In the early morning hours of Jan. 26, 2012, an Iranian F-14A (serial 3-6062 that can be seen here) was scrambled to intercept a ‘UFO’ near the port city of Bushehr in south of Iran. Less than 5 minutes into the flight, the mighty ‘Tomcat’ disappeared from the ground control radar. The pilot and RIO both lost their lives in the crash.
So far the Iranian regime has attributed the cause of this terrible incident to some unknown technical failures.
But that was not the case.
The ‘3-6062’ F-14 was one of the best maintained aircraft in the Iranian Air Force’s inventory assigned to critical ‘QRA’ duties in the important port city of Bushehr where Iran’s sole nuclear reactor is also located.
But what was the cause of this mysterious crash?
The Iranian regime has not revealed much beyond its official line that the crash was due to technical issues. But now it can reliably be said that the ‘Revolutionary Guards’ air defense near Bushehr 6th tactical air base shot this valuable ‘Tomcat’ down.
The regular air force officers I spoke with over the past week claim that the IRGC’s air defense personnel are “totally unfamiliar” with the type of aircraft flying for their own country. One of them told me that the ‘IRGC’ AAA personnel fire at anything that might scare them. Although my guess is that they fire at all high speed flying objects out of fear of getting reprimanded for not actually fighting.
This story exposes an existing gap between the regular armed forces and their more radical revolutionary guards’ comrades. A gap that could be exploited during a coalition air strike to de-fang the Iranian regime and its nuclear weapons facilities.
Winston Smith for TheAviationist.com
Top image: IRIAF
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That’s false. Criticism against some claims (F-313 Qaher and few other oddities) is absolutely no meant to be against Iranians or Iran, is just for the sake of truth. BTW, article was written by an Iranian.
Well put
What makes you think anything here is anti-Iranian?
If you build a complete joke of a toy mockup, and tell the world you’ve built a new stealth fighter – expect to be laughed at. If you have a 7th grader photoshop your failed missile launch with a clone tool, and release it to international media to show your missile launching prowess – expect to be laughed at.
It has nothing to do with “anti-Iranian”. It’s “anti-bullshit.”
“If you build a complete joke of a toy mockup, and tell the world you’ve built a new stealth fighter – expect to be laughed at”
iran send stealth fighter to CNN BBC or NBC ant etc ?
It’d prototype and mockup but you … :)
every things is mockup . all thing.
http://rt.com/news/iran-production-sayyad-missile-485/
What are you talking about?
The Qaher 313 is a joke. A toy. A laughing stock.
your right our engineer ?
A usual incident by iranian. you can find similar stories in recent years in web.
Thought the Iranian F-14’s were grounded due to lack of parts/spares?