Last fighter/bomber death by enemy fire?

[FallingOsh]

Does anyone know when the last fighter or bomber pilot was killed by enemy fire?

Yes I've used the search function and google.

[ClearedHot]

Fighter Pilot - Desert Storm

Bomber Pilot - Vietnam

[Guest Hoser]

There was an F-15E lost during OIF. Capt Eric "Boot" Das and Ltc Bill "Salty" Watkins. It was attritubed as a combat loss, but they really don't know what happened.

RIP.

Cap-10

Edited August 2, 2009 by Cap-10

[Guest ChickDriver]

I thought it was briefed as CFIT, post-defensive reaction from a mud spike?

[Hacker]

Originally posted by ChickDriver:

I thought it was briefed as CFIT, post-defensive reaction from a mud spike?

It wasn't "briefed" as anything...it was officially called a "combat loss" by the investigating board with no further information added about what happened.

Many pilots who were there, myself included, think that the cause of the crash was spatial-d, but that's pure speculation based on a lot of circumstantial evidence. The fact of the matter is that it just as easily could have been AAA or the like that caused them to crash because we don't have anywhere near all the information needed to really make a determination.

There was a similar crash in Desert Storm where a group of F-15Es was threat reacting while low altitude and everyone similarly thinks that they reacted themselves into the dirt.

[ 06. July 2006, 04:55: Message edited by: Hacker ]

[ClearedHot]

Same thing happened to an F-111 during the Lybia raid...they think.

[B-O-double-Z]

There were two A-10 fatalities in Desert Storm.

One involved a shootdown where the pilot was believed to be killed when the missile impacted the aircraft (Steve Phyllis). No ejection attempted.

The other involved a pilot attempting to land a severely damaged A-10 ("Olie" Olson). He crashed during landing and was killed on impact.

[Guest Rainman A-10]

My experience has been when you ask any fighter pilot who has flown in combat what the worst missions he ever flew were he will undoubtedly say "Well, the weather was total shit" at some point during the story. I've heard that guys from WWII through OEF/OIF. Mother Nature is a cruel b1tch.

I was flying in the same target area (about 20 miles away) on the night Boots and Salty crashed. We searched until bingo and we scrambled the Sandys. We found the crash site and looked for hours and no one ever came up on the radio. I didn't talk directly to anyone else in the Mudhen flight but the words were passed to us via AWACS that the Flt Lead/Wingman said it was spatial D. I assumed until now that they had made a radio call before they crashed.

Spatial D was easy to believe since the weather was total shit. I doubt anyone who delivered ordnance or threat reacted that night didn't do at least one unusual attitude recovery. I was in the middle of my third one of the night when AWACS called me. All I was doing at the time was climbing out after going down to about 2000 AGL for target ID on what ended up being a crane parked in a grove of palm trees. It was the perfect setup for spatial D since the targeting pod could see just fine but the inflight vis was crap. The green milk bowl of death. You could have a perfect image of the target on the screen but when you tried to fire the marker it would just end in the haze at what seemed like a few hundred feet from the jet. Put out a flare and the whole world goes upside down.

Not good.

Them them...

[Hacker]

I was also up in the vicinity of Tikrit that night, several hours earlier.

Rainman Johnson is right...it sucked. I was flying with an ADI up the entire time I was in that area because the vis was terrible.

[scoobs]

What about that Navy pilot Scott Sphicer(sp)? Did they ever find his body?

[VL-16]

I don't think he was ever pronounced KIA (no body yet)...but who knows.

[Steve Davies]

CH

From talking to a couple of guys on the raid who saw Karma 52 go down, and based on the autopsy reports of the one guy eventually repatriated, the general view is that it is more likely that they ejected following a SA-3 impact on the right side of the jet.

[ClearedHot]

Originally posted by Steve Davies:

CH

From talking to a couple of guys on the raid who saw Karma 52 go down, and based on the autopsy reports of the one guy eventually repatriated, the general view is that it is more likely that they ejected following a SA-3 impact on the right side of the jet.

Steve,

I've heard that as well, but I also have a good friend who was on the raid, and to this day he believes they flew it into the ground.

[Guest Hoser]

An incase anyone was wondering, Karma 52 was the callsign of the F-111 lost during El Dorado Canyon, not the F-15E during OIF.

Cap-10

Edited August 2, 2009 by Cap-10

[M2]

Originally posted by scoobs:

What about that Navy pilot Scott Sphicer(sp)? Did they ever find his body?

Thursday, September 8, 2005, 12:38 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Navy has been unable to determine whether Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher, the fighter pilot shot down over Iraq in January 1991, is dead or alive, but it decided to keep his official status "missing/captured" and intensify investigative efforts.

More info here.

Cheers! M2

[M2]

Or better yet...

At the end of the Gulf War, Speicher was listed as "killed in action". In January 2001, the Secretary of the Navy changed his status to "missing in action"; according to Scott Ritter, this was "the first time the Pentagon ever made such a reversal". His status was changed again, to "missing/captured", on October 11, 2002, one day after the United States Congress authorized the use of military force in Iraq. (source)

Cheers! M2

[Guest OL' Patch]

Originally posted by ClearedHot:

but I also have a good friend who was on the raid, and to this day he believes they flew it into the ground.

"2"

OL' Patch

[Guest GTPilot]

How bout recent non fighter/bomber losses? I know the "new" C-130W was built to replace a few C-130 losses in combat. Were these losses the most recent?

[Champ Kind]

If you want to know more about the Speicher story, I'd recommend the book "No One Left Behind".

[Mickey]

I was on board the AWACS the night the strike eagle went down in OIF. Rainman, I might have made that call to you...I was the check-in controller. What I was told by the flight lead was he didn't believe it to be caused by enemy fire (spatial D or threat reaction). We had aircraft (including a KC-135R) in that area the rest of the night that never got shot at. If I remember correctly, that was the same night a strike eagle had trapped fuel and had to divert and an EA-6B closed down PSAB for a couple of hours. It was the worst night of the war for me.

[uhhello]

Good news for the family

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) has positively identified remains recovered in Iraq as those of Captain Michael Scott Speicher. Captain Speicher was shot down flying a combat mission in an F/A-18 Hornet over west-central Iraq on January 17th, 1991 during Operation Desert Storm

http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/release.aspx?releaseid=12862

[Prosuper]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/world/middleeast/03speicher.html?smid=fb-share

[Day Man]

Welcome home, Captain.

[Blue]

1 hour ago, Prosuper said:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/world/middleeast/03speicher.html?smid=fb-share

Article published about seven years ago.......

[Lawman]

How bout recent non fighter/bomber losses? I know the "new" C-130W was built to replace a few C-130 losses in combat. Were these losses the most recent?

Spirit 03 was the last (maybe only?) AC-130 shot down.

It happened during Desert Storm at the battle of Khafji in the early morning dawn. They stayed on station to service a call from the Marines and ended up getting hit with an SA-7. They crashed out to see with no survivors.