Posted on 11/27/2015 7:21:05 AM PST by Revski
On my bike while exercising in the morning, I stopped by the local cemetery and at the grave site of a American pilot, Captain Michael Scott Speicher, of the Golf war who was the first pilot shot down and his remains were found in the Iraq about 18 years later. I sing A-Capella the hymn, Down At The Cross.
A credit in your ledger of life.
Your post prompted me to look it up...
LCDR Scott Speicher was flying an F/A-18 Hornet fighter, BuNo. 163484, when he was shot down 100 miles west of Baghdad, on the night of January 17, 1991, the first night of Operation Desert Storm.[1][2] His plane crashed in a remote, uninhabited wasteland[2] known as Tulul ad Dulaym 33°14′35.81″N 42°21′18.14″E.[6] He was the first combat casualty for American forces in the war.
The U.S. Navy maintained in a 1997 document that Speicher was downed by a surface-to-air missile
However, an unclassified summary of a 2001 CIA report suggests that Speicher’s aircraft was shot down by a missile fired from an Iraqi aircraft, most likely a MiG-25, flown by Lieutenant Zuhair Dawood, 84th squadron of the Iraqi Air Force. Speicher was at 28,000 feet and travelling at 0.92 Mach (540 Knots) when the front of the aircraft suffered a catastrophic event.
The impact from the R-40 missile threw the aircraft laterally off its flight path between fifty and sixty degrees with a resulting 6 g minimum load. A pilot on the same mission stated: “I’m telling you right now, don’t believe what you’re being told. It was that MiG that shot Spike down”
The one thing you **can count on** - the FedGov will lie to your face at every turn and at every junction.
Sadly, his death and those of many others were for naught....
“veteran of the golf war”
For those ho take the game seriously.
Thanks and I am thankful for all our veterans.
Glory.
I believe some how his death was not in vain.
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