Cooper, Tom and Sipos, Milos, Iraqi
Mirages, The Dassault Mirage Family In Service With The Iraqi Air Force,
1981-1988, Warwick: Helion & Company, 2019
Iraqi Mirages, The Dassault Mirage Family In Service With
The Iraqi Air Force, 1981-1988 covers the development of the Iraqi Air
Force that led to its purchase of the Mirage fighter from France, which became
its most advanced aircraft during the Iran-Iraq War. It places those planes
within the larger operational plans during that conflict. The major argument
was that the Air Force faced a number of problems from the top down, and it was
only at the very end of the war that Iraq overcame these difficulties and
effectively used the Mirages.
Authors Tom Cooper and Milos Sipos started with some
interesting history of the Iraqi Air Force. That started with a growing
frustration with its poor performance in the Arab-Israeli Wars and the
inability to put down various Kurdish revolts. In the 1970s the Soviets refused
to re-supply the Air Force during the latest Kurdish uprising and was forcing
planes upon it that it didn’t order. The Iraqis felt insulted and that gave them
the incentive to go to Paris and work out a deal in 1977 to buy Mirage jets. From
1981-1988 France delivered 86 Mirage fighters and another 15 trainers. This
would prove very important because the Soviet planes they had were vastly
inferior to the Iranian F-4 Phantoms and F-14 Tomcats they would eventually
fight. The Mirages started a technological revolution within the Air Force as
they had the latest electronic counter measures, anti-radar equipment, and
missiles. Additionally, France provided advisers that actually planned some of
the more adventurous operations. The Iraqis would have been inferior to the
Iranians throughout the war without the French.
The book emphasizes that it took almost until the end of the
war for the Iraqis to fully utilize these new weapons. One major problem was
the inexperience of the Iraqi pilots. They were deathly afraid of the Iranian
F-4s and F-14s. Their American radar and missile systems were superior to the
MiGs and Sukhois most of the Iraqis flew and even the initial Mirages until
they were outfitted with new counter measures. That led the Iraqi pilots to
flee every time they detected the Iranians. In those rare times they tried to
attack the U.S. made jets the Iraqis fired their missiles at maximum range and
then retreated not even seeing if they hit anything or not. Second, Saddam
mismanaged the war. Early on after Iraq lost the initiative Saddam ordered that
no operation be launched that might result in the loss of Iraqi planes. He and
the Iraqi command didn’t understand the use of air power to begin with. In 1985
for instance, Iran launched an operation to try to seize the city of Basra.
Saddam ordered the Air Force to attack Iranian cities instead of the Iranian
troops. The Air Force constantly shifted its targets from Iranian oil terminals
to shipping to ground support to urban areas. Thus, after many tries Iraq
finally damaged Kharg Island Iran’s main oil terminal in 1986, but then the Air
Force was tasked with hitting another oil terminal allowing Tehran to repair
Kharg. Saddam also began giving out medals and money to Iraqi pilots regardless
of their performance, which made them reluctant to speak up about the problems
with the war. Third, Iraq lacked effective targeting and intelligence to effectively
use its planes. During its campaign to attack shipping in the Persian Gulf the
Iraqis would simply fire upon the first thing that came up on their radar. That
led ironically to the first two ships being hit containing Kuwaiti oil that was
helping Baghdad pay for the war. They also didn’t know what the Exocet missiles
they bought from France could do to large tankers and didn’t have the
intelligence to check its results. That led to Iraq to claim a huge number of
ships being sunk that was a complete exaggeration. Baghdad was also unaware of
the ship convoys Iran was running in the northern Persian Gulf that delivered
men and material, which was the key to all of the major military operations of
the war. It wasn’t until 1988 the last year of the war that the Iraqis were able
to strike a strategic victory when it bombed a number of refineries that led to
fuel shortages and trapped the majority of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard
units in the north for the rest of the war. Not until the end of the conflict
did Iraq mass its planes for major attacks upon the Iranian ground forces often
times using chemical weapons. This was the highlight of the book. It
meticulously went through all the major operations and the Iraqi strategy or
lack thereof. It placed the Mirages within this larger picture to show whether
they and the Air Force in general was effective or not. For most of the war
they were not. It took years for the Iraqis to figure out how the French jets,
which were the best of anything they had, should be utilized. Without this
analysis there would have been no real way to determine whether the Mirages
were productive or not.
The book is full of pictures, has some graphics to
illustrate the tactics the Iraqis developed during the war, along with a few
maps. The main drawback as with many military histories is the plethora of
abbreviations. A reader can get loss in how many are used such as when Cooper
and Milos describe an operation and all the equipment the Mirages were decked
out in. Luckily, there’s a glossary at the start of the book.
The air war is one of the least well known parts of the
Iran-Iraq conflict. This one volume provides a great overview. The Iraqi Air
Force closely paralleled the developments on the land. First, there was initial
confusion about how to fight the war. Then there was a long period trying to
figure out how to overcome the Iranian advantages and the interference from
Saddam. Finally, towards the end the Iraqis were able to launch successful
offensive operations and led to a turning of the tide. The Mirages were
integral to this eventual victory.
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