On January 7th, 1981, a single F-14 Tomcat brought down three Iraqi MiG-23 aircraft, but how? Iranian F-14 Tomcats fought the Iraqi Air Force in the early days of the Iran-Iraq War, shooting down both fighters and bombers. An Iranian F-14 Tomcat pilot and his radar intercept officer reacted to sightings of an unidentified aircraft flying near Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, on that particular day in January. The Tomcat discovered that the intruder was actually three Iraqi MiG-23s, most likely flying toward an island-area oil rig. Although Iranian ground radar could not see all three, the pilots were given permission to engage the MiGs. What you need to understand is that there were three MiGs flying in a formation like this. The RIO instructed the pilot to target the middle MiG in the expectation that he would damage the other two sufficiently to cause them to separate. And almost exactly that is what happened. The American-made Phoenix missile's explosive release was so potent that it brought down all three of the enemy aircraft after the pilot shot the MiG in the middle. The following day, Kharg Island was home to the remains of all three MiGs.
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