As a bit of clarification you both are probably right

1 The Coral Sea was part of the major Libyan attack called El Dorado Canyon the Air Wing at the time was CVW 13 and their Hornets flew Combat Air Patrol and repeatedly "challenged" the opposing aircraft additionally have worked with CVW8 squadrons as well as CVW13 squadrons The famous Line of Death is part of El Dorado Canyon in 86. The Mig shot downs were in 81 and 89.

2  It is very possible that CVW 8 (which would have been aircraft from VF-41) were on the Coral Sea when Dex saw them,  CVW8 was in a transtition phase from 89-91 when they were waiting for the Roosevelt to become availiable and all the squadrons from CVW13 were in the process of changing air wings. As Sept of 89 while CVW-13 exsisted the squadrons either did not or were moving on to another wing in fact the squadrons still assigned basically had little or no aircraft. So if infact this was in that time frame late 89 till 91 then the planes on deck were most likely not the planes from Coral Seas airwing and probably were on loan.

3 Also F-14's at that time were also doing two major changes so like the A-6 and EA-6B they airplanes used by VF-41 in 1981 were most likely not in the squadron in that they would be high air time air frames and finally the state of Texas Flag and the state outline was used on planes that were part of the reserve airwing VF-202 Superheats caused they were based out of Dallas and from 1986-till decomm they were with out a carrier to call home and were flying very old Tomcats which is why the decommissioned rather than convert and were using what ever carriers to maintain quals

So in a nut shell the VF-41 plane from 81 mostly was part of VF-202 and was on the Coral Sea since the Coral see had not planes around then and VF-202 had no carrier. So Dex no regular aircraft assigned to Coral Sea downed a plane in the Libyan Conflict.  Blackbeard there is a high degree of probablity that the tour guide may have actually been told that the plane on deck was one of those planes that did (there were 4, but VF-32 was not until 89) shot down a Mig and just didn't know that it was no longer a Black Ace Plane, but on the surface it would be a valid assumption to think a VF-41 plane was not on Coral Sea as they never were assigned to her in fact Coral Sea never deployed with Tomcats.

So play nice

(vf-202_1.gif)

vf-202_1.gif (14KB - 835 downloads)

the cars on deck are normally part of a change of home port the navy lets crew take POVs to new home port onbard the deck sometimes

Here is the list of skippers which might tell when the tour was

1981 - 1983	Captain Jerome L. Johnson, USN
1983 - 1984	Captain Jeremy D. Taylor, USN
1984 - 1985	Captain Robert E. Tucker, USN
1985 - 1987	Captain Robert H. Ferguson, USN
1987 - 1988	Captain Bruce B. Bremner, USN
1988 - 1990	Captain Lloyd E. Allen, Jr., USN

which in turn might help figure out the why

yeah but I really think Dex is right to I think for the review they had aircraft on deck and that the aircraft was most likely from VF-202 (hence the Texas Flag) and that the aircraft was actually the one that VF-41 Skipper flew when he downed the Migs

anyways  it is airdale stuff  and it is like saying which torpedo number was used to hit which ship  not important

Okay I give up

All I was trying to do was explain how both of you could be right at the same time and my comment was just meant to say consider how you both were wording things  such as you saying Dex you are wrong but its a nice sea story (implying not all TINS are true yah know) and Dex very certainly stated Well I know it was the Coral Sea  So whatever I keep my damn comments to myself and you all can just stuff it. I am done with this crap

BTW: Naval Air was my life from 1989 to 1996 (yes I was at TailHook several times)

Edited by Bear 2008-05-09 7:35 PM