Ever heard of the Tonopah Test Range or TTR? Long before it became a secret base concealing the first operational home of the F-117 stealth fighter jet, it was a remote Department of Energy laboratory. Later, it was to host the first cover story to explain the increase in operations and construction that would surround the arrival of the super-secret F-117. What’s really weird, and awesome at the same time, is that this cover story was also so sensitive and treated with such respect by those in the know, that even as the F-117 jets were arriving at Tonopah and going operational, the word of the cover story, never got leaked… The story was thus never told. A failed cover story. Finally, in 2006 the mission was declassified. And one of those fine American’s decided to write some of their previously undisclosed history down.
Before they were the Red Eagles they were the TAC Red Hats. TAC stands for Tactical AIr Command. Back then, TAC was on a leadership rampage. What resulted was the rise of the “fighter generals” as described in the great history book by Mike Worden of the same name. This was, and has been, their heyday. Yet their rise to prominence culminated in the dissolution of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and the previous reign of the “bomber generals” over the USAF. This was thirty years ago. This event ushered in the 3rd epoch of USAF maturity since it’s birth as a new service in 1947. The epochs were defined and characterized by Jeff Smith in his illuminating work entitled. “Tomorrow’s Air Force”. The rise of the fighter generals happened on the eve of the first Desert Storm war in Iraq. It was the late 80’s and I was a newly commissioned officer in the USAF. A SAC trained warrior as we were called...forged in the fire of a nuclear weapons maintenance squadron, inside a profession and an Air Force Speciality or AFSC (maintenance) well known for eating their young. Everyone remembers the 80’s with the movies, Top Gun, the music, Billy Idol, and our clothing choices, parachute pants. It was a fine time to be young and unafraid.
With all that going on it’s no wonder that a few fearless pioneers went unobserved in that high desert of Nevada. They were guided by a vision to train fighter pilots, the cream of the crop fighter pilots, to join an echelon above the best of the best, to cap-off their training with an aerial engagement of actual adversary alien (forgien) aircraft. In this case, actual Russian MiG fighters straight from behind the Iron Curtain. The training would be conducted in complete secrecy. The Cold War was still in full swing. We were still a decade away from the fall of the Berlin Wall. America’s strategy was still nuclear deterrence with actual limited nuclear strike options materializing to confront the nightmare of the Fulda Gap scenario which was deemed not only real, but likely. What burned in the heart of Air Force planners at the Pentagon was the ability to gain Air Supremacy over the communists in the event a conventional war kicked off in Europe and 50,000 Soviet Union tanks streamed across the border, through the Fulda Gap, and into Germany.
Who were these planners at the Pentagon? Enter Gaillard Peck, known as Evil Peck in his band of fighter pilot brothers. These brothers, seasoned in the aerial combat of VIetnam, knew the Air Force could do better. Their plan, build a squadron of real Russian MiGs and train pilots to fly them, and to fly against our best of the best in training scenarios.
“America’s Secret MiG Squadron, The Red Eagles of Project Constant Peg”, is an effort by Evil Peck, to describe how he got it done, in complete secrecy. How did he pull it off? How did he get it approved, funded, and operational? What it took, despite the huge bureaucracy, and what was the resulting success of this elite squadron of US owned and operated Russian MiGs? It is also an essay about winning and losing, It is an essay on leadership and egos. What is wrong with the United States AIr Force but also, what can be done right? Evil Peck, through his own eyes reports on being inside the bureaucracy that made it all happen. There was also some losing going on and Evil is too much of a gentleman to describe and place blame where it belongs. Having been in and around the Air Force myself, since 1982, as an officer in the field, a civilian on the Air Staff, and as a contractor supporting the Pentagon, I have seen it all. Evil Peck nails it. He also tells the story of Bud “Chops” Horan, who cloaked the program in secrecy, almost to a fault...given the need for a cover story that never really emerged...and for good reason. OBTW that story still hasn’t emerged. More on that later.
First some background before I get deeper into this book review. Flying high performance jet aircraft is a lethal enterprise...not just because of the necessity to dogfight in combat. These technical marvels of the sky can kill you very quickly. Thus the training required to learn just how to strap on engines with more thrust than weight is not something those who are in the profession have ever taken lightly. It demands no compromise and the best of the best training required is an absolute. A block approach was adopted by the Air Force to build the best of the best. Baby steps. Learn and master in stages. Finally, when you’ve mastered the jet you still have a long way to go. You are only learning for one reason, to fly in combat. At the top of the flyer’s pyramid stand the aerial aces. Those who have downed other enemy fyers in combat. During wartime, experience was gained in the heat of the dogfight. What did you do? What worked and how did you survive? Pass that on to the flyers in your squadron. From previous combat it is well known in the fighter community that 10 missions is the number required to gain comfort and some proficiency...that is if you don’t die first. After all the book learning, after all the block training, after all the tactics and techniques have been described, you still must fly in a hostile exchange to really know how you will perform. Enter, Red Flag. At the top of the heap, pilots are invited to Red Flag exercises to gain their 10 sorties of combat proficiency against a simulated aggressor aircraft….but is that even enough to eliminate “Buck Fever”. The first time you look through your rifle scope while hunting a deer and hesitate before you pull the trigger. That’s buck fever. It’s a well known phenomenon. How then, do you get the deer in the room? Let the pilot see the deer, run with the deer, and down the deer in combat, or be bested by the deer...and learn that lesson too How do you put a highly trained USAF fighter pilot in place with their crosshairs on said deer...a Russia pilot in a MiG trying to kill you. How do you get the deer to 20,000 ft, AGL, moving at near the speed of sound? Evil Peck figured it out.
