syscom3 said:
That must be the ultimate shame for a jet fighter pilot ................ getting shot down by a prop plane!
YEP!!
http://skyraider.org/skyassn/sartapes/migkill/migkill.htm
even worse, getting shot down by a helicopter!
"The AN-2 strike force rolled in on the target, mistook the Air America ops shack for the
radar site, and proceeded to venti*late it. The aforementioned "anti-aircraft artillery" force- one
little Thai mercenary about five feet tall and all balls- heard the commotion, ran out on the
helicopter pad, stood in the path of the attacking aircraft spraying rockets and bombs everywhere,
and emptied a 27-round clip from his AK-47 into the AN-2, which then crashed and burned. At
this juncture, the second attack aircraft broke of and turned north towards home.
The "air defense interceptor" force was an unarmed Air Amer*ica Huey helicopter
which was by happenstance on the pad at the time, the pilot and flight mechanic having a
Coke in the ops shack. When holes started appearing in the roof, they ran to their Huey and
got airborne, not quite believing the sight of two biplanes fleeing north. Then the Huey pilot,
no slouch in the balls department either, realized that his Huey was faster than the biplanes!
So he did the only thing a real pilot could do-attack!
The Huey overtook the AN-2's a few miles inside North Viet*nam, unknown to the
AN-2's as their rearward visibility is nil. The Huey flew over the rearmost AN-2 and the
helicopter's down-wash stalled out the upper wing of the AN-2. Suddenly the hapless AN-2 pilot
found himself sinking like a stone! So he pulled the yoke back in his lap and further reduced his
forward speed. Mean*while, the Huey flight mechanic, not to be outdone in the macho contest,
crawled out on the Huey's skid and, one-handed, emptied his AK-47 into the cockpit area of the
AN-2, killing or wounding the pilot and copilot. At this point, the AN-2 went into a flat spin and
crashed into a moutainside, but did not burn.
It should come as no surprise that the Air America pilot and flight mechanic found
themselves in a heap of trouble with the State Department REMF's in Vientiane. (REMF is an
acronym. The first three words are Rear, Echelon, and Mother.) In spite of the striped-pants
cookie-pushers' discomfort at (horrors!) an inter*national incident (or perhaps, partly because of
it) these guys were heroes to everybody in the theatre who didn't wear puce panties and talk with
a lisp. They accomplished a couple of firsts: (1) The first and only combat shootdown of a biplane
by a helicopter, and (2) The first known CIA air-to-air victory. Not bad for a couple of spooks."
Full story;
http://home.hiwaay.net/~jlwebs/misc.html