1992 Helped an Eagle chase a Mirage

On April 15th 2020 my nephew Brian called me at the office. An old friend who had been with me when I flew Eagles at DPRO McDonnell Douglas in St Louis in the early 1990s had just watched the first takeoff of the very first F-15QA designed for Qatar make it’s first flight.

At the bottom of the article it was mentioned these new Eagles were being purchased to replace their French made Mirage 2000 jets.

I’ve flown this same Viking takeoff many times doing test flights at McDonnell Douglas. I helped work on the Saudi F-15S aircraft during that time, but that wasn’t what made me thing of this story. It was the Mirage…

SO ON TO THE STORY….

It was 1992 and I was flying F-111E aircraft at RAF Upper Heyford. My crewmate and I had taken an F-111 to RAF Mildenhall for an airshow.

While we were there a visiting F-15 performed a demonstration. Limited to the US Military imposed restrictions on our demonstration flights, they did a fine demo, but it just wasn’t loud or in your face. If I remember correctly USAFE wouldn’t let us go lower than 1,500′ or go faster than 500 knots.

A visiting French Mirage 2000 wasn’t held to the same restrictions. He flew much lower, closer to the crowds, and much faster. As I stood in front of my jet on the show flightline visiting civilians came up and asked me why the Mirage was so much more “powerful” than the Eagle. Telling them about airshow restrictions just didn’t inspire them. The French were winning the day. But we had a plan…..

The next day all of our aircraft were taxing out for rapid departures. A very good sized crowd of airshow visitors gathered to watch all the airplanes depart.

As we entered the taxiway, we were careful to wedge our big, beautiful F-111 into the fray just ahead of our F-15 buddy.

When we approached a planned intersection where we knew the Mirage would pass we “accidentally” rolled just a few feet too far forward, and a bit off to the right of the taxiway right after the Mirage taxied by. We immediately called our apology over ground and all the airplanes behind the mirage stopped in position waiting for ground to sort it out.

That sneaky F-15 then squeezed by us in the space we left to our left side and rapidly taxied up behind the Mirage. (Giving us a huge thumbs up as he passed.)

The Mirage rolled for takeoff and did a nice 60-degree climb out of the field, no doubt feeling like king of the world.

The Eagle, who was cleared immediately after the Mirage lifted off, wasted no time lighting the blowers and rolling. He performed a max performance takeoff, quickly rotating to climb, and accelerate, going straight up.

As the Eagle climbed past the Mirage with burner cans glowing bright, he began to perform aileron rolls, still going straight up as it rocket past the Mirage with vortices trailing off his wingtips.

We celebrated in the cockpit as our Eagle buddy got to show just a little bit of what his airplane could do.

When we got back to Heyford an SP who was at the airshow asked me why the Eagle did that on departure. My answer was, “Because he can.”

Reading in 2020 about the latest Eagle, the F-15QA is replacing Mirage 2000s, it made me smile a bit. History repeats itself…