FLYING Arab ACES (1967 - 1973)

[Sage]

Yes my dear friend ..... they were 6 Israeli F-4 phantoms against Emansouri and his wing man Hassan ..... it was in Feb 1973 before October/Ramadan war ....
Also it was one of the longest dog fights ever .... till MANSOURA AIR BATTLE ....which was the longest dog fight ever happened since WWII between hundreds of Egyptian and Israeli fighters.

Keep this thread alive...Keep posting more to it. This is something we are knowing for the first time.

The radio call between him and his wingman is hair-raising to listen to.

Can you please post it ?

 

[Gomig-21]

Can you please post it ?

Do you understand Arabic? Or you just wanted to hear it anyway?

 

[Sage]

Do you understand Arabic? Or you just wanted to hear it anyway?

I understand some it ....But Egyptian dialect is very difficult ....plz share...

 

[Max]

Add detail stories from nuetral sources.

 

[Gomig-21]

I understand some it ....But Egyptian dialect is very difficult ....plz share...

Very cool, let me see if I can find it. Egyptian dialect is very difficult? Really? Interesting to hear that obviously because when it's your mother tongue, that's hard to fathom lol! And also I would think it would be the opposite only because much of the Egyptian Arabic that you hear spoken on the street and in these videos is colloquial Arabic, made to be MUCH easier to speak and understand than traditional Arabic. For example, most of the time we don't use the J the way traditional Arabic uses it or any other Arab-speaking country does. For example Friday is Juma'a, but in Egyptian colloquial Arabic we pronounce it as if it is a G. Goma'a is how we say it whereas anywhere else in the Arabic world, it's pronounced Juma'a! lol. Many other examples, too.

Add detail stories from nuetral sources.

Very difficult to do and you probably know why. Most of the information written in western sources were collected from Israeli sources and not Egyptian ones. Throughout the entire history of all the Arab/Israeli wars, the collected information was through the Israeli side only and so what you get is very Israeli-dominated depictions. Some are correct, some are not and some have been omitted completely such as this encounter over the Gulf of Suez. The Israelis never claimed this loss and so it was never recorded anywhere except in Egyptian media and that tends not to be trusted. The also deny the huge losses at the battle of El Mansoura air base. Heck I think they even deny that entire, air battle!

What would be great is to get a precise as possible location of this dogfight from El Mansouri (who is featured in those videos @The SC posted) and mark the location for a marine exploration. I bet you the 2 Israeli phantoms will be sitting at the bottom of the Red Sea in the Gulf of Suez area and what a find that would be.

 

[Gomig-21]

I understand some it ....But Egyptian dialect is very difficult ....plz share...

So this is a portion of the radio call as Al Mansouri is a guest on this show in 2015 and he's explaining the entire story to the host as it happens. In the beginning they play a good portion of the radio call but then he sits down with the host and explains what happened in detail and it's pretty good if you can understand what he says or have a friend who speaks fluent Arabic can translate for you. I'm still looking for the entire radio call because the excitement is incredible.

Basically what he says is they were tasked for interception and were sitting in their MiG-21's when the call came iin that there was 6 enemy aircraft penetrating from the Gulf and flying over certain areas doing reconnaissance. The first 2 aircraft were filming and the other 4 were escorts. So they took off in their 2 MiGs and he talks about how the interception works much faster when you're already just sitting in your plane and waiting, despite how uncomfortable it is because it basically results in being at altitude in 3 minutes. 1 minute to taxi out of the hangar or wherever, 1 minute to take off on the runway and 1 minute to reach altitude. So they headed straight for the Phantoms and when they got to them, ground control tells them not to cross over into the Gulf but it was too late for that because they were already over water lol. So the Israelis saw them and he goes into detail about his experience fighting them and against the Phantom and talks about the comparison between the 2 types of aircraft and the advantage the Phantoms had which was 4 hours flight time due to fuel capacity vs 1-1/2 hours in the MiG-21. 2 seater vs a 1-seat plane so they were essentially 12 pilots vs 2 and the Phantom carried 2 Sparrow missiles which were much more advanced than the Atoll because they can be fired while the aircraft is in any position (he also says they essentially had 48 missiles to 4 missiles in the MiGs LOL but that the Sparrow missile the Israelis had was a "fire & forget" missile) giving them that much more of an advantage while the MiG-21 needed to be straight and level and essentially pointed right at the enemy aircraft to get a successful kill with one of the Atoll missiles. Also that between the 2 MiGs and the 6 Phantoms, they were also quite outnumbered in gun shots, something like 1.300 to 450 bullets or something like that.

