Tom Cooper - Hawker Hunters At War: Iraq And Jordan, 1958-1967

Tom Cooper & Patricia Salti

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published by helion & company 2016

Cover designed by Paul Hewitt, Battlefield Design ( www.battlefield-design.co.uk )

Text Tom Cooper & Patricia Salti 2016

Photographs as individually credited

Colour profiles Tom Cooper 2016

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if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

ISBN 978-1-913118-12-9

eISBN 978-1-911096-25-2

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The authors would like to thank the many participants mentioned in this book, who kindly shared often intriguing personal stories or eyewitness accounts. Foremost among them are the officers and pilots of the Iraqi Air Force (and former Royal Iraqi Air Force, IrAF/ RIrAF), Royal Jordanian Air Force (RJAF), Bangladesh Air Force (BAF) and Pakistani Air Force (PAF), including Major General Alwan Hassan al-Abossi (IrAF, ret.), Major General Mohammed Abdel Wahhab al-Jabouri (IrAF, ret.), Major General Mohammed Najji (IrAF, ret.), Lieutenant General Arif Abd ar-Razzaq (IrAF/RIrAF, ret.), Major General Ihsan Shurdom (RJAF, ret), Brigadier General Ahmad Sadik (IrAF, ret.), Brigadier General Faysal Abdul Mohsen (IrAF, ret.), Brigadier General Farouk Abdeen (RJAF, ret.) and Group Captain Saif-ul-Azam (BAF and ex-PAF, ret.).

We would also like to express our gratitude to a number of other researchers for their kind help during the research for this book, in particular: Dr David Nicolle from Great Britain; Ali Tobchi from Iraq for his kind help with his own documentation, contacts to a number of former IrAF pilots and officers, and translations of original documents and various publications; Group 73 in Egypt, including Dr Abdallah Emran, Nour Bardai and Ahmed Zayed, who provided extensive transcriptions from their interviews with a number of leading Iraqi fighter pilots, including Marwan al-Aboosi; and Mohammad Hassan, Abdul Salam al-Maleki and Hayder Aziz from Iraq for further help in our research. We would like to offer our special thanks to Yawar Mazhar and Usman Shabbir from Pakistan, to Jagan Mohan from India, for kindly sharing their research and helping with contacts relating to the Pakistani and Indian Air Forces, respectively, and to Albert Grandolini in France for the kind provision of photographs from his immense archive. Last, but not least, our thanks go to Farzad Bishop for his research in the archives of the Air Ministry in Great Britain, Christof Hahn for help with further research on Hawker Hunters in general, and Hicham Honeini from Lebanon for his patience and kind help with the translation of various publications and documentation from Arabic.

At a first look, the history of the Hawker Hunter jet in service in Iraq and Jordan might appear not to have much in common, as if not requiring an entire volume to tell. Actually, the two countries and their air forces share not only a mutual border but also much of their history. Carved out of several former Ottoman provinces by the pens of British and French diplomats within the frame of the Sykes-Picot agreement, during the first 20 years of their existence, the kingdoms of Iraq and Transjordan were heavily dependent upon British assistance for their survival. Their militaries were established with British help and equipped with the Hunter at a time when they not only maintained very close ties with London, but also during the formative years of their air forces. In both countries, the Hunter was to see a long, colourful and action-packed service especially during the first 10 years after their delivery, when they represented the backbone of both the Iraqi and Jordanian air forces. While Hunters of the Royal Air Force (RAF) flew combat air patrols during the Suez War of 1956, Iraqi and Jordanian Hunters not only became the first aircraft of this type to see combat, but became involved in a number of fierce air combats with the Israeli Defence Force/Air Force (IDF/AF).

The Iraqi Air Force is the oldest of all Arab air arms. Established as the Royal Iraqi Air Force (RIrAF) on 22 April 1931, it was almost completely destroyed during the British intervention in that country in 1941. It had re-emerged by the early 1950s as a relatively seasoned air arm that maintained very close ties to the RAF. This went so far that not only were its uniforms, equipment, traditions and training essentially British, but once British troops officially vacated Iraq in 1955, the RIrAF since November 1954 under the command of Brigadier General Abd el-Kadm ash-Shieh Abadi also took over the task of air policing the northern part of the country, inhabited by Kurds who were nearly always in opposition to the central government in Baghdad.