Air Combat - 1989 Gulf of Sidra Incident 

People today dont understand how tense the situation was between Libya and the U.S. then. Just four years earlier, Doc Brown, a U.S. citizen, had stolen plutonium from the Libyans to power his time machine.

It's amazing how low-res all the planes were back then, before they had HD aircraft...

You forgot the part where he fly's upside down and takes a picture of the other pilot.

I do miss seeing the F-14 Tomcat on carrier decks. 6:57-"I can't, I ain't got a f@!*king tone!"

Why did the Libyian navy switch their ships to glass bottoms? So they could keep track of their air force!

The United States military. The worlds leading distributor of MIG parts.

Was laughing at how one F-14 was always in full afterburner but never went any faster than the other F-14.

The F-14’s ARE NOT descending to confuse the enemies radar with the ocean clutter - they are descending so that the powerful radars are looking up with no clutter & their missiles will have a better chance of hitting their targets with no clutter.

"I dont have fuckng tone" 😂😁

Thank you for the clearest description of what happened that day. There are other videos containing the audio from the action but they lack the clarity which your video provides. Well done.

I saw an F-14 at an airshow in Eau Claire WI back in the '80s. Most amazing aircraft performance I've ever seen, from an airplane that was absolutely huge.

Well, if they weren't hostile, they were extremely dumb. Flying toward a battle group....flying toward two navy Tomcats at that time in history in that area. Not real wise.

This was a significant event in my life, just over 30 years ago. At the time, I was commanding the closest U.S. and NATO bases to the incident on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Thirty-three months earlier in April 1986, prior to my assumption of command, Libya had fired two Scud missiles at my base. We were in a constant state of readiness for further attacks. A few minutes after the event, I received a STU-II call from 6th Fleet Intelligence at La Madelena, advising me of the incident and other relevant facts. At that precise moment, I had a large, C-53 Sea Stallion helicopter from Sigonella, Sicily preparing to take off from my base, direct flight to Tel Aviv. I had to make an immediate judgment call to ground the helicopter, and ordered the unarmed aircraft's commander to shut down. Had they taken off, their route would have taken them into very hostile airspace with no defenses. The A/C was furious at my order until I told him why I grounded him; he calmed down pretty quickly. There were a number of events through that night and over the next few days. We had recon aircraft flying constant circles over the base for several days, and NATO warships making pickets around Lampedusa and the other Pelagie Islands. We put the six-person crew of the helicopter up on our base for the night. We gave them a great meal, and despite the fact that I ordered THREATCON CHARLIE for the base, I think they managed to have a good time. They left late the following morning, but flew directly back to Sicily. I slept on a sofa in the wardroom to make my cabin available to the two women on the crew. Late that night, we had a little excitement when our external security forces, an Italian special forces team, decided to make an unannounced survey of our perimeter with all of their light off. It is to the great credit of Mike Loy and the other watchstanders that they didn't fire on the Italians but instead came to the wardroom and got me. The next evening, I got another call from 6th Fleet, advising me that Libyan leader Col. Gadaffi had threatened my life and the life of the U.S. Navy officer in command at NAS Sigonella, Sicily. My response to that news was, "Couldn't I just invite Gadaffi over for coffee and talk about It?" (Yes, I was kidding. You have to joke when you're told that the leader of a country has just threatened your life. But I don't think the 6th Fleet duty officer knew what to make of my question. 😎)

I like how you just started the "Air Combat" series!

