The inside story of how a US Navy pilot shot down a Syrian jet

The Russian built SU-22, NATO code name “Fitter” didn’t fare very well against Navy Tomcats back in the day. They’ve continued with this tradition against Navy Hornets.

Navy LCDR Michael “M.O.B.” Tremel was sipping his coffee at 20,000 feet, at a leisurely 700 Kts, doing his part supporting US, Kurds, and friendly Arabs fighting ISIS. Little did he know he was about to become the first American pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft, in battle, in 20 years.

Tremel had a hunch the day’s mission would be different than the others he had flown into the gut of war-ravaged Syria, dropping bombs to protect friendly forces in the fight against the Islamic State.

“Defending guys on the ground is what I’ve done my whole career,” the F/A-18E Super Hornet pilot told Navy Times last week at the Tailhook Association’s annual convention, where he received the Distinguished Flying Cross for becoming the first American pilot to shoot down an enemy plane since 1999.

Tremel didn’t want to talk too much about those troops on the ground, but according to his medal citation they included an Air Force Joint Terminal Attack Controller, or JTAC, who was calling in strikes for Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State militants in their Raqqa
stronghold.

The beauty of the day clashed not only with the fighting below but also the thorny international politics that animate what strategists contend is a proxy war in Syria.

It pits Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad and his Hezbollah and Russian allies against a shifting array of insurgents backed by Gulf Arab states and Turkey, plus Kurdish militias largely supported by the United States.

These days, the complicated battles on the ground are matched by a jumble of jets in the sky.

“You have Russian aircraft, Turkish aircraft, Iraqis, the Syrian air force,” Tremel said.

That’s not want Tremel saw outside his cockpit in 2014, three years into the Syrian civil war, when he joined one of the first U.S. sorties into the divided country to bomb Islamic State positions.

The rules of engagement briefed to the “Golden Warriors” of Strike Fighter Squadron 87 stressed caution. Russian aviators appeared to reciprocate by flying “very professionally, and so did we,” Tremel said.

Tremel and his wingman, Lt. Cmdr. Carl “JoJo” Krueger, began their day with a launch off the carrier George H.W. Bush in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

They swung south of Cyprus and then jetted over Turkey toward Syria.

His radar soon picked up an unknown aircraft closing fast on the U.S.-allied Kurdish and Arab militias bannered as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

It was a Syrian Su-22 Fitter. Tremel said he tried to prod the pilot to move south and away from the friendly forces he was shepherding below.

“At any point in time, if this aircraft would head south and work its way out of the situation, it’d be fine with us,” Tremel said. “We could go back to executing (close-air support).”

That didn’t happen.

“He ended up rolling in, dropping ordnance, two bombs on those defended forces,” Tremel said.

Tremel went for the Sidewinder missile.

“It was really crazy, swinging that master arm for the first time in combat with an air-to-air missile selected,” he recalled.

But it didn’t work.

“Real time, I thought I might have been too close,” Tremel said. “I thought maybe I hit (the jet) but it didn’t fuse in time.”

So Tremel turned to the AIM-120, an advanced medium-range missile.

“That got the job done from about half a mile,” he said.

His actions on that day in 2017 won him a Distinguished Flying Cross, and would secure his own place among Naval Aviation icons.
The lucky SOB.
*grin*

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Navy Times

Category: Navy, Syria