Brigadier General Farajollah Baratpour and Manouchehr Ravadgar (Major)

A Phantom, as a reservation, must accompany the group until taking off the runway, i.e. up the flight group runway. The pilot of these aircrafts were:

  First Lt. Iraj Mohebi in the front cabin / Lt. (unknown) in the rear cabin.

 Col. Pilot Mahmoud Eskandari, liberated prisoner and pilot of rear cabin, Kaveh Koohpayeh Araghi

Two aircrafts also were considered as reservation flights; they must accompany the group until after second stage of refueling and near the North West of the country border; and if they won't be needed, return to base. The pilots' names of these two reservation flights were:

• First Reservation: Capt. Mohammad Atighehchi in the front cabin / First Lt. Ali Kadkhodaie in the rear cabin.
• Second Reservation: Capt. Ibrahim Fakhar in the front cabin / First Lt. Ali Ganj in the rear cabin.

Amir Second Brigadier General pilot Farajollah Baratpour, the leader of two flight groups says:

"At March 19^th 1981, I and Lt. Col. Golchin, commander of fighter third base, were summoned to the commander's office of Air Force in Tehran. Fakoori talked about implementation of mentioned mission at the date of April 4^th 1981. It was supposed that no one, except us, was not aware of the operation date. Because of using tanker aircrafts for delivering fuel and modern F-14 and F-5 fighters in the operation, several days later a meeting was held in the command post of Air Force with the presentation of responsible officials of these units. At the meeting, all officials were justified about their responsibility in the operation. And because the Nowruz came close, they insisted to know the time of operation to adjust Nowruz programs of their units, but that was not possible. So, without being aware of the place and date of the mission, they left the meeting and waited until the day and hours of operation comes.

I was operation deputy of base and in addition to the heavy responsibility of operation, always would think about how to carry out this unprecedented operation better and safer. If I would command that ten aircrafts to be armed at operation night, peoples must be suspected. At that time evidences indicated that some of our sensitive overseas operations would leak out. Pilots would say that before they reach to the target or the enemy's defensive weapons, the enemy would strike them on their way. Unfortunately, I should say that this was true, because a number of them were arrested and punished during the war.

So, I decided to arrange several plans to load a number of aircrafts with different ammunition that I was intended. A few days before the mission I ordered five aircrafts to be equipped with considered ammunition. Then I pretended that the mission has been canceled, but I asked the battalion of ammunition maintenance not to disassemble the ammunition. I said we wait to see what will happen! I did this two or three times else, so that we had exactly ten ready-to-operation aircrafts until the day of operation, while no one would guess whether there will be a mission eventually! Because this event persisted a few days, nobody noticed the main intention.

At March 31th 1981, the operational instructions of mission, with all attachments and appendices, were sent from headquarters in Tehran to fighter third base in Hamedan by special courier, and implementation of operation was established.

At April 2th 1981, Capt. Iraj Osareh, who was one of the main candidates for flying, asked me a leave. I wanted very much to tell him it is not possible and he should stay in the base for an important mission, but it was not advisable. It looked like that my disagreement with his request led to leaking out the mission and all realized that big news is coming, so I signed his leave paper.

Three days to operation, the Commander of Air Force phoned me and asked in riddles: 'Which pilots do you want to be sent from Tehran or other bases?' I said: 'No one needs. I will plan using the pilots who are present in the base.' He insisted several times that he had more skilled guys in mind, but I said, sir, there is no need. Finally, mentioning the name of one of the relatively weak pilots, he asked: 'would not wish to appoint such a person in the flight group?' I said, 'If need be, I'll also do that!' However, I called the considered group at afternoon of operation night and with a brief explanation, informed them the implementation of an important operation without disclosing the place of it; I asked them to go to rest completely, so that to be ready for this mission."

To be continued…