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Revision as of 21:22, 5 August 2010
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Constant Peg was a top secret USAF dogfight training program involving Soviet fighters as absolutely realistic adversaries. It was conducted between July, 1979 and March, 1988 at Tonopah Test Range, Nevada.
The idea of a more realistic training program was devised by the Vietnam war veteran F-4 Phantom pilot Gail Peck, who wasn't satisfied with the efficiency of the Vietnam era dogfight training of the US Air Force. After the war, he worked at the Department of Defense, where he heard about the Have Drill and Have Donut programs evaluating soviet MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighters. At the Pentagon general Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Jr. became a supporter of Peck's ideas, and the program was launched. (A somewhat similar thought led to the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School known as Top Gun.) It got its name from Vandenberg's callsign, Constant, and the nickname of Peck's wife, Peg[1]
The aircraft were collected at Department of Energy's Tonopah Test Range, where they were flown by the 4477th Test & Evaluation Squadron, nicknamed the Red Eagles. The squadron operated MiG-17s until 1982, and mostly MiG-21s and MiG-23s. The pilots had no manuals for the aircraft, which were extremely difficult to operate without any supply of spare parts, as it was necessary to manufacture all those required. The bad circumstances led to high operational costs and a high rate of accidents. During the program, two pilots were killed, one of them being Captain Mark F. Postai, who crashed with a MiG-23 on October 21, 1982. Nearing the end of the Cold War the program was abandoned and the squadron was disbanded.
The Soviet aircraft had their own tri-service designations in order to avoid using MiG-names during paperwork.
Although the classification of the program was removed at November 15, 2006, even since the 1980s newspapers were writing about it. The idea wasn't abandoned completely: in 2009, a US company bought two ex-Ukrainian Su-27s.
Notes
References
- Davies, Steve (2008). Red Eagles - America's Secret MiGs. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978 1 84603 378 0.
{{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter:|coauthors=(help) - Constant Peg
- Grier, Peter. "Constant Peg". airforce-magazine.com. Retrieved 2009-09-16.
External links
