aircraft did not accurately represent the current front line Soviet fighters that a US pilot might encounter and a more capable aggressor was required. A competition was held between the highly successful General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon and the extremely capable Northrop F-20 Tigershark, which was a much upgraded version of the F-5 Tiger II. Even though many pilots clearly preferred the Tigershark, the F-16 was selected for the task, primarily due to the attractive finance package that came with it – on reflection, it was probably the most sensible option …. after all, the F-16 is one of the most successful jet aircraft ever produced!
Aggressors Overseas
The spectacular aircraft of the US Aggressor Squadrons were not exclusively confined to home bases and two squadrons operated overseas – one in the UK and one in the Philippines. Of particular interest to the UK enthusiast, the USAFE 527th Aggressor Squadron operated out of RAF Alconbury, in Cambridgeshire, firstly with their colourful F-5 Tiger II’s and latterly with the F-16 Fighting Falcon. With the closure of Alconbury, the unit moved to RAF Bentwaters, in Suffolk, were they continued to fly dissimilar aircraft training missions over the North Sea and over Continental Europe. They allowed NATO air forces to benefit from the same combat training afforded to US pilots back in America, which was clearly a sensible move, as these European air forces were much closer to the perceived threat from the East! Anyone lucky enough to catch these extremely enigmatic aircraft in their formative years, will lament the passing of the USAF UK Aggressors and could easily be forgiven for using the line ‘Those were the days!’
A Lion Cub for the Navy and Marine Corps
Traditionally, the US would use home produced aircraft for the role of dissimilar aircraft combat training, but there was a notable exception. The Israeli Aircraft Industries Kfir (Lion Cub) was an Israeli built, all-weather multi-role aircraft, based on the French Dassault Mirage V airframe. With a number of significant modifications, an Israeli avionics suite and an Israeli built version of the General Electric J79 turbojet engine, the Kfir was a very capable aircraft indeed and it was felt that this would provide a much more capable test for pilots during dissimilar combat training. Between 1985 and 1989, twenty-five modified Kfir C.1’s (known as F-21A Kfir in the US) were leased to the US Navy and Marine Corps squadrons for their aggressor operations, providing them with a very interesting new adversary. The twelve Navy aircraft were painted in a three-tone blue-grey ‘ghost’ scheme and operated out of Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, in the colours of VF-43 ‘Challengers’. The Marine Corps machines operated out of MCAS Yuma, in Arizona, in the colours of VMFT-401 ‘Snipers’. The Kfir allowed pilots to be tested by a Mach 2+ aircraft, which possessed extremely fast acceleration, although hampered by relatively poor manouvreability – these were characteristics possessed by the Soviet MiG-23 fighter, which was available in large numbers to Eastern Block air forces. Unfortunately, the F-21 Kfir aircraft were only operated for a relatively short period, as the aircraft were sent back to Israel in 1989, but they provided yet another colourful chapter in the annuls of US Aggressor Squadron history.
Die-cast Aggressors – A colourful diversion
As photographers and aviation enthusiasts will go out of their way to catch a glimpse of these enigmatic Aggressor aircraft, it will come as absolutely no surprise that the die-cast collector is particularly keen on this type of aircraft. Adding an aggressor or two to any collection of die-cast aircraft will immediately brighten up your display and create a distinct talking point for anyone viewing your collection. I will guarantee that even though you may have a plethora of Lancasters and Spitfires in your collection, along with a fair spattering of rare and valuable models, the Aggressors will be the ones that a lay person will pass comment on. Model releases of Aggressor subject matter have always been popular and we expect our latest OFFER OF THE WEEK to go down a storm, in this last weekend before Christmas. Available at massive savings, we are offering all our remaining Aggressor models to our Newsletter readers, whilst stocks last – we have a beautiful Alconbury based USAFE F-5 Tiger II, a Top Gun classic ‘Jester’ A-4 Skyhawk and both a US Navy and US Marine Corps F-21 Kfir. Each one is being made available at a substantial discount and I am certain that the die-cast aviation collecting loved one in your life would be overjoyed to receive one of these beauties over this festive period. To grab one of our remaining models, simply click on this AGGRESSOR OFFER link and select your aircraft.
Last weekend’s Falcon BOGOF offer
I would like to end this latest Newsletter with something of an apology. Firstly, I am sorry about the late delivery of this weeks Newsletter, but I had to run the gauntlet of ‘Mad Friday’ traffic yesterday and pick my daughter up from spending her first term at University – it is great to have her home! Secondly, I think that I messed up last weeks offer with the Falcon BOGOF – what a Kerfuffle! I think that I spent more time on the phone last Friday than ever before, as I tried to reassure collectors that our system would not charge them too much. In hindsight, it would have been better to simply reduce the price across the board, as our system is not capable of running such an offer automatically and I was not clear enough about how we were going to manually process each order to ensure only the correct payment was taken. A lesson learned, I suppose – thankfully though, many of you took advantage of the offer and our Falcon stocks have been decimated as a result. Our remaining FALCON MODELS stocks have all now been reduced and the last few models can be snapped up by clicking on the link above.
Christmas Orders – Last Opportunity!
As the Christmas holidays are almost upon us, it is a good idea to let you know what we will be doing about processing orders over the next few days. We intend to process and dispatch all this weekends orders on Monday and Tuesday this week – our 24 hour Parcelforce delivery service for a UK Mainland postal address means that all parcels should be delivered to one of these destinations by Christmas Eve, although the weather and seasonal volume may play a part in affecting this. All orders placed over the Christmas holiday period will be processed on our return to work on Monday 5th January, although we will be working before this date, but cannot guarantee a collection from our carriers.
As you may well imagine, it has been a very significant year for the small team here at Flying Tigers and Christmas will give us some time to reflect on our recent decision to close the business. One thing that both Emma and I would like to say to you all is that you have been absolutely fantastic with us and we have been humbled by the hundreds of unbelievably kind messages that we have received. Please forgive me for not being in a position to reply to each of you personally, but it has been a little manic over the past few weeks. It was, however, the finest tonic that we could possibly have been given and we sincerely thank all of you, from the bottom of our hearts. May we take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
I will leave you with a picture of one of this weeks offer models, which is also one of our last remaining FALCON SALE models – a really unusual die-cast model aircraft. See you all in 2015!