June 17, 2022
For the third time in just four months, an Iranian Air Force fighter jet has crashed, completely destroying the aircraft.
The first jet loss was an American-made F-5, which crashed February 21 into a school yard in a residential area of Tabriz, skidding into a building and killing both crewmen and a driver on the ground. Iran is believed to still have about 48 operational F-5s
Next, on May 24, Iran lost a Chinese-made F-7, which is a Chinese copy of the Russian-designed MiG-21 from the 1960s. Again, both crewmen were lost.
Iran bought 24 of the Chinese planes in the 1980s but apparently never used them in combat during the Iran-Iraq War. It seems to use them only as trainer aircraft. The one lost May 24 was based in Esfahan and was on a training flight, reportedly teaching the trainee how to strafe ground targets, when it crashed near Anarak.
The two men killed were Lt. Col. Qasem Zamani, the instructor, and the student pilot, 1st Lt. Mohammad-Javad Baay.
It isn’t known what caused the crash. The Air Force said that the plane suffered a “technical failure,” which is the normal term the military uses after all plane crashes.
Then, on June 18, an American-made F-14 Tomcat, also flying out of the Esfahan air base, crashed in an unpopulated area. The cause was, again, attributed to a “technical failure.” This time the two crewmen ejected and suffered only minor injuries when they hit the ground.
According to a survey by Flight Global in 2019, the Iranian Air Force was then still operating 24 F-14s out of the 79 the Shah bought in the 1970s.
Four years ago, another F-7 crashed near Esfahan due to what was also labeled a “technical failure.”
