What did I get wrong this time? Believing something I read about F-15 Eagles and reposting it, that’s what.
Here’s the big picture. My last USAF flying assignment was to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, where I flew F-15Cs with the 44th Fighter Squadron Vampires. The F-15C is the original single-seat air-to-air Eagle, built in the 1970s and 80s. It’s being retired, and Kadena’s the last base in the active Air Force still flying it. The Air National Guard in a few states still operates C models, but not for much longer. They’re being replaced by F-22s, F-35s, and the brand-new two-seat F-15EX, the latest evolutionary development of the F-15E Strike Eagle, a multirole fighter/bomber introduced in the 1990s. Since I flew the F-15C, and since I know Kadena, I’ve been following the story of the drawdown with great interest.
So I bit on the Eurasian Times report. I should have known it was crap when they bolloxed the tail number of the “last F-15C” to fly at Kadena, listing it as “A5095.” Kadena is home to an F-15C with the tail number 85-0095, and that’s probably the one they meant. Another clue should have been this sentence: “The following day, the aircraft was scheduled for demilitarization, highlighting the phase-out of the legendary F-15C Eagles from Kadena.” Demilitarization? What the eff is that? That is not what the Air Force does with retired aircraft. They reallocate them to the Air National Guard or put them in storage at the Boneyard in southern Arizona. They’re never “demilitarized.”
No, this wasn’t the last F-15C Eagle to fly at Kadena, not by a long shot, and I should have been more skeptical.
Kadena’s F-15C fleet was to have been retired to the boneyard or reassigned to Air National Guard units in the States a year or more ago, but that was based on the idea that by now newer fighters would have replaced them. But the handful of F-22s the Air Force possesses are heavily committed elsewhere; the F-35, well, who knows what the hell is going on there; lastly, deliveries of new F-15EX aircraft have been delayed again and again, and are only now beginning to show up at Kingsley Field in Oregon, where new F-15EX pilots will be trained. It’s going to be a while yet before the F-15Cs at Kadena are replaced, maybe another year or even two.
What actually happened is that the fighter wing at Kadena put on a ceremonial “last F-15C flight” to mark the intended removal of single-seat Eagles from that base. The jet they used, I’m pretty sure, was tail number 85-0095. But 85-0095, from all I can tell, is still at Kadena for now, still flying daily missions … as are 30 to 40 others, spread between two squadrons, the 44th Vampires and the 67th Fighting Cocks.
A more accurate update from The Aviationist, written a week or so after the misinformed Eurasian Times piece, says there were 48 Eagles still at Kadena, minus four that were just flown back to the US, bound either for Air National Guard units or the Boneyard. Since the article was published, additional Eagles may have left, so I feel safest saying 30 to 40 remain. The exact number is likely classified, since several nations, friendly and hostile, are following the story even more closely than I am.
I’m obliged to stress a related point, since these days Eagles and Strike Eagles (the original single-seat fighters and the newer two-seat multirole fighter/bombers … which include the new F-15EX Eagle II), are mixed together in the press and popular mind. Same basic airframe but different roles (plus the whole single-seat versus two-seat thing, which goes to the very soul of the fighter ethos), and anyone who’s flown the different models knows why it’s important not to mix them up. The F-15C, F-15E, and F-15EX — all the best at what they do, but not the same.
L to R: F-15C, F-15E, F-15EX.
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