SUBJECTS >> OPERATIONS >> Kosovo
AIRCRAFT >> FIGHTERS >> F-16
Catalog Number:
1996.012
Description:
On the morning of 28 February 1994, Lt. Bob Wilbur Wright, flying a block 40 F-16C, downed his third low flying Bosnian-Serb, J-1 Jastreb aircraft with an AIM-9M Sidewinder air to air missile, while enforcing a United Nations no-fly zone during ‘Operation Deny Flight’. Earlier in the three minute engagement, the 526-F’s pilot, leader of block 03 flight, had destroyed the first with an AIM 120 AMRAMM and the second with another sidewinder. This action, the first by NATO in its (then) 45 year history was also the first ‘hat trick’ by a USAF pilot since the Korean War in the 1950s (A ‘hat trick’ usually refers to a pilot attaining three kills in a single engagement). The AMRAAM kill represented only the third for this missile type and all were by fighting falcon aircraft. A fourth kill during this same engagement by another F-16 brought the fighting falcons worldwide aerial victory records to 69 with no losses.
