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Red Eagles: America's Secret MiGs (General Aviation)

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Manufacturer: Osprey Publishing
List Price: $25.95
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From the late 1960s until the end of the Cold War, the United States Air Force acquired and flew Russian-made MiG jets, culminating in a secret squadron dedicated to exposing American fighter pilots to enemy technology and tactics.

Red Eagles tells the story of this squadron from the first tests of MiGs following the Vietnam War when the USAF had been woefully under-prepared in aerial combat. These initial flights would develop into the "black" or classified program known internally as Constant Peg.

At a secret air base in Nevada, ace American fighter pilots were presented with a range of differnet MiG jets with a simple remit: to expose "the threat" to as many of their brethern as possible. Maintaining and flying these "assets" without without spare parts or manuals was an almost impossible task, putting those flying the MiGs in mortal danger on every flight.

Despite these challenges, in all more than 5,900 American aircrews would train against America's secret MiGs, giving them the eskills they needed to face the enemy in real combat situations.

For the first time, this book tells the story of Constant Peg and the 4477th Red Eagles Squadron in the words of the men who made it possible.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 358.435
EAN: 9781846033780
ISBN: 1846033780
Label: Osprey Publishing
Manufacturer: Osprey Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2008-09-23
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Release Date: 2008-09-23
Studio: Osprey Publishing


SIMILAR ITEMS:

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• F-4 Phantom II vs MiG-21: USAF & VPAF in the Vietnam War (Duel)
• Lockheed SR-71 Operations in the Far East (Combat Aircraft)
• Debrief: A Complete History of U.s. Aerial Engagements - 1981 to the Present


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Red Eagles; a must buy
Comment: Anyone who has read any titles from this author would expect a great deal of primary research and this book doesn't disappoint. In fact, it goes beyond anything else he has produced, which is remarkable considering the absolute secrecy surrounding the Red Eagles. As a former customer of the Red Eagles, I can attest to the close hold nature of the entire operation. Nobody talked about it, period. It was just such a unique and good deal that nobody wanted to jeopardize it. This books captures all the details and even illustrates it lavishly with photos that just didn't exist until now. Well done! Make that, extremely well done tribute to those who flew as Red Eagles and made this remarkable unit a reality and kept it going for so long. No serious library on air combat would be complete without it.

Customer Rating:
Summary: The book is a reflection of the USAF
Comment: I highly recommend this book. Red Eagles tells about how the TAC part of the USAF went from being the worst in fighting ability of the US Military air services to becoming the cutting edge.

This books is divided into parts of a third. One third is related to the people, one third is related to the structure of the USAF, and one third is about the MiGs.

I was suprised by a few things. First, the USAF had to reverse engineer the ejector seat explosives and the disk brakes for the MiG-21s. What was weird is Finland was flying the MiG-21 at the time and it's just strange that the CIA was not able to get a chemical formulation for the seat ejector cartridge nor able to get one good brake disk for the MiG-21. There was quite a bit of non-coordination between the various intellegence agencies of the USA.

Second, I thought it was strange that in the mid and late 70s the USAF was training pilots to fly against the MiG-17. That school was 10 years too late for Vietnam. Also, after the fall of East Germany the USAF/USN were asked by Germany if they wanted a full squadron of MiG-29 aircraft. But the budgets had turned so tight in the early 90s the USAF and USN was having a hard time paying the light bill.

In full disclosure this reviewer did his first tour of service in the USAF before going over the the US Army (this writer is blind as a bat). One of my friends ended up working on the F-117 side of the runway. My hat is off to Mac for never talking about it and I knew the guy for 30 years. He got to see the MiGs every working day. What a life!

This book is fairly good. I wish they had spend more time on the "geek" stuff of the MiGs. I just love reading about the aircraft. I didn't like the day to day Bee Ess of reading about the politics of the USAF. I was sort of surprised that the Red Eagles had an accident rate of 22/100,000 sorties. That is fairly dreadful.

This book is fully worth the money and a good read about the people who defended this nation from post Vietnam until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Red Eagles
Comment: As an old fighter pilot who was stationed at the edge of the Mojave desert and only about 30 miles from Edwards AFB, this was a most interesting book to me. Yes, I was stationed at Nellis prior to the times mentioned in the book, and I was amazed at the projects that were taking place. A good book for any fighter pilot.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Highly detailed account
Comment: Steve Davies has obviously had extraordinary access to detailed information on this once highly classified project. His characterizations of individuals are subject to challenge but the detailed account of the program is the overriding issue. The book is certainly not for everyone. Although he makes a serious effort to simplify, readers who will be most interested in his account are those closely associated with the fighter community in military aviation or those who wish they were. Among that group, the book stands as an excellent record and something of a revelation. There is good reason to believe that it will be the history of Red Eagles (as well as a credible partial account of the Aggressors and other programs that overlapped)absent an official USAF accounting.

