And so we launched out the front end, and I think it was a left turn.

And away we go in Zone 5, afterburner, you know, scorching out to make the intercept.

We get radar contact fairly quickly.

We end up converting on an SU15 flagging at the time.

Go out there and pull up behind an SU15, which was just amazing at the time.

Did he have any awareness or did there C2 have any awareness of you guys or did he show any awareness?

You know that? We don't know. I'm pretty sure, you know, they were close.

And at the time running the intercept, I think he starts turning back to the West. And so now the biggest thing is

creating an international incident where you get so focused on running this intercept, you end up going through a buffer,

you know, Soviet airspace and you end up getting shot at or whatever. So that's, that's kind of, if you listen to the comms on it, that's my biggest concern is not to become that guy, right?

So anyway, we make the intercept.

You know, there's no aggressive maneuvering.

It was cool to see this airplane with this silver and a green nose, drab green.

And then there's also Big 23s up.

Guys are running intercepts on those guys.

And the Meg 23, they came out with their wings out.

They never put them back. You know, they were loaded probably with apex missiles, A87s at the time.

But again, not really aggressive maneuvering. As this thing occurred, we go back to ship. We start

talking about it. Rumor has it that these were senior level pilots flying out to try to get a chance to take a look at an F-14,

you know, to see what the reactions would be.

It was more of a look-see possibly from those guys than some sort of preconceived tactic

that they were trying to develop and see whether or not the carrier group would react accordingly.

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