104th Fighter Wing “Mig Killer”

The 104th Fighter Wing (104 FW) is a unit of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, stationed at Barnes Air National Guard Base, Westfield, Massachusetts.

Captain Tony “Kimo” Schiavi recounted his role, starting with the targeting plan, stating, “We got our MiG- 23 EID and AWACS clearances out of the way well before we could shoot. The MiGs were at 500ft and, at about 40 miles, ‘Hoser’ called the targeting plan – he targeted me on the northern [western] trailer and ‘Rico’ and ‘Roto’ on the other trailer to the south.

‘Hoser’ shot an AIM-7 first, but his missile had a motor no-fire. He shot again and the second Sparrow headed towards the lead ‘Flogger.’

By now we were calling ‘Tally-ho’ on the MiGs, and we saw ‘Hoser’s’ missile hit the back end of the airplane. There was this little explosion and a dust cloud, but ‘Hoser’ called, I fired about seven or eight seconds after Hoser,’ and I used two missiles because I was coming in at an angle and the guy was low. I also wanted to be sure that the MiG died.

We came down very fast through some clouds and moist air, so we were trailing condensation and wingtip streamers pretty good. The MiG pilots saw this and began a hard right-hand turn into us. At that instant my first missile hit the front of the second MiG and it basically vaporised him. My second missile went right through the fireball.