Customer Rating:
Summary: An Incredibly Thorough and Overall Enjoyable Unit History
Comment: Red Eagles is largely a unit history of the 4477th TES (originally TEF, officially known as the "Red Eagles") that was based at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada and which flew three types of MiG's to train American fighter aircrew against them, the MiG-17, -21 and -23, over a period of nearly twenty years. This history focuses primarily on the pilots and other officers who developed this unit and their flying exploits over the course of its life. As such has as its strongest flavor a stream of personal histories, and the characters, antics and interplay of the aircrew assigned to the unit ranging from hilarious to quirky to autocratic. But the unifying thread is the American efforts at exploiting captured, borrowed, and bought MiG's and as such the book also touches, sometimes briefly and sometimes more generously, on the squadron's maintenance efforts, how the MiG's were brought to America or how American pilots managed to fly foreign MiG's in their host countries, the corollary exploits of the "Red Hats" at Groom Lake -which was the equivalent of a test squadron vice the training squadron that the 4477th became and which explored a larger variety of Soviet designed aircraft-, and the technical details of the aircraft.

Suffering a rude awakening from its combat experience in F-4's and F-105's against North Vietnamese MiG-17's and -21's in the Vietnam War, the USAF was handed a golden opportunity to recover its aerial fighting prowess when Israel offered it the temporary use of several MiG's flown to her by pilots defecting from several other middle eastern countries. This was the simmering catalyst of what eventually grew into a much larger (but almost always infused with a rag-tag and secretive character as a result of being an extremely black program half dependent on chance for its continued operation) effort to acquire soviet aircraft from foreign countries for exploitation (notably Indonesia and Egypt). As such the Red Eagles continually grew from a ramshackle flight with a small handful of aircraft at a remote, dusty and nearly forgotten base to a fully professional, integrated Air Force squadron with a relatively large number of MiG's. On this foundation they could offer more consistent and reliable training exposures to Air Force units at Nellis, particularly during Red Flag, Navy units from TOP GUN at Miramar or undergoing work-ups at NAS Fallon, and USMC units from El Toro. The value of this training to US pilots, consisting of actual exposure to the type of aircraft they could expect to encounter in hostile situations and flying the spectrum from standard enemy tactics to anything goes, full out dogfighting, was obviously tremendous. The Red Eagles truly deserve many of the laurels for later American aerial victories against Libya and Iraq, and the story of the squadron is a great one well told by Davies.

The history of the unit is pretty captivating and exciting, with many fascinating details, particularly how the MiG's were acquired and maintained, the experiences the pilots had learning to fly them, and the results of match-ups between the best of what the Soviets built and the primary American fighters of the day. As a complete history it of course also includes the unfortunate deaths of several people involved in the squadron and the poignant effects these deaths had on the deceased's families, made worst by the fact that the details and true story of how they died and why could not be revealed even to loved ones until sometimes decades after the fact. The in depth thoroughness of this book is truly impressive though, and a great credit to its author who clearly spent a very long time investigating this recently declassified subject.

While the 80% of the book is the personal exploits of the pilots involved in the program and thus make this a great read for people who have served in military aviation, the technical and operational details of the MiG's themselves, although sometimes disappointingly scant, will also prove fascinating to those interested in aerospace engineering and aircraft design. The Russian philosophy of aircraft design was decidedly more rugged, reliable, and less complex than the American, but delivered mixed results. All of the Russian aircraft suffered from extremely poor range, and very poor cockpit design which hampered everything from visibility to ergonomic efficiency of use, but they also showed some surprising levels of performance and operability. The MiG-17 truly was an outstanding low speed dogfighter, and the MiG-21, in spite of its high energy bleed rate from its delta wing and supersonic dash optimized design, also held up admirably in the dogfight. The MiG-23 on the other hand was a dud as an individual aircraft, more dangerous to its own pilot and a nightmare to fly due to its poor handling characteristics. While it was practically useless in a dogfight it did deliver nearly stunning acceleration and high speed. Used with cunning tactics even this "turkey" could prove deadly, making dash intercepts against American AWACS (it was even able to out accelerate the F-15), chasing down F-111's, and being used either as a lure for more nimble MiG-21's or used to make lightning fast swiping runs against American fighters lured by the slower -17's and -21's.

There is a lot of great information in this book about a truly amazing chapter in aviation history, and it is well told in a very personal and humanizing manner. Definitely recommended!

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