Then he talks about their strategy which was knowing how the Israelis dealt with Egyptian aircraft is that they were very familiar with their advantage and knew precisely that the fuel content would be the Egyptian plane's quick downfall and all they had to do was evade until the MiGs burnt off their fuel and had to turn and return home and that's when they could pounce on the MiGs 6 o'clock. So once they made contact, the Phantoms started looping around and doing radius turns and following their squadron commander to cause the Egyptian pilots to chase them and either get shot down by being outnumbered or run out o fuel. So first thing Mansouri does is push his throttle to full and aim his nose right at the lead airfcraft and fired both his missiles and nailed the leading Phantom as it blew up and the scraps fell into the gulf and both pilots ejected into the water. He talks about killing the "head of he snake will then make the body disheveled" and that's what happened. He says then that aggressive move and kill of the leading Phantom just threw the rest of them into a complete unorganized chaos because that was basically a devastating and totally unexpected monkey wrench thrown into their tactics and plan. He had no intentions of playing their games and circling around and seeing who can fly their plane better and all that crap while the Israelis are just waiting for him and his wingman to deplete their fuel, he went straight at them right from the get-go lol.

Interestingly enough he tells the host that the first kill was within 30 seconds of the merge, while the average dogfight would last anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes and in this case, 1 jet was down in 30 seconds and right after that, his wingman flew directly into the formation of the remaining 5 Phantoms and they just spread out in shock as to how aggressive these Egyptian pilots were in their lonely little MiGs. So they actually get into a prolonged dogfight after that initial kill which lasted 13 minutes. He doesn't get into the detail of how the 2nd Phantom was shot down (or even if there was, I might be mistaken about that and only 1 was downed) but he does say that after a 13 minute battle and 1 of their Phantoms shot down, his wingman informs him that there's only 500 litres of fuel left. So they had no choice but to turn back and head home and he dove straight down to low altitude because he knew he didn't have enough fuel to make it back to the airport and had to find somewhere to land. He goes into detail about how he swore to Gamal Abdel Nasser that he would never abandon his aircraft even though the Russians who trained them told them that when you're in that position, get to friendly territory as quick as possible and eject and leave the aircraft behind. But he wouldn't do it and claimed that he wouldn't throw away his aircraft' worth and burden Egypt even more and would do whatever it takes to bring it back. He also talked about not wanting to eject in the shark-infested Red Sea either lol! And that video ends on that note.

So you can hear the wingman telling ground control at the end of that interaction that Mansouri is landing on a roadway and to send out a rescue helicopter to pick him up.

BTW, Mansouri lands successfully on the road despite it being bumpy and really bad coming in at 400 kmph, he sees a vehicle coming in the opposite direction straight at him and so instead of crashing into that car and blowing everything up, he veers off the road onto the desert sand, lifts up his landing gear so it doesn't get damaged and the MiG-21 slides on its belly and comes to a stop. He also gets into detail about the people running up to him thinking he was an Israeli pilot and wanting to beat him up lol!

I'll see if I can find the entire 13 minute radio interaction because you can tell in this short one how intense it gets but in the long version there's a lot more including the elation of shooting the two Israeli aircraft. Here you can hear them warning each other watch out for the other ones above you and the ones behind you etc.
@Amun or @The SC if either of you fellas find that video with the entire battle call on the radio, please post it.

Here it is:

 

[The SC]

Mansoura Air Battle The longest air battles in contemporary history

 

[Sage]

15 minutes of a dogfight is like fighting a whole war by one alone....

 

[Agha Sher]

God bless these heroes.

 

[The SC]