One of my favourite blogs is/was TJ's Hangar. While technically not defunct, it hasn't been updated for years, so - with apologies to TJ if he's still stalking the internet - I've decided to repost some of 'his' old posts, newly translated by myself! Starting with this one featuring Iraqi Tu 22 Blinders and a rare MiG 21 image..here 'TJ' explains how he went about locating some of 'his' rare images on the net...
" ..The last few weeks have seen the 40th anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. For this reason, I think it is a good occasion to share some of the various photos I have been finding in recent months on the subject, after many hours of research, often tedious and boring research, until something worthy of interest appears. As in this case, it makes the effort expended worthwhile. This is a new image, at least for me, of an Iraqi Tupolev Tu-22 Blinder, probably photographed at the Al Takkadum base. It is taken from one of the many personal profiles or Arabic Facebook pages I have visited that were open to the public..."
From a different angle, another image of another Iraqi Tu-22, apparently in an operational state, judging by the tyres and attire of the posing pilots. Unfortunately the serial that should be seen on the front door of the front landing gear leg is either blurred or has been censored out. Once gain this is probably Al Takkadum base.
Below, Iraqi Mig 21 showing two Iranian 'kill' markings
" ...The story of how I found this photo is curious, because I almost lost it. I was surfing Facebook looking at dozens of profiles of Iraqi and Syrian soldiers and I hadn't found anything interesting for a while. Suddenly, in one of the profiles, a picture of a Mig-21 appeared, small and of poor quality. I don't usually copy such pictures. But it had a lot of comments, so that caught my attention and I decided to scroll through the comments, all in Arabic so I didn't know what they were saying, until, scrolling down, scrolling down, in one of them, Bingo! this picture appeared. But it was late and I was already tired, so after checking that there were no more photos in the thread, I copied it, closed it and went to bed. It is a very tedious and tiring task, opening one by one public Facebook profiles, looking at the photos one by one when there are hundreds of them and then stopping to read all the comments on each photo. If you do the latter, you may never finish and you don't make any progress. It is really tiring. So in these cases of "exotic" profiles, it's often a matter of luck to find something interesting, as you can say that I'm going blind, as I don't know the language in this particular case. I know that there is a translator incorporated into the Facebook answers, but its usefulness is sometimes limited, and there is a risk of crashes or loss of access to the original links, which has happened to me, so I don't usually use it, unless I see something worthwhile..."
"...Once I found the photo, we moved on to another phase, the identification phase. What do we have? Well, we have nothing more and nothing less than a MiG-21MF or maybe a Bis, with two Iranian "kills" painted on the nose of the fuselage. So this pilot is not just anyone. I then started looking for information on Iraqi "Aces" in the war against Iran, both on the net and in books I have at home. In the latter respect, among others, I have the fabulous "Iran-Iraq War in the Air" by Tom Cooper and Farzah Bishop, published by Shiffer in the 1990s, which is the best thing I have read to date on this conflict. On the other hand, when looking for Iraqi aces on the web, Mohommed (curious about the O, it's not Mohammed) Rayyan appeared among others, and consulting several pages, I found that he shot down two Iranian planes with a Mig-21 on 23 October 1980, before becoming a MiG-25 pilot. With this information I went to Tom Cooper's book, who confirmed the date of the shoot-downs, adding that they were Iranian F-5 fighters, which probably means that the plane in the picture is none other than the one involved in those two shoot-downs. The photo is simply very interesting because it allows us to identify the serial number of the plane with the two victories, which is 2092, a detail that I have not seen published anywhere until now, so perhaps, just perhaps, we have an unpublished piece of information, and we also have a pilot posing for the camera, perhaps Mohommed Rayyan himself? Probably, I suppose. The photo of the year so far without a doubt.... :) Photos like this and the previous ones make the searches and the time spent on them worthwhile..."
And subsequently on the cover of Tom Cooper's "Wings of Iraq", published in 2022
also on this blog
