IrAF No.84 Squadron. January 1991
possibly flown by Lt. Zuhair Dawood who shot down LCDR Scott Speicher on F/A-18C Hornet from VFA-81 «Sunliners» on January, 17. 1991
Model: MiG-25PDS "Foxbat"
s/n: 25211
LCDR Scott Speicher was flying an F/A-18 Hornet fighter when he was shot down 100 miles west of Baghdad, on the night of January 17, 1991, the first night of Operation Desert Storm. His plane crashed in a remote, uninhabited wasteland known as Tulul ad Dulaym 33°14′35.81″N 42°21′18.14″E he was the first combat casualty for American forces in the war. An unclassified summary of a 2001 CIA report suggests that Speicher's aircraft was shot down by a missile fired from an Iraqi aircraft, a MiG-25; flown by Lt. Zuhair Dawood, 84th squadron of the IrAF. Speicher was at 28,000 feet and travelling at 0.92 Mach (540 Knots) when the front of the aircraft suffered a catastrophic event. The impact from the R-40 missile threw the aircraft laterally off its flight path between fifty and sixty degrees with a resulting 6 g minimum load. A pilot on the same mission stated: "I'm telling you right now, don't believe what you're being told. It was that MiG that shot Spike down". The day after the shoot-down, Speicher was placed on MIA status. On May 22, 1991, after the end of the Gulf War, Speicher's status was changed to Killed in Action.
