Air Raid to Al-Waleed (16)‎

The Story of Demolishing Fighters and the Equipment in Al-Waleed Triple Military Bases ‎Known as H-3‎

2016-4-24

Air Raid to Al-Waleed (H-3‎)‎

The Story of Demolishing Fighters and the Equipment in Al-Waleed Triple Military Bases ‎Known as H-3‎

By: Brigadier General Ahmad Mehrnia

Tehran, Sooreh Mehr Publications Company

‎2010 (Persian Version)‎

Translated by: Zahra Hosseinian

At 3:30 Am, according to the plan, several cars are sent to the company-provided houses of base and drivers shortly stop in front of pilots’ houses, according to the list of names and addresses; and pick up these pilots - who have got up from their warm bed strong-willed and determined to rush forward defeated enemy - and take them to the command post. There have ever no precedent for presenting of such a numerous groups together to carry out an operation at this time. All of them perform their ablution to pray for victory over the enemy, with the exhilarating sound of Adhan. Today, after nearly three decades, some participant pilots mention the spiritual and mystical state of that pray, when they want to speak about the operation.

The leader of flight group informs the attendance how the mission will be done, in a general explanation. Important points and necessary orders are conveyed to the pilots with high accuracy and scrupulously. In addition, it is announced that after the last refueling, the group will divide into three groups and each one is targeting one base. The names and order of flights in the rout during the attack is written on the blackboard. Now, each of the pilots knows what to do.

But there had been a brilliant idea; since the flight of two supertankers inside Iraq was very risky and there is a possibility of Phantoms’ detection by enemy radar, the flight leader - in coordination with Izadseta and Golchin - had designed another rout, which passes along the far eastern border into Syria, as a good alternative (plan B) in addition to the rout shown in Figure 12, regarding the reluctance of authorities for the use of Syrian territory.

As will be described in detail, Baratpour and Golchin give the map of this plan to the pilots of front cabin in a more private meeting, and say: "If we see the situation is good, we will traverse the alternative route inside the Syria territory, rather than continuing from inside edge of Iraq boundary to the south, which is extraordinary risky." Members of the group confirmed this idea by saying words like great, well done, and …, and after uttering a Salavat, leaders of triple groups are separately engaged in justification. Then, pilots of each aircraft review together the calculation of the route, the marked spots on the map, fuel status at any point, and how to attack and arming the munitions. During an hour and a quarter, all normal and emergency conditions are studied and a glorious pray brings to an end this session of justification. Pilots head to flying equipment room and wear their G-suit and test their flight cap and mask in the terms of breathing easily and the good function of its microphone. They set the map and information paper on the leg part of G-suit and pass under the Quran, which is embedded in the output, to take the car and to their aircraft hangar.

The staff of maintain battalion, who all are busy doing the last necessary checks and relevant affairs in the aircrafts parking place, wait for pilots to reach the hangar.

Liberated prisoner, Second Brigadier General Manouchehr Ravadgar and his pilot in the rare cabin, Col. Ahmad Soleimani in the H-3 operation, (2008)

Memory of retired pilot, Col. Ahmad Soleimani, who was an experienced pilot in the rear cabin at the time of operation, speaks of the atmosphere of that day:

"I was ordered to go to Tehran from Hamedan as an officer. At the 14^th Farvardin, we were asked to be present at the command post for justification. Surprisingly, I saw the number of us is more than I expected; at least twenty-two pilots and copilots during Nowruz holidays! It was strange. It must be a very important mission. However, justification was done in general and I heard the limits of ‘Khanaqin’ and ‘Jalula’ cities, which had relatively strong defense, will be our target.

Because so many of us were officers, we gathered in the guest house at night to rest, and teased each other, while conversed. One or two of our colleagues were preparing dinner and salad. First Lt. Javanmardi prepared salad, and due to his sense of humor, he had added vinegar, lime juice, verjuice … and everything he found for seasoning; so that two or three guys felt ill a little after having the salad. When someone complained, another one responded: "man! It is just tonight. We go to that world tomorrow and everything else will be ok!" Every few seconds, one of guys would speak about the dangerous of mission and remind us that tomorrow morning we’ll drink the sweet syrup of Martyrdom! I remember that Lt. Gholam Ali Ashkan was among us and every time we spoke of dying, he said: "guys! I swear you to ‘death of Ali’ don’t say this." As he repeated ‘death of Ali’ very much, we named him ‘Ashkan Death-of- Ali’ from that night.

Col. Gholam Ali Ashkan, expert pilot in the rear cabin with the rank of Lieutenant next to a Phantom, new image (2009).

After two or three times warning and failure in obtaining result, Mahmoud Khazraei[1] went out of our room. From that year so far, the memory of each moment of being together that night has remained in my mind, and I’m going hopefully to record details of this memorable night in my memoirs, one day in the future.

The order of flights was still unknown and we didn’t know who will be the leader and who will fly with whom. It was obvious that almost most of group consists of younger pilots. There was no appearance of officials and oldsters. For this reason, we would guess that the mission should be very dangerous and difficult, and we had got a little annoyed. That tough night elapsed with joke and laugh and minibuses picked us up in the morning. We were a load off our mind, when got to the command post and saw that Major Baratpour, operation deputy of bas is the leader of flight group and Col. Golchin also is present in the group. We breathed a sigh of relief and we promised to each other that the flight will be good and safe! But when they introduced the target, we were shocked and thought that they joke, because we waited targets in pre-mentioned areas. We realized that we didn’t think so true and looked forward to be justified about the operation. After planning the men in the flight group, I saw my situation is the worst. Because I was of older rear cabin pilots, and the pilot of front cabin, Manouchehr Ravadgar, was very skilled, so we should flew in the number 8 flight, the last aircraft of flight group. Thus, the possibility of risk for us was more than others. But as usual, we trusted on God and by entrusting their fate to His powerful hand, we provided flight arrangements and checked the maps; and then headed to the aircrafts’ hangar with the group to depart for a mission its risk was about 90 percent."

About the protection of information in the operation, Amir Baratpour said:

"I ordered that all base communications with outside and even internal communications to be cut off, so no one can telecommunicate data to others, as soon as we go to turn the aircrafts on.

Usually, when pilots knew that they attended in a combat operation, spoke about with their wives somehow, and recommended for resolving issues that might occur in the event of their imprisonment or martyrdom. But since this time it had been stressed very much about the confidentiality of mission, most women were unaware of the attendance of her husband in a combat operation. My wife, especially, didn’t know about my flight at all. But the late Eskandari’s wife, who apparently had been aware of the morning flight of his husband with me, had taken time from the moment she had heard the sound of aircrafts’ takeoff, and had her eyes glued to the sky to see when we will land, When she realized - by comparing the time of this operation to previous ones - her husband has been late and hasn’t return; first tried to hear about Mahmoud from base officials, but the phones didn’t ring. She also didn’t find anyone to answer her convincingly; so, she went to our house and saw my wife calmly busy doing chores. Surprised, she asked: "How can you be so carefree? Our husbands have flown three hours and still haven’t backed!" Therefore, my wife informed about the story, and accompanied by her guest pray for our returning, with indescribable anxiety.

However, justification of flight was done and participant pilots were given Iraqi dinars and dollars, so if they involved in an emergency state inside enemy territory by any chance, can meet their basic needs and be rescued."

To be continued…