In 1974 while stationed aboard the U.S.S. Assurance (AG-521) as an Ocean Systems Technician (OT), we took a little cruise to the Mediterranean, where life got very interesting. After leaving our home port of Charleston SC, we had made a port of call at Bermuda, and then Ponta Delgada in the Azores before entering the Med. The entire purpose of the ship (an old WW-II minesweeper which had been converted into an intelligence gathering platform), was to detect Russian nuclear submarines via a Towed Array Sound Survellience system known as TASS, which we would deploy once on station. It drove the Russians nuts. We would find them, and then Airdales in P3 Orion A/C would come out to drop sono-bouys on top of them to pinpoint their precise location. It was like playing hide-and-seek on a grand scale. After crossing the big pond, the day finally came that we were to enter the Med, and in a chessboard move to try and out-slick the Russkies, we de-energized our radar before entering the Straits of Gibraltar thinking maybe they wouldn't notice us. Fat chance. It was broad daylight, a beautiful day, fair winds and following seas when we steamed into the Med, and once well out of sight from land, we reeled out our underwater detection equipment, and began conducting operations. All was well. We detected a surface ship over the visual horizon which had been shadowing us on a parallel course, but it wasn't particularly alarming, and as evening fell, those crew who were not on duty gathered on the fan tail to enjoy a movie. The mood was light, and we were all relaxed and full from our all you can eat steak and lobster dinner, which was the norm with a compliment of only 80 or so crewmen. It was a wooden ship, and we were iron men. As the movie concluded at about 2100, the surface ship which had been shadowing us suddenly went full speed ahead, and turned to a collision course with us, bearing down as if they meant to cut us in half. Our bridge crew was sounding the horn, the signalman was frantically flashing the light, and at the last possible moment, the Russkies cut hard to port narrowly missing us so closely, that we were awash in their wake. That was just within the first hours of our arrival into the Med, with many other harrowing encounters and adventures to follow. I wouldn't have traded it for anything in the world.

*_Now if only they made an Ace Combat game about this._*

Actual audio AND VIDEO from the incident: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Q2eSk6uQWS0.html

Great Video as always Allec Joshua; the Communications, and the final scenes showing even the MIG 23. Thank You.

Well that raised my pulse...can't imagine the surge of adrenaline the pilots felt. Excellent video! I enjoyed this more than I expected.

I believe one of the US pilots was later killed in a training accident. Thanks for your service. RIP

6:18 Hit that MiG-23 so hard it turned into a Helix!😬

That was amazing. I hope you continue this as its own side-series (combat incursions), like you've done with the airport videos aside from the disaster ones. Reminded me of your "bogey down" video somewhat

I love how this new series is made in the same way as Air Disasters.

My goodness, this was really nail biting scary and realistic. Thank you.

Thanks for all the hard work in making that animation/recreation.

I’ve probably listened to the audio of this about 20 times but was never had much of a clear picture of what was actually going on. Thanks

Very Good Alec, I hadn't heard of this incident. There's more to readiness than just having hardware, training is every bit as crucial !

2:35 "jinking", not "jinxing"

Left out the part where pilot says "Now let's get the hell out a here!"

Awesome video. Love those old F-14s.

You should do more air combat videos they're pretty good

I still remember those radio calls because they played them over and over on the TV news when this happened. I think our guys were expecting the Libyans to kind of check us out from standoff range, but never expected to actually have to fight them. As a side note, Libya at this time had a nuclear weapons program that Qaddafi later gave up in order to be part of the UN (getting his scientists killed as spies in the process). It was so advanced it caught us completely off guard, and the TV news only showed boxes instead of the actual equipment.

GREAT video....really like what you did here!

Very nice job, Allec, along with all your other work. Keep on pumping them out... :D

5:24 Sums up the tension in the room.

I think this is your best video. Very compelling stuff in this situation.

Very nicely done. Keep up the good work.

This was awesome!!! Please do more like this😊

Awesome video, pal! Keep up the good work. Request: Can you do 1997 Charkhi Dadri midair collision?

This was well put together. Subbed. 👍

Well done - I listen to this all the time at work.

Are we supposed to have visitors today? Negative sir.

In 1989, Pat Sajak had his own late night talk show. I remember him making jokes about the Libyans were looking for their fighters as he showed video of swimmers diving under water.

My new favourite video. Love that you have transmission from the aircraft. Well. done.

Great video Allec!

5:24 "Oh, Jesus."

Woke up at 4:33am and what do I see? A new vid from Alec waiting for me!

Why would anyone play chicken with a couple of F-14's amazes me.

Great video, thanks for sharing. One small nit pick ... the term is "Jink" vs "Jinx", meaning the MiGs were doing a short, sharp turn.

Outstanding video, would like to see more.

Now do the USS liberty incident

The lead F-14 here, Gypsy 207, is the F-14 on display at the Udvar-Hazy location of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. It was converted to a F-14D in the early 90's and continued to serve with VF-31 Tomcatters, and VF-101 Grim Reapers before retiring with the rest of the F-14's in 2006.

