Ben Thompson marvels at Iranian pilot Jalil Zandi:
I don’t know, maybe this is common knowledge or some shit, but I had no idea that friggin’ Iran was the only other country in the world that operates the F-14 Tomcat, and that they still have twenty-something operational aircraft to this day.
Apparently, back in the early 70s the pro-western Shah of Iran had a big problem with the fucking Soviets flying bullshit recon flights over his airspace, so he went to the USA and asked if we had anything capable of blasting a MiG-25 Foxbat out of the sky. The US was like, “well, we got F-14 Tomcats and F-15 Eagles, you pick,” so the Shah bought two billion dollars’ worth of F-14s and a missiles and other stuff to go with it. Then he sent a bunch of his best pilots and mechanics to the states to be trained by US Navy personnel in the operation and maintenance of the aircraft. By 1979, Iran had almost 80 F-14s and over 120 qualified pilots to fly them. The crazy thing is that some folks think this two billion in funds actually kept the F-14 project alive, because military high command was considering just scrapping it.
We’d given him all this shit because we wanted him to use it to kill Russians. Instead, he got his ass overthrown by a radical Shi’a Muslim cleric known as the Ayatolla, who pretty much hated the USA and everything it stood for but kept the Tomcats for himself anyways because, let’s be honest, they’re really fucking cool.
Iranian Air Force Major Jalil Zandi was a daredevil, balls-to-the-wall fighter pilot with an awesome ‘stache, a badass love of awesome aviator sunglasses, and a reputation for taking the Highway to the Danger Zone and doing the sort of awesome coffee-spilling Ghost Rider requesting fly by shit that got Maverick in trouble like all the time. A daredevil asskicker who pulled three Gs every time he threw on a pair of shades, Zandi had been one of the pilots hand-selected to visit the United States and train on the Tomcat with the most badass pilots the US Navy had to offer. So, naturally, when the Ayatolla came to power and declared a new ultra-conservative Islamic republic, Jalil Zandi was one of the first guys arrested at gunpoint in the middle of the night, thrown in jail, and sentenced to ten years in prison for disloyalty to the new regime. Because apparently the fact that this guy had once set foot in the United States far outweighed the benefits of having a highly-trained F-14 Tomcat pilot on his flight roster.
This happened across the country. Many of the F-14 pilots and techs who had trained in the states were arrested or killed, but not before some of the techs sabotaged the aircraft and missiles on their way out the door.
In 1980, however, when a massive rampaging Iraqi tank army under Saddam Hussein launched a full-scale invasion of Iran, the Ayatolla changed his mind and had his former pilots released from prison to save their country from utter destruction at the hands of an Iraqi madman.
Amazingly, Jalil Zandi walked out of prison, dusted off his flight suit, clenched his teeth, and resolved to fight for his country no matter what.
Continued below the fold -
For the next EIGHT YEARS, Jalil Zandi was in pretty much constant combat against the MiGs and Mirages of the Iraqi Air Force. Flying at the head of an ever-shrinking operational force of F-14 Tomcat fighters (the United States refused to ship replacement parts, missiles, or weapons for the Tomcat, so by 1986 the operational strength of the Iranian Tomcat fighter wing had dropped from 80 to 25), Zandi constantly took to the air and flew straight-on into ever-increasing swarms of enemy fighters that vastly outnumbered him. Blasting left and right with missiles and his 20mm Vulcan gun, Zandi shredded enemy MiGs without mercy. He was tasked primarily with defending Iranian oil fields, sometimes taking to the air against entire squadrons of Iraqi Air Force units.
In one of his first engagements, Zandi blasted a pair of MiG-23s on his own, nailing one with a long-range Phoenix missile and the other with a Sidewinder. In another engagement he escorted a massive Iranian oil tanker plane on a dangerous run deep through Iraqi airspace and found himself tangling with a squadron of MiGs. The plane he was escorting survived.
Counting air-to-air kills has always been an exercise in making yourself completely fucking insane, and it’s especially true with a war like the Iran-Iraq War where every side is run by an intense Orwelllian propaganda machine that claims every single battle was won because their guys ran out and killed ten thousand of the enemy with their bare hands without losing a single soldier. Iran officially credits Major Jalil Zandi with destroying eight enemy aircraft, with three more listed as “probable” to bring his total to 11 – making him a two-time fighter ace. Iraq claims he only shot down three, which, incidentally, would still be enough to tie the number of kills earned by the United States’ top-scoring fighter pilot of the supersonic age. We’ll never actually know the truth, but I’d argue that the fact this dude survived eight years of non-stop war in the cockpit of an F-14 despite limited repair facilities, no backup, no ability to replace his missiles or ammunition, and being constantly outnumbered by huge margins is more than evidence enough that this guy fucking kicks ass.
Major Zandi’s final fight took place in October of 1988, when he found himself going up against eight badass French-built Mirage F1 fighters. Zandi fought hard, scoring two unconfirmed kills in the engagement, but eventually was shot to shit and had to bug out of there. He somehow limped his aircraft (which by this point looked like Charlie Sheen’s plane at the end of Hot Shots) across the Iranian border, then ejected when his second engine shut down on him. His F-14 crashed and burned, but he made it back to base in one piece and spent the rest of the war running things from the ground as a General. Which ain’t bad. He retired in 2001.