Prying eyes over Persia

Major Doug Soifer began to trim out the Astro-Inertial Navigation System control display while at the same time he adjusted the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) displays. It was the fifth hour of a very long, non-stop flight from the Kadena Air Force Base, located on the strategically important Island of Okinawa, to one of the more congestive areas of the world: the Persian Gulf.
In the morning of September 24 1980, what was until that point, a scrimmage border conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Iraq erupted in a full-scale war when thousands of Iraqi ground troops, supported by columns of armour attacked the world’s largest oil refinery at Abadan. After setting the installation ablaze, the invading force plunged quickly over the port of Khorramshahr, advancing nearly fifteen miles inside Iranian territory. Despite the early success, the Iraqi attack boggled down. An old-type of warfare descended over the Arabian sands. A systematic stalemate with both sides digging and fighting a prolonged trench war.

From the outset, both superpowers un-officially decided to keep their ‘hands’ out of the area. But the Regan Administration was worried that Iran would use its military assets to hit Iraq’s most precious: oil.

By the mid 1980s, the Iranian Air Force was conducting ever more daring raids inside Iraqi airspace. Their targets were the vital oil pumping stations. At the same time, Iraqi jets were pounding Iranian oil terminals on Kharg Island. The ‘oil’ conflict escalated when on May 18th 1987, two Iraqi F-1 Mirages carrying the deadly Exocet AM-39 anti-ship missile, attacked two frigates outside the coast of Bahrain. One of the ships was the USS Stark. Twenty eight sailors died that morning. As a direct result, President Ronald Regan ordered the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as other intelligence services, to step up surveillance activities inside Persia.

As Soifer turned the SAR on, fellow Major Mike Smith, pilot of serial number ‘967′, a sample Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird; began to turn the aircraft towards its pre-programmed objective. The 967 had experienced a heavy cloud cover level ever since its departure from Kadena. On top of the target area, Soifer activated the Blackbird’s advanced Technical Objective Cameras and its Optical Bar Panoramic Camera. Sizzling through the Arabian sky, 967 took pictures of the entire Iraqi-Iranian border.

The eleven and a half missions involved two midair refueling stops on the flight’s outgoing leg, and three additional ones on its return. Two hours behind serial number 967 was No. 975, another Blackbird flown by the veteran crew of Majors Ed Yeilding (pilot) and Curt Osterheld (reconnassaince officer). As it customary at the time, two SR-71s would be on route profile for each operational sortie. It was a redundancy tactic implemented during the early days of the Blackbird mission program.

When 967 reached its second outbound refueling stop, a fully loaded KC-10 tanker, Smith called Yeilding’s plane, which trailed Smith’s by two hours, and told him that because the flight was proceeding according to plans, his ’services that day would not be needed’.

Blackbird number 967 landed at Kadena eleven hours and twelve minutes after its departure.
A month later, August 9th, Major Terry Pappas and John Manzi took off from Okinawa aboard ‘Bird number 975 in route to the Persian Gulf. After clearing the first tanker leg, Pappas accelerated its powerful aircraft into the heart of Southeast Asia, then, further south near the edge of India airspace. Near the collective area, Pappas began to suffer temporarily blindness. A condition associated with the inhaling of high quantities of purified oxygen. “My tears help me out. I could hardly manage the instrument panel. I thought of removing my visor, but the idea of full decompression changed my mind”, Pappas later stated. After a brief, but potentially deadly problem, Pappas and Manzi were able to resume the sortie, after which they landed without incident.

By late August, data collected by SR-1s penetration flights confirmed that Iran had acquired and was prepared to deploy Chinese-built Silkworm HY-2 anti-ship missiles. The Silkworm was a radar guided platform capable of striking targets within a range of 60 nautical miles. The weapon became ‘hot’ in September, when Iranian ground personnel commenced a bombardment of the Al Faw peninsula near Kuwait’s important oil facilities. The initial strike was a complete failure. None of the twenty five fired HY-2 hit their targets.

Unabated, the Iranians kept launching the Silkworms, finally hitting a target. On October 22nd, in a prelude of what would come, an HY-2 struck a Kuwaiti oil transport facility. Because of precise photo imaging, the United States were able to prognosticate from where the Silkworms would be fired. This information gave the defenders an opportunity to counter the threat. Decoys and electronic countermeasure systems were utilized along all the Kuwaiti ‘black gold’ processing plants.

The last Blackbird sortie took off in the spring of 1988. With Major Dan House at the control and Blair Bozek in the rear seat, SR-71 number 974 departed Kadena early in the morning April 30th. The 11-hour mission went smoothly. The film gathered by 974 was pivotal to the US Navy’s assets operating in the region, as well as to the Iraqis who were beginning to target Silkworm batteries with surprisingly accuracy.

By itself, the SR-71 did not end the war. But the Blackbird gave the Americans, and to some extend the Iraqis, an invaluable tool from which to work with.

An article by Raul Colon: rcolonfrias@yahoo.com