Awesome both 14’s are museum pieces now. I remember when this initially hit the news.

Great video! Good job on the pilots. Cheers from Brazil.

You should do the 1981 engagement as well.

Great video and description! 👍

Excellent re-enactment. Best that I have seen yet.

Do more videos on this content please

For future reference, Alec, the aircraft were making jinking maneuvers, not jinxing maneuvers. Otherwise, nicely done. If you perhaps thought on it to make this much effort on a combat mission in FS2004, you could look into doing future air combat videos through Digital Combat Simulator.

A very well put together video with a lot of technical and political information. Congratulations on a job well done!

Excellent representation of a second by second account of these types of engagements. Very well done! Please make more of these simulated documentary videos!

The lesson here is obvious. Don’t ever point your MIG at a Tomcat unless you intend to pull the trigger, and if you intend to pull the trigger, you had better make sure that yours is bigger and faster than his.

Brilliantly executed video! Perhaps you could switch over to DCS for making future air combat videos/incidents?

Nice video , well done .

If more of this kind of videos is made, I'm a sure sub

As a former Hawkeye mole (VAW-122), shout out to my brothers in VAW-126. Nice work!

Just listening to Enwright, he was in full blown panic mode.

great recreation, good job liked it

History to be remembered, thanks for the vid!

I never knew the F14 at the museum was gypsy 207. I've been there and seen that tomcat several times. But never knew it was part of that incident.

I was wondering why the migs never fired. Even after the first one was shot down.

wow give us need more aerial combat videos! keep up the good work.

Commander Connelly’s: “Now wait a minute” and “oh jeeezus” might be the most relatable moments of the whole story. It’s almost like “definitely didn’t expect to be in a fight, but here we are” type of thing.

Nice vid... again. Another series?

I always wondered how that battle went down thx

The actual video with audio from the tomcats is available on the internet, I believe here on RU-vid. All you have to do is a search if you want to see it.

Excellent presentation ! Well done

The Libyans shouldn’t have turned towards the f 14s multiple times, therefore they are a threat

Two duos sweep wing fighters are in combat

the F14 turn for "standard intercept" the Mig turn for "collision course" NICE

excellent as always, thanks

Good video. However it would look much better if you used DCS instead of the older MS flight sims. It’s free to download and you can use the mission editor to gain footage without needing to pay for the various modules. Also you showed an AIM-7 Sparrow being fired at the end instead of the sidewinder which would be appropriate for the fox 2 call.

I remember this and the incident involving the Tomcat and a pair of Su-22M Fitters. Tomcat:4 - Lybia:0 ANYTIME BABY!

fantastic work - would have been nice if there had been external stores on the Tomcats as well

Another great video! Is there a way to make a one-time, or periodic donations?

Who is up there? - Cougar/Merlin and Maverick and Goose - Great! Maverick and Goose.

I wonder who trained those MiG-23 Pilots........Russians who tried hard as Hell but these Pilots Just didn’t get it.

Wow! This really really connected with me! I was a Boatswain's Mate ( a nobody relative to MIL action) on a destroyer out of Mayport Florida, and we were in the MED in 88 and 90, and i had no clue stuff like this was going on! LOL

Amazing video. It gave me goosebumps!

Never jinx into a tomcat

Playing chicken with F14s probably wasn't the smartest thing to do.

i once thought i could make history vids with ace combat (or alike). now i see this. thanks man. but i still too young to give anything.

Thanks for making the nice film

Alpha Bravo directs “Condition Yellow - Weapons Hold”!

When I hear of the Tomcat, I always think of Tom Cruise and Top Gun for some reason.

I am a big fan of your recreations of air disasters

Can you do some videos on military aviation training crashes? Lots of content to choose from...

The committees can say what they want: they weren't in the cockpits jousting with those Libyans. If those pilots judged that they were threatened, nobody can't blame them to defend themselves.

Could you do the Battle of Britain next please

Great video presentation and like the attention to detail and would have been nice if the MiGs were in Libyan Colors not Russian, but the video was great and the actual kill and cockpit records make even better. The history of this aircraft is that extra touch as to what happen to them and where they are now.