Iraqi Mirages
The Dassault Mirage Family in Service with the Iraqi Air Force, 1981-1988
by Tom Cooper & Milos Sipos
What to expect from this book? Why care writing and publishing it given not only one, but two 'similar' efforts were published over the 12 last months? What is left to say about this topic any more? ...and why buy it?
There are so many reasons that this book not only 'remains necessary'; indeed - exactly due to the abysmal failure of these 'similar' efforts - it's more necessary than ever before. It's not only a 'must', but long overdue too, otherwise one is never going to understand anything at all about the Iraqi Mirages, perhaps not even about the Iraqi air war against Iran, 1980-1988. At most, one might conclude the Iraqis were hopeless dilettantes in regards of aerial warfare even at the times they were receiving plenty of high-tech and at least reasonably good support from France. And, certainly enough, if it's along certain authors, then one might get the impression that majority of Iraqi pilots were de-facto clowns thinking they won a war - and certainly earned themselves another Mercedes sedan - every time they caused 'fire and smoke'...
Precisely that - sorting the more intense propaganda emitted by Baghdad the longer the war with Iran went on, but also the increasing propaganda spread from the circles of what is nowadays widely known as 'Saddam's pilots' in Iraq first and foremost - was one of objectives of this project. Another objective was to find out who there in Iraq was bringing what of crucial decisions at what point in time - and with what consequences, because nearly all of these have had their direct impact upon operations of the Iraqi Mirages. The sad matter of fact (at least from the Iraqi point of view, but very much that of the 'Arabs' in general) is that the Iraqi Air Force of 1931-2003 period used to be the most combat-experienced military flying service in that part of the world, yet next to nothing is known about it.
Other topics making us curious were such like what kind of impact have 'Iraqi Mirages' actually had upon the drama best-known as the 'Tanker War' (actually a part of what Iraq run as the 'Oil Campaign'), and then what role - if any at all - did they actually play in regards of forcing Iran to accept the UN-mediated cease-fire of 1988?
Finding out the answers to all these questions went well beyond the point of determining exact camouflage colours and unit designations, or finding out about crucial IrAF Mirage pilots. This story began with the actual - and complete - story of the cancelled Iraqi order for Mirage 5s from the Year 1968; it went on with bitter Iraqi experiences from wars against Israel, in October 1973, and against Kurds, in 1974-1975; the Algiers Treaty; Saddam's fascination with the Grumman F-14 (I dare saying he was probably a bigger fan of the Tomcat than I am), but also the ability of 'his' C-in-C IrAF to understand the signs of time and launch a major effort to obtain electronic warfare capability - for his branch, but for the entire Iraqi military, too...and it really heated up with several closely-linked affairs in Baghdad of 1979-1980, when Saddam imposed himself in power, bought more 'toys of war' convinced he would need them in order to earn himself his 'deserved' position in the history, and then invaded Iran.
The things then developed not the least the way the strongman in Baghdad envisaged them: instead of achieving a quick victory, the Iranian resistance converted his adventure into a bloody draw - in which the IrAF was suffering particularly badly. This, plus 'special relations' between top authorities in Paris, plus the Soviet arms embargo (provoked precisely by the Iraqi invasion) then prompted not only Baghdad, but Cairo and few other 'Arab' capitals to force Paris into doing something it otherwise never did: deliver heavy arms (and lots of related assistance) to a country at war. Before soon, France thus found itself in an outright race to arm Iraq - in which its primary competitor was the Soviet Union (it was rather surprising to find out very clear relations in this regards). That's how the operational history of the Iraqi Mirages began in 1981, and then went on through 1982-1983. Their first few successes in combat then gained them immense reputation at home (no surprise: they were first 'good news' in more than a year) but, failed to avert a series of defeats that ended with the Iraqi withdrawal from Khuzestan, and the Iranian counter-invasion of mid-1982.
One of absurdities of this war was that throughout all of this time, not only Saddam - but also the IrAF - continued acting as if the war with Iran didn't matter. Indeed, the top ranks of the air force remained preoccupied with planning for 'times after the war', and thus continued placing additional orders for more Mirages - including Mirage 2000s - even at the time Baghdad was not only bankrupt, or doing its best to lose the war, but became over-reliant on extensive crediting by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, too. To say the resulting arms deals were 'complex' would be an understatement: in this place it's sufficient to say that they not only involved Iraq and France, but Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt...and even Brazil. Indeed, they not only went as far as that the air force nearly staged a coup against Saddam for reasons related to another buy of Mirage F.1s, but the situation reached the point where he was forced to issue an order along which the IrAF was to avoid losing aircraft at any cost.
The same remained valid until Iraq was nearly defeated by Iran for the first time: the Iranian Operation Khayber of February 1984 not only drove deep into Iraq, but forced Baghdad into the realisation that ending the war was possible only through forcing Tehran to call for a cease-fire. That's why the Oil Campaign - run without much effects already since September 1980 - was then intensified through the acquisition of Exocet-compatible F.1EQ-5s, the 'lease' of Super Etendards, and Saddam's wildest exaggerations about their supposed success in attacking international shipping off the coast of Iran. Rather unsurprisingly, precisely these exaggerations proved counterproductive: the shipowners not only knew better than anybody in Baghdad about the actual 'results' of the Iraqi 'anti-shipping' operations of this period, but profits from chartering tankers to the Iranians were much too attractive.
With nobody in Baghdad coming to the idea to challenge the Saddam's way of fighting that war, it took Iraq not only two additional years of squandering billions for no achievements: indeed, it took the 'bitter pill' of losing the Faw Peninsula to another Iranian offensive, in February 1986, for Saddam to finally give up on his idea of being a military genious and let the professionals within the military - and so also the air force - to take over. That's when things began to change quite rapidly. Surely, the old-new Commander of the IrAF, Major-General Sha'ban - and his top assistants took some time to learn how to defeat Iran ('old' because Sha’ban used to command the IrAF in period 1976-1980, when he took care to place such far-reaching orders like those for Mirages in France, but also advanced MiGs and Sukhois in the former USSR; 'new' because following his retirement, he was re-instated in that position in 1984 again). And, hand on heart, thanks to the mix of Iraqi preoccupation with so many other issues ever since, irrecoverable loss of the related documentation, but also plenty of ignorance - in Iraq, but abroad too - until today it remains unclear whether they ever really learned their lessons, or achieved the much-sought-for feat by sheer accident. Matter of fact is: in early 1988, and thanks to extensive support of the corrupt IRGC, thy did break the back of the Iranian capability to continue the war - and this despite their actual failure to at least significantly diminish the Iranian oil exports.
So, yes, the 'Iraqi Mirages' did play a crucial role. How exactly - see in the book.
Perhaps more importantly, in between all of this, the Mirages played the crucial role in winning the electronic war. The importance of this achievement cannot be overemphasised because without them Iraq would've almost certainly lost by sometimes between 1985 and 1987. The availability of the F.1s in their role as most advanced reconnaissance and electronic warfare platforms available was really an issue of life or death during that period. This is what made them as important - much more so than any kind of aerial victories, fire and smoke caused by occasional success against tankers hauling Iranian crude, or entirely pointless strikes on the construction site of the Iranian nuclear reactors outside Bushehr.
Containing seven chapters, 80 pages and 120+ photos, Iraqi Mirages is slightly thicker than usual volumes of Helion's @War series. This is why we eventually stopped the story in 1988: the part after that year requires much more research, and that's going to take slightly longer. That said, this is a 'fast and furious' read, providing intricate details on the tactics, technology and crucial 'lessons learned' from the longest and most intensive air war of the 1980s.