The Iran-Iraq war a bloody, costly and ruinous battle that raged on for 8 years, killing a million people. It also showcased the most daring & ambitious – and successful – airstrike in military history.

For a pacifist, I have a peculiar interest in history, wars, and military battles. Despite WatchMojo being mainly a pop culture & entertainment publisher, we have done our shares of lists on wars, battles, etc. In my 2nd book on Alexander the Great, I discussed what at is arguably one of the most impressive military campaigns ever, the Siege of Tyre, where the legendary Macedonian commander built a bridge to reach the fortress island of Tyre, to continue his global march. Other battles are notable for their role in defining history, such as the Battle of Stalingrad, where the Russians stopped Hitler’s forces – though one could argue that the Germans would have hit a wall eventually. Recently, I came across what is arguably one of the most impressive aerial missions, and went down a bit of a rabbit hole.

From January 1978 to February 1979, Marxists and clerics joined forces to topple the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, during the Islamic revolution. Once in power, the clerics purged many they deemed loyal to the monarchy. The purge of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces – or Artesh (“military” in Farsi) – took place in two phases: the first from February 1979 to September 1979, and the second one from October 1979 to mid-September 1980.

On September 22, 1980, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invaded Iran. It was a long 8-year struggle that cost a million lives, with many Western nations supplying Iraq with weapons, while Iran found itself increasingly isolated, having to do with whatever weapons they had from the pre-revolution days.

After Iraq’s surprise ground attack, the Iraqi Air Force led an aggressive series of sorties, hoping to neutralize the stronger Iranian Air Force (subsequently renamed the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force), which not only had planes supplied by America, but whose pilots were also trained by the US.

Inspired by Israel’s pre-emptive strikes against Arab states in 1967, the initial sorties by Iraq and countered by Iran were some of the biggest ones since WWII. But that was nothing compared to one of the most audacious and impressive aerial attacks in history – the strike on H-3 in Western Iraq, alongside the Jordanian border, a thousand-plus kilometres away from the Iranian border.

What makes the strike even more outstanding and surreal is what the airmen had experienced in the year preceding it.

One of the more high profile executions was that of Nader Jahanbani on March 13, 1979. Trained in America and founder of the Taj-e Talayi (or Golden Crown) Aerobatics team—the equivalent of the US Air Force’s Thunderbirds – Jahanbani is widely viewed as the father of the Iranian Air Force.

Ultimately, the purges and executions deprived the Iranian Air Force – and all of Iran – of its most experienced commanders and personnel. Nonetheless, as with any good armed forces, the remaining members of the Air Force – Fereidoon Izadseta, Ghasem Golchin, Manouchehr Tousi, Bahram Hooshyar, Javad Fakoori, Jalil Zandi to name a few – rose to the occasion to defend their country and played an instrumental part, especially early on, to change the course of history.

On that fateful 4th of April 1981, the Iranian pilots took off from Hamadan air base, traveled north to lake Urmia (on Iranian soil) to refuel, before heading south-west along the Turkey/Iraq border, refueling at an altitude of 100 meters to evade radars, before setting their sights on the Al Walid base in western Iraq, next to the Jordanian border. Thanks to satellite imagery via the Israelis, the Iranians had detected Iraq restocking their fleet at the H-3 airfield, which consisted of 3 airfields. Striking in a surprise attack, Iran destroyed 48 Iraqi planes, suffering zero losses, before returning after an incredible 3 hours.

The H-3 attack will go down in aviation history as one of the most impressive, daring and successful aerial attacks… and understanding the ordeal and stress the Iranian Air Force (and all armed forces) personnel had experienced only makes the operation that much more impressive, and a testament to the loyalty and patriotism the Iranian pilots had for their country. Here are a few videos that summarize that mission.

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