Almost every F-15 squadron based
outside CONUS and every Fighter Interceptor Squadron in the States ran a
Zulu Alert. A Zulu Alert consists of two and sometimes four, like at
Bitburg AB, fully armed F-15’s with full tanks all cocked up ready to go
airborne 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Usually there would be an Alert
Facility at the end of the runway. Here the jest and their crew were ready
24 hours per day and waited for the signal to go. Within a couple of
minutes from the time the call came the F-15’s would be airborne this
could be a training sortie, a plane is distress that needs help or the
real thing. Once the Eagles were airborne they would usually fly through a
pre-arranged corridor. In this corridor they are not restricted to
anything and were able to go as fast as needed without the fear of a
mid-air collision. During this time they would get their “target” info
either from ATC or an airborne AWACS and directed to the possible threat.
When the threat was real it was usually a TU-95 Soviet nuclear bomber on a
training sortie testing the U.S and NATO Air Defences. Most of the times
the encounters were friendly the F-15’s picked up the soviet bomber and
escorted it away from U.S./NATO airspace. But there are different stories
one of the 57th FIS (NAS Keflavick) were the soviet Bomber
crew flew extremely low trying to run the F-15’s into the ocean. Or that
the soviet bomber would turn into the F-15’s. One of the busiest squadrons
during the cold-war was the 57th FIS at Keflavick, taking the
bulk of the TU-95 intercepts. With the ending of the Cold War in the late
80’s did not mean that the Tu-95’s stopped trying to fly into U.S. and
NATO airspace. During the late 90’s when tensions between CIS and NATO
rise about the “Allied Force” campaign against Serbia, two TU-95 flew
within striking distance of the U.S. but were turned back by F-15’s from
the 122nd FS Louisiana ANG.
Another unusual intercept
occurred on the 4th of July 1989 when a MIG-23 entered
West-German airspace and continued in a straight line towards the
Netherlands. Immediately two F-15’s from the 32nd TFS stationed
at Soesterberg AB scrambled to intercept the MIG-23. When the F-15’s
caught up with the MIG-23 and started to escort the MIG out of NATO
airspace they saw that he pilot had ejected from the airplane and that the
MIG was flying on it’s own. After it was impossible to chance the MIG’s
flight path the F-15’s kept escorting the MIG until it ran out of fuel and
crashed on a farm near the Belgium coast. Killing one person inside the
farmhouse.
Still today USAF F-15’s are ready
and on zulu alert all around the world at place like Kadena AB, Japan. RAF
Lakenheath, U.K. but also in the United States as a result from the
terrorist attacks on N.Y.C and Washington D.C. F-15’s patrol the U.S.
skies “Noble Eagle” ready to intercept any unidentified aircraft.
