(Image: via GlobalSecurity.org)
When Australian special forces soldiers captured Iraq’s Al Asad Airfield in April 2003, they discovered – and in some cases uncovered – more than 50 combat aircraft dispersed across the base.
Many were reportedly undamaged and a handful are thought to have been in flying condition. Iraq’s air force brass had clearly gone to the trouble to concealing the warplanes. Most of the jets were Soviet-era MiGs, including three high-performance MiG-25 Foxbats.
Several had been buried (like the Foxbat unearthed at Al-Taqqadum airbase, below), others parked on dried-out river beds and covered with camouflage netting. Others, meanwhile, had been strategically hidden within groves of date palm trees.
Above, Australian SAS troopers patrol around a twin-seat MiG-25 which has been artfully concealed beneath the palms, protected from coalition airstrikes by multiple camouflage nets and thick foliage above.
(Image: US Air Force, public domain)
The Russian-made jets weren’t the only examples of formidable weaponry found scattered across Al Asad. Almost 8,000 tonnes of explosive ordnance was also discovered at the site, suggesting that Iraq’s military had every intention of pressing its aircraft back into combat.
Of course, they never got the opportunity. Special Forces helped repair the damaged runway and the massive airfield 100 miles west of Baghdad fell into allied hands. In the years that followed many of its aircraft were reduced to battered wrecks, despite having survived the initial bombing campaign.
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