Navy pillot slashes USAF plane and....

[Dr Mordrid]

....becomes an Admiral

Battleland....

Navy Pilot Who Shot Down U.S. Plane Makes Admiral

And you thought McHale’s Navy was cancelled back in 1966. It was one of the most bizarre stories Battleland ever covered. And incredibly, the perpetrator – the young Navy officer who mistakenly shot down a U.S. warplane 25 years ago – is being promoted to the rank of admiral (granted, it was an Air Force plane the Navy pilot shot down, but even so…)

Here’s the top of the story, from the April 18, 1988, front page of the Chicago Tribune:

The war game ended abruptly when the Air Force RF-4C broke sharply to the left and dived threateningly toward the USS Saratoga. Hot on its tail, the pilot aboard the F-14 Tomcat, the Navy’s hottest warplane, sought advice from the aircraft carrier.

“Red and free on your contact,” the Saratoga told him.

The phrase “red and free” stunned the pilot.

“Jesus!” he exclaimed to his back seat radar officer. “Do they want me to shoot this guy?”

“Yeah,” the radarman said. “Shoot!”

The pilot squeezed his trigger.

“I saw the Sidewinder dip low and to the inside of the turn,” he said later. “I saw it hit, probably around the stabilator on the port side, and then a big fireball.”

Moments later, two parachutes opened and safely deposited two bruised Air Force officers into the Mediterranean.

The triggerman was Lieutenant (j.g.) Timothy Dorsey. Here’s the end of the story (you can read the amazing middle here):

Later, Dorsey reflected on the day`s events. “Under no circumstances do I consider myself trigger-happy,” he said.

“If called upon to do so, I`ve been trained to react decisively and smartly. In this most unfortunate mishap, I believe that I indeed reacted decisively and, at the time, with the information I had received and interpreted, believed I was acting smartly.

“If flying tomorrow, I`d have a heck of a lot more things I`d do differently.”

But Dorsey won`t get that chance. The Navy ruled that he will be allowed to keep his pilot wings, but he never again will be allowed to fly a Navy aircraft.

So they’ve made him a rear admiral instead

[KRSESQ]

Those boys get trained to follow orders and they sure trained this one well.

If the Air Force pilots had been killed, Dorsey's career would have ended then and there, orders or no.

[Dr Mordrid]

Apparently the USAF plane banked towards the carrier, and being major national assets that are aggressively defended the CO took no chances that its pilot may have gone rogue and sent the order to splash it. As such I severely doubt the Navy flyer would have suffered at all if the USAF guys hadn't survived.

[KRSESQ]

To be fair, Air Force pilots are pretty well-trained too. The probability of one of them "going rogue" is pretty low.

Note that probability=low =/= probability=zero.

[Jessterw]

I'd like to hear what the Air Force pilots have to say about the events that took place.

It is a good thing neither were killed, because career or not, the Navy pilot would have likely have suffered from guilt the rest of his life.

[Dr Mordrid]

He fired a Sidewinder, which is a heat seeker and would tend to hit the rear of the plane around the engine outlet(s.) Better than using the guns or a radar guided missile that could have hit the cockpit.