Back then the Air Force fostered what was known as the one mistake mentality. A single mistake would mean the end of your career, unless you were very lucky. Some of this grew out of the nuclear posture of the Air Force where we constantly hung under the Sword of Damocles and a single mistake could not be tolerated. But yet, how do you learn? Particularly when you are coloring outside the lines. When I was a maintenance officer on the flightline in 1988, I remember an issue came up and at one point I had 10 senior NCO’s in my office, totalling 220 years of USAF maintenance experience. I did the math but I didn’t try to solve the problem. I told them to solve the problem. My two years of maintenance experience wasn’t going to get it done. And guess what? In the morning 220 years of experience had that problem solved. As Evil describes leadership within the Red Eagles, the difference in styles jumps off the page, from the maintenance officer, David Stringer, who went on to be a 1-Star general, a very very high rank for a logistics officer in those days, to George Gennin, a commander who single handedly destroyed the Red Eagles because of his commander’s ego and blind spots. Later Col John Manclark would have to repair the mess made by Gennin and get the sortie rates back up.
In his new best seller, “Talking to Strangers”, Malcomn gladwell describes what happens when two people don’t understand one another at a very basic level. In the case of Bobby “Daddy” Ellis, the SMSgt who was the Chief of Maintenance, for the Red Eagles nothing could be closer to the truth. When the 6th Red Eagles Commander showed up, Col George Gennin, they immediately had a communication barrier. They didn’t speak anything close to the same language. Gennin seemed unwilling to even try to learn. Ellis, on the other hand, owned those jets in every sense of the word. He built them from scratch. He repaired them. He maintained them. He knew them down to the last rivet. Gennin, on the other hand, knew none of this. What he knew was Air Force good order and discipline. And this is what he imposed on the Red Eagles when he showed up. Gennin was out for himself. And hypocritically, as he would condemn Ellis for doing things outside the chain of command, he himself evaded the chain of command, not reported in Evil's book, but in other published accounts of the Red Eagles. Gennin himself frequently jumped the Chain of Command and would have routine conversations with the Commander of TAC, Gen Creech, behind his own bosses back. He, better than anyone, understood the value of these back channel communications. But fundamentally failed to understand the magic that was taking place right in front of him. Instead of finding a way to join the team he decided to crush the spirit of the unit. He claims credit for increasing the sortie rate, where the numbers reported by Evil show he did nothing of the sort. Sortie rates decreased under his watch, the lowest to date in the history of the Red Eagles and he handed a broken squadron to the next commander’s White and Manclark who really turned the sortie rates around.
This is a great book which captures a brief moment of Air Force culture. Apart from Evil’s story and personal involvement he was humble and truthful enough to include stories of the Red Eagles written by other Red Eagles in his book. These are all fascination stories told in their own words. I’ve mentioned several times that the Red Eagles should have been the cover story for the F-117s. They were not. Perhaps, again, we return to Gerrin. Perhaps, we may never know, trying to break the Red Eagles into conformance with the USAF was one way to thrust them into the light of day...to assume their envisioned role as a cover story for those F-117’s, the primary reason for Tonopah’s resurgence, visibility, and obvious influx of major funding.. Ultimately the Red Eagle squadron at Tonopah was shut down as the F-117’s went public due to their involvement and success in the first Gulf War.
I alluded to it earlier, but a word about Intelligence collection in the United States...
What Evil doesn’t describe is this book is the inherent relationship the Red Eagles must have had with the United States intelligence community. For obvious reasons this has been left out. And perhaps the reason you don’t use an intelligence program as a cover story for another classified program. Evidence in the book would suggest you don’t run off to Egypt and other countries around the world, as Daddy Ellis did, to collect Russian aircraft parts, without US Intel in the room. So they must have been there and Daddy Ellis must have been eyeballs deep in this community. This is another piece of the puzzle that Geoge Gerrin would have never understood. It’s a blind spot for most inside the Department of Defense, primarily because most employees of the DoD never possess the coveted clearances to go behind the intel curtain. And whereas they may brush up against it, they never understand it’s depth. The relationship between DoD and US Intel meet at organizations such as the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) under Air Force Systems Command (AFSC). You are on your own to research such things but I would start with digging up some history on the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC). And keep in mind the rules are different on the intel side. Those guys grow beards and don’t wear uniforms.. They also don’t serve as cover stories for DoD missions. Typically it’s the other way around...
I close with a question for those alien hunters out there who may be reading this review and searching for ET. Ever seen a fighter pilot complete with face-mask and oxygen line connected to their helmet? Check it out sometime...
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