I was lucky enough to do a det to israel 5 years ago this month. Some of the best SES training I've ever had. Fight through vipers, turn around fight through more vipers, get lit up from the ground, bomb a target, and then jumped by eagles from 40k+ off target, all the while trying not to sneeze and go in the "wrong" airspace. I was just a nugget hanging on for dear life at the time. I would love to go back and do it again now.
We had a sit-down-drink-beer-and-share stories night with the IAF. They showed us a greatest hits compilation of kills by their viper pilots from 82. Amazingly (and there seemed to be more than the 40 kills mentioned above), almost all of their kills were below 5000', mostly with sidewinder, but quite a few with the gun. I took away a big lesson from that- since we don't train enough for low fights.
One of their old timer viper pilots spoke of his experiences from the 82 war. He was a colonel, but was only a brand new lieutenant during the war. The guy scored 5 kills, and he was a wingman dash -4 on just about every mission. Two of his stories stand out in my memory. The first was a mission where he was already down low and spotted some syrians even lower. He called out the tallies to his flight and then swooped in on them. He had a couple of quick kills, but found himself all alone. Nobody else in his flight had heard him or followed. The other memorable mission was when they spotted a helo and tried to bring it down. His 4-plane set up a circle-the-wagons on this helo trying to get a tone rise or hit it with the gun. After 3-4 passes each without success he was finally the one to get tone and bring down the helo. His stories made a big impression on me - all the more so since I was a nugget myself at the time.
When it was our turn to speak, we had a few desert storm vets, but not nearly as much to show off. One of the israelis put one of our O-4s on the spot by asking him what is our motivation to fight. Fair enough question. But the obvious underlying implication was that we americans are little better than mercenaries since our country was in no obvious danger. Our LCDR gave a diplomatic, but boring answer in reply. I couldn't think of anything better at the time to say. This was pre 9/11 mind you. A couple of months later, after 9/11, when we found ourselves off the coast of pakistan, I guess we had our answer for the smug